Compiled by Polly Campbell
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Required reading

There's a bit of a fad at the moment for books that trace the history of a single food or category of food. We've seen books on cod, salt, olives. Here are three new titles that take a deep and complete approach to food writing.

Caviar (Broadway Books; $23.95) is by Inga Saffron, a journalist who spent several years in Moscow. She writes a lively account of how sturgeon roe, once a humble food, was transformed to the world's best-known luxury food item, of how communism and capitalism have impacted the caviar trade and the uncertain environmental future of prehistoric sturgeon fish.

Sweets: (Bloomsbury; $24.95) is a serious book about the history of candy, but author Tim Richardson is obviously a candy lover, and writes with an amusingly dry English sense of humor. The book has a British slant, with essays about such sweets as rock, Turkish delight or rhubarb and custards that have never crossed the Atlantic.

Pasta: The Story of a Universal Food (Columbia University Press: $29.95) is the most scholarly of these books. Authors Silvano Serventi and Francoise Sabban consider the history of pasta in Italy and China in a complete and somewhat dry style.

We tried it

Coffee tastes good while it lasts, but it does tend to leave a nasty taste in your mouth (especially that sludge in the office coffeepot).

Starbucks sells what causes the problem; now it also sells the antidote: a line of after-coffee mints and gum. There are vanilla mints, peppermints and cinnamon gum. The mints are tiny, which is a good thing with the peppermints. Even more intense than Altoids, they are almost too much mint. Vanilla and mint is a nice mellow combination; you'll need about five for a tall latte, though. They're sold in attractive tins and cost $1.95.