Artists as well as cooks know that presentation is everything, and in the gallery of pleasures that is The Modern Art Cookbook (Reaktion, $39), Mary Ann Caws pairs visual and literary evocations of food with matching recipes. Many of these dishes come from the kitchens of the great modern artists; here’s Renoir’s special sea urchin sauce, Picasso’s herb soup, and van Gogh’s monkfish and mussel stew—or try Dalí’s mesclagne landais, if you dare. Writers are also ready chefs, and Caws samples the bass dish Alice B. Toklas prepared for Picasso and serves up Emily Dickinson’s instructions for gingerbread, alongside recipes and brief narratives from iconic food writers such as M.F.K. Fisher and Elizabeth David. A serious scholar and the author of books on surrealism and poetry, Caws specializes in the French arts, but her range is broad and deep. She wears her learning lightly in this anthology, whose point, she says, is “affection,” as well as harmony and joy.