As Waverley Root wrote in "The Food of France," inland Provence is not a place you fall in love with at first sight.

Compared with the apple, it is "harder to grow, fussier about its surroundings," according to Waverley Root, and "resists efforts to reduce it to uniformity."

Waverley Root called the cooking of alpine France coarse, unsubtle and stern.

In a paperback edition of "The Food of Italy," which was first published in 1971, Waverley Root devotes 111 pages to this region.

Waverley Root also mentions lobster with pasta as a specialty of Trapani in "The Food of Italy" (Random House, 1971).

The Paris Edition; The Autobiography of Waverley Root, 1927-1934 (1987)

Au contraire, replied the French food critic James de Coquet, as quoted by Waverley Root in "Food."

According to Waverley Root in "Food," mint acquired its name from a nymph called Minthe, who was coveted by Pluto.

IN addition to being a renowned authority on food, Waverley Root was one of the more distinguished American foreign correspondents of his time.

As Waverley Root wrote: "There is a harmony among all things and the places where they are found."