"Tell me where you eat, what you eat, and at what time you eat, and I will tell you who you are." This is the motto of Anka Muhlstein's erudite and tasty little book about the ways food and the art of the table feature in Honoré de Balzac's stories and novels. Writing during the rise of the restaurant and haute cuisine in France, Balzac was the first novelist, Muhlstein argues, to show how food can evoke character, atmosphere, class, and social climbing more suggestively than money, appearances, and other trappings.