Meals in Fiction - Incline Our Hearts by AN Wilson

I  have just finished reading a series of five novels by AN Wilson collectively called The Lampitt Chronicles. I will probably write a blog post about them under "Reading", but in the meantime I would like to include in the occasional series of posts on literary meals on this blog a meal in the very first volume of the series, Incline Our Hearts. The meal takes place in France in a house at the seaside called Les Mouettes where the protagonist stays as a youth, in order to improve his French. He describes the house thus:

"Les Mouettes had been a family home. A turreted, granite affair, it would have been hard to classify architecturally. Is there such a thing as Seaside Gothic Celtic Twilight Revival?"

The meal goes like this:

"This was a series of dishes done to such perfection that one was half aware, even while eating it, that the memory of the meal would remain for ever. Almost all experience is instantaneously forgettable. Most of what we do remember is only fixed in our minds by chance. For another person to place something in our consciousness deliberately, so that we never forget it, that is art. Thérèse as a cook [had it]. The meal began with a spinach soufflé which was like a thing of nature, a puffy light green crust sprouting from its bowl like a bush coming to leaf. And then there was raie au beurre noire, the freshest strands of succulent skate as white as snow amid the black butter and the little, dark green capers: once again, one felt that the food was for the first time in its natural habitat: a naked mermaid was suggested, sitting in seaweed. And then there were pieces of roast beef, pink and tender, served with pommes dauphinoises. And then there were haricots verts from the garden, served separately when we had all finished our meat. And then there was a fresh, very oily, green salad with which to eat the Camembert. And then, to crown it all, omelettes soufflées aux liqueurs, frothing, bubbling in their great buttery pans."

I could have done without the mermaid analogy, plus the italicised French, and I would have preferred Brie de Meaux to Camembert, but all the same.