How to Eat a Peach summary

Most 16-year-olds devote their time to scrawling angsty love notes in their diaries. Not Diana Henry. If an inquisitive friend had peeked into her notebooks at the time, they would have found recipe after recipe. Henry was keenly attuned to food from a young age. She carefully observed all the meals her mother prepared, and spent hours poring over Cordon Bleu cooking magazines. 

For Henry, food was a way of getting to know the world even before she was able to travel. She grew up in Northern Ireland, which was isolated from the rest of Europe; travel was cumbersome and expensive. By poring over exotic dishes from the rest of the world, Henry wasn't only learning about food. She was learning about other ways of life.

When you think of serving an elaborate three-course menu, you might imagine a group of people solemnly gathered around a white table cloth,  sniffing their wine before they drink it and eating dainty morsels off china plates.

But that's not what Henry envisions when she's planning a meal. She grew up in an Irish family that loved food, but never hosted what they called dinner parties. Rather, they had parties that included lots of food, as well as loud chatter and good whiskey and dancing around the living room to Frank Sinatra.

One of the first menus that Henry made as a budding young cook consisted of buckwheat blinis swimming in butter, cream and smoked salmon; guinea fowl breasts with a creamy red wine sauce, and a soufflé to end. It was a rich creamy meal from start to finish without a fresh vegetable in sight!

Today, her tastes tend towards the lighter end of the scale. Most of her meals include only one course containing cream, and she makes sure to keep her food fresh with sharp flavors, citrus fruits, and fresh herbs. And almost every meal will feature a fresh green salad.

The benefits of seasonal eating are now widely accepted. Not only is locally sourced food more ethical in terms of environmental impact, it also tastes better. 

Henry has believed in these principles long before they were fashionable, but she also has another reason for eating seasonally. For her, meals are not only about food; they're events. Seasonal factors like the weather and even the fragrances wafting in from the garden will influence these events because they affect what people feel like eating.

On her first trip to Italy, Henry was eating dinner outside on a summer evening when she noticed a waiter carrying a bowl of peaches over to the diners at a neighboring table. Everybody took a peach and then cut it up, dropping the slices into a glass of chilled Moscato wine. They left the slices to muddle in the wine for a while, then ate them and drank the peach-infused wine.

Henry was enthralled; the dessert had been savored as if it were the most complicated piece of patisserie, but it hadn't required any cooking, or even chopping. At the same time, it had been served with the utmost care and attention to detail. Everything was perfect,  from the quality of the peaches to the glasses they were served in. 

When we think of French food we may think of some classics, like snails in garlic or boeuf bourguignon. But there's so much more to it than that. Each region of France has its own delectable specialties, drawing on local produce and cooking traditions. Henry has travelled all over France, intent on discovering the tastes of every region. Her menus are steeped in these specific experiences and have an exacting regional specificity.

For example, a menu inspired by carefree holidays at the seaside in Brittany pays tribute to her memories of eating oysters with sourdough bread from a roadside stall in the wild wind, with the tang of the sea in the air. 

Henry's first visit to Spain was a sensory overload; smells of leather and garlic, loud conversations, and crowded bars. She'd read the bittersweet descriptions of the country written by Lorca and seen the dark, somber portraits by El Greco, and being there felt just as moodily high-pitched as their art suggests. 

Spain has fascinated and intrigued her ever since. The fraught political history under Franco reminds her of the Troubles she grew up in in Northern Ireland. She marvels at the capacity that people seem to have for embracing darkness and melancholy but also for living life so fully. There’s an electric aliveness in Spain that keeps people up dancing and drinking and talking and singing all night!

When her plane touched down in Mexico in the middle of the night, Henry felt exhilarated. The trip had been planned as a distraction from a broken heart; she'd just been dumped by her boyfriend. When she walked into her hotel at one in the morning to find a band playing La Bamba in a raucous bar serving shots of mezcal, she knew it would do the trick.

Mexico entranced her with its bright colors, and its vivid flavors. Mexican food turned out to be about so much more than the guacamole with tacos served in Europe. It was delicate, rich, and complex. Today, when she wants a jolt of the exuberant heat that helped to heal her heart, Henry prepares a menu of the dishes she loved so much while she was there.

Food is about adventure, but it's also about comfort. And there's nothing more comforting than home. For Henry, the most nostalgic food will always be the kind of fare she ate when she was growing up in Northern Ireland. Things like Guinness bread, made with molasses and buttermilk, or seafood–like smoked eel, cockles, or mussels. The food makes her think of her father, and childhood holidays, and the exuberance of the place where she was born. 

The key message here is: Food can provide comfort, and remind us of home. 

By now you've probably become very inspired by Henry's festive menus. But what about if you want to plan your own meal from scratch? Planning the perfect menu is easy, if you just follow some of Henry’s key principles.

The first question you can ask yourself is, what are you trying to say with the meal? Henry has said that her meals are like stories – they express something, be it a festive occasion, a memory of a place, or an ode to a particular season. What is it that you would like your guests to experience through your food?

Want to try out the menu that inspired the title of Henry’s book -- and her entire cooking philosophy?

We’ve included some instructions here so you can make your own version of “How to Eat a Peach”.