As a child attending boarding school in England, Roald Dahl displayed culinary discernment at a young age. When Cadbury’s distributed boxes of test chocolate to Dahl’s class, he assessed one variety as “too subtle for the common palate.” The experience later inspired Dahl to write his 1964 novel “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” but that book was not the most food-focused of his writings. In 1990, the last year of his life, Dahl wrote “Memories With Food at Gipsy House” with his wife Felicity – a cookbook that is often as biting and delectable as his fiction.

For grown-up Dahl fans, “Memories With Food” is a fascinating glimpse into the author’s life at Gipsy House, his family’s home in England. Dahl makes clear in the introduction that he values a certain epicurean restraint: “We are all pigs, but we are, I hope, discerning pigs who care with some passion about fine cooking. No lunch is ever eaten without a comment or a discussion or a criticism or an accolade.” It’s a theme he emphasizes in “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” too: Augustus, Violet, Mike, and Veruca get their comeuppance because they fail to temper their greed with good taste.

Though there are recipes in “Memories With Food,” hardly any of them are from Dahl himself. The most enjoyable moments in the book come from his essays on topics like catching baby cod on the fjord in Norway, his hatred of Christmas turkey (he preferred a goose or a plump capon), and the joy of the perfect Dutch butter cookie, the Arnhemse Meisje.

The recipes themselves are mostly a grab bag of British, French, and Norwegian dishes, all contributed by Dahl’s family and friends. There are stodgily Continental standbys like pike quenelles and oeufs en gelee, but most of the recipes are interesting and varied examples of refined home cooking, like Stilton pate, Norwegian meatballs, and iced pecan and orange mousse. Dahl even contributes a few recipes himself, describing the humble kitchen suppers he made for his children. Of these, he writes with a characteristic mixture of tenderness and disdain: “Anything that floats in the middle of a jelly is appreciated. Then there was peanut butter on toast, crispy bacon and lots of mustard and cress on top. Don’t ask me why children love these particular curiosities.”

The meals for special occasions – illustrated with hand-drawn menus – are a particular highlight. Simple, seasonal, and enviable, the menus evoke the British countryside like a still life: The Easter feast, for example, features lamb with turnips, sprouting broccoli, potatoes, and onions with cream and garlic, followed by curd cheese tarts and the first rhubarb of the year for dessert.

The food memoir genre continues to flourish – poet Maya Angelou, gossip columnist Liz Smith, journalist Linda Ellerbee, and novelist Pat Conroy have all entered the fray in the past year. These books, like Dahl’s, have dual identities: free-form autobiography on the bedside table, and eclectic recipe collection in the kitchen. It’s no surprise that more and more writers are telling the tales of their lives through recipes. As Pat Conroy observes, “A recipe is just a story that ends with a good meal.”