Babette’s Feast

Babette’s Feast, short story by Isak Dinesen, published serially in the Ladies’ Home Journal (1950) and later collected in the volume Anecdotes of Destiny (1958). It was also published in Danish in 1958. The tale concerns a French refugee whose artistic sensuality contrasts with the puritanical ethos of her new home in Norway.

Fleeing the Commune of Paris in 1871, Babette arrives in a small Norwegian town, where she is taken in as a servant in the home of Martine and Philippa, two elderly daughters of the town’s late minister who maintain the austere lifestyle of their father’s sect. The pious sisters instruct Babette to cook simple northern dishes—such as split cod and ale-and-bread soup. When Babette wins the French lottery, she spends the fortune to lovingly prepare a magnificent French feast for the sisters and their friends.