Acknowledgements

I am primarily grateful to Peter Campbell, who first suggested many years ago that I should write a book about the village of Mourjou; to Mary and Philip Hyman, who argued that there was a need for a book in English on Auvergne cookery; to Tag Gronberg, Paul Overy and Ginette Vincendeau, who bullied me to get down to writing it; to Michèle Canet, an unfailingly helpful source of local culinary lore; and to Eleo Gordon, of Penguin Books, who patiently shepherded the book through its various metamorphoses.