What Is a Canon and Why Do Cooks Need One?

In the academic world, the professors wrangle over which books everyone ought to read. They call this list of essential great books “the canon.” The word itself is a classic: It derives from the ancient Greek word for measurement or standard of judgment. The Catholic Church governs itself through a legal system of “canon” law, by which judgments are made in ecclesiastical courts. When the Church selected the sacred books it would include in Holy Scripture, the selection process was described in the same language as the selection process for sainthood, which is called canonization. So it was that in 1545, the Council of Trent gathered in the Adriatic Italian city of Trento near Trieste and established a canon of officially anointed books to include in the Catholic Bible.