More recent books are no slouch in this department; there are vivid descriptions of all kinds of goodies in the Harry Potter series, and the "Redwall" books are so well-known for their evocative culinary imagery that the author has added a companion cookbook: https://www.amazon.com/Redwall-Cookbook-Brian-Jacques/dp/039...

Perhaps it's a cultural thing, as I was born and raised in ranching country, but cowpies (that is, dinnerplate-sized piles of cow manure, hard or soft) are not something I tend to see eaten in literature. Stepped in, frequently. Maybe even burned for heat. But never eaten.

In the UK, those are cowpats. There is definitely a risk of a particularly horrible misunderstanding here.

The cowpie Desperate Dan eats is actually a huge pie of meat - so big the horns stick out of it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desperate_Dan

Similarly, I was once offered a Meadow Muffin, a fibre-filled, unashamedly health-food cupcake. But to me, a meadow muffin is what comes out of the south end of a north-going horse.

Also a pretty cool article on this subject

https://daily.jstor.org/turkish-delight/

I also admit when I first heard read the book when young, Turkish Delight seemed like this otherworldly thing. In reality, its interesting, but nothing I would go out of my way for

I've noticed that in the Chronicles of Narnia (written in the early 1950s), C.S. Lewis frequently included rich, detailed descriptions of the food. Knowing about the situation with rationing in the UK at the time helps put it in context. Or maybe Lewis was just a foodie.

It was a fine meal after the Calormene fashion. I don't know whether you would have liked it or not, but Shasta did. There were lobsters, and salad, and snipe stuffed with almonds and truffles, and a complicated dish made of chicken-livers and rice and raisins and nuts, and there were cool melons and gooseberry fools and mulberry fools, and every kind of nice thing that can be made with ice. There was also a little flagon of the sort of wine that is called "white" though it is really yellow. "The Horse and His Boy," Chapter V

Not to mention Anne Mcaffery’s Dragon Rider of Pern books. I’ve heard GRRM does a lot of food porn in his fire and ice series, but have never read those books.

The companion book, "The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern" featured recipes for "Hearty Herdbeast Stew", gather pies, and the coffee-analog "klah".

My attempts at gather pies never seemed to work all that well, but klah was pretty much just cinnamon hot chocolate, which was pretty good.

> such tales as Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (1908), where food denotes cosiness and plenty.

This. Grahame’s account of the animals' Christmas meal is my favourite secular evocation in literature of the 'goodwill to all' spirit of Christmas. If I remember, I find this book and re-read this passage sometime over the xmas period.