A Loving Defence of Brown Food

Food provides many pleasures, not least of them aesthetic. The taut purple-black gleam of aubergines; the perfect Fibonacci fractal of Romanesco; the speckled Tuscan tones of a pile of dried borlotti beans; the tiger-striped iridescence of mackerel: cooking is full of such sudden snatches of beauty. No one sense can operate satisfactorily without the willing cooperation of the others: without smell, you cannot taste; how food looks can alter our perception of it before we’ve even had our first mouthful.