[In] Julie & Julia ... Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

If I had thought the beef marrow might be a hell of a lot of work for not much difference, I needn’t have worried. The taste of the marrow is rich, meaty, intense in a nearly-too-much way. In my increasingly depraved state, I could think of nothing at first but that it tasted like really good sex. But there was something more than that, even. What it really tastes like is life, well lived. Of course the cow I got marrow from had a fairly crappy life – lots of crowds and overmedication and bland food that might or might not have been a relative. But deep in his or her bones, there was a capacity for feral joy. I could taste it.

Here is an entire institute devoted to glorifying the art of cooking,

French and Italian cooking have been elevated to a really high art form.

The French peasant cuisine is at the basis of the culinary art. By this I mean it is composed of honest elements that la grande cuisine only embellishes.

A lot of that cooking was done by people not on meal plans. We would like to minimize the number of people who are doing that.