It’s doubtful old Gelasius would be thrilled to learn that, in the 21st century, these martyrs are remembered through observance of a holiday that exists primarily as a means by which young men obtain premarital sex through the purchase of jewelry and expensive dinners. But then again, he had more in mind than saints when he made Feb. 14 a holiday. He was also cleverly attempting to repurpose a Roman holiday that fell on Feb. 15, upon which young men would randomly choose the names of young ladies to be their dates to the bacchanal. (In that regard, it seems the pagan conception of the holiday has triumphed.)

And Feb. 14, it has long been believed in Europe, is the day on which birds begin to pair (it is halfway through the second month of the year). As Chaucer wryly observed in “Parliament of Foules”:

“For this was sent on Seynt Valentyne’s day Whan every foul cometh ther to choose his mate.”

Today, in America, we’ve added our own twist to the Valentine’s Day ritual: It is the day upon which we are subjected to countless articles in the mass media about aphrodisiacs. Champagne, chocolate, caviar and sushi, we are told year in and year out by the likes of Mademoiselle and Cosmopolitan, are the “keys to a smokin’ Valentine’s Day.” We’re inundated with specious quotes from scientists willing to say anything to get their names in print by agreeing that 10 particular food products will “spice up your love life.”

Don’t get me wrong, I love champagne, chocolate, caviar and sushi (though sushi isn’t particularly filling so I usually need to supplement my meal with a couple of slices of pizza afterwards). And I love holidays, too, because they typically involve eating with reckless abandon. Thanksgiving is chief among the feasting holidays and is a personal favorite, though Christmas (I’d consider converting if I could be assured of frequent roasted goose), Chanukah (biblically mandated fried food), Independence Day (cookouts), St. Patrick’s Day (corned beef with cabbage) and even Passover (with the exception of the no-bread thing) have their charms. Indeed, any self-respecting fat guy can think of an excuse for a feast even on Arbor Day. (Everything tastes better under a tree.) You might think Yom Kippur would be a problem, but think again. Fast days are actually the best. I can’t speak for the Islamic community, though I imagine the nights of Ramadan are a hoot, but I assure you that breaking the fast after Yom Kippur is one of the only exercises of gluttony that won’t trigger alarm in even the most weight-obsessed Jewish mother.

So you’d think that Valentine’s Day, which involves both food and sex — easily my two favorite things — would be at the top of my list of all-time favorite holidays. But it’s not. It’s actually my least favorite holiday because, though it often involves dining and sex, it’s usually dining and sex of a contrived, high-pressure, laden-with-expectations, neurotic sort. I’d just as soon skip it.

Sure, the list of aphrodisiacs routinely trotted out around this time of year consists of mostly delicious foods, but let’s face it: They’re amateur aphrodisiacs. To the extent these sorts of foods have any aphrodisiac effects at all, a proposition that is highly doubtful, they are nonetheless the least creative choices imaginable — the aphrodisiac equivalents of the missionary position, the simulated-sex softcore porn on the Playboy Channel and candlelight dinner at a suburban hotel restaurant.

Not to mention, Valentine’s Day is the absolute worst day of the year on which to dine out. It’s a day of celebration, no doubt, in the restaurant industry, because price gouging is the order of the day. You pay twice as much money for the exact same meal you could get on the 13th or the 15th, except that on the 14th you have fewer menu choices. Pity the poor guy who waits until the day before Valentine’s Day to make a dinner reservation — he’s going to pay extra dearly, or spend the night alone. And don’t get me started on all the unscrupulous florists selling near-dead weeds at a 600 percent markup.

Moreover, the documented, physical effect of these supposedly sexy foods on sexual performance is exactly zero. According to the scientists of the United States Food and Drug Administration, who couldn’t have been more bored to be receiving yet another phone call from a journalist doing a Valentine’s Day aphrodisiac story, “The reputed sexual effects of so-called aphrodisiacs are based in folklore, not fact. In 1989, the agency declared that there is no scientific proof that any over-the-counter aphrodisiacs work.”

Not alcohol, which though known as a social lubricant (and therefore an inhibition lessener in some people) is actually a depressant. Not oysters, which got their reputation not through empirical studies but through their folkloric connection with Aphrodite (etymologically, the root of “aphrodisiac”), who came from the sea. Not chilies, which, though they can raise the heart rate and cause perspiration (similar to the body’s physiological response to sexual excitement), have never been shown to trigger the libido. Not ginseng, the stimulant root that looks like the male genitals but has no more effect on sexuality than caffeine. And not even the highly touted rhinoceros horn, which also resembles the male member but ultimately will only help your sexual performance if you happen to be deficient in calcium or phosphorus.

To the extent that such foods, for example oysters, contain trace quantities of a particular mineral (zinc) that is speculatively associated with libido, the likelihood is that you’d have to eat a diet exclusively of oysters for 36 months in order to produce one additional erection. Viagra — one of the only substances that can legally and scientifically make the claim to be a bona fide aphrodisiac — seems a far more efficient choice.

If any foods do have an aphrodisiac effect, then, that effect is not in the realm of performance but rather in the realm of desire. That is to say, certain foods may trigger psychological associations that set the mood for sex. “The mind is the most potent aphrodisiac there is,” says John Renner of the Consumer Health Information Research Institute, and he is of course saying the one thing the naive glossy magazines refuse to admit. They’d rather focus on specious explications of technique, as in “Ten Ways to Drive Him Wild.”

And it may be that in extreme cases physical solutions are necessary to solve sexual dysfunction. But time and again, real people in the real world experience sexual desire more as a psychological phenomenon than as a physical one. That is to say, a wife can do all the softcore, Cosmo-endorsed things she likes: Buy lingerie from the Victoria’s Secret catalog, burn aromatic candles from RedEnvelope.com, dim the lights and lay out a spread of every aphrodisiac unearthed in a Lexis/Nexis search, but as soon as she pipes up about the husband’s failure to take out the garbage, the moment will be ruined. Many wives, conversely, would much rather their strong, silent husbands share with them information of personal significance than buy them chocolates, which they typically throw out, throw up or eat in the closet anyway.

But even if psychology defines the limit of the effect of culinary aphrodisiacs, all hope is not lost. Foods that trigger sexual thoughts are always welcome in my home. The question is: What are they?

True excitement necessarily contains an element of surprise, so the first secret to unearthing sexy foods is to look for something unexpected. One caveat, though: In the early stages of a relationship, you probably don’t want to get too creative. Dating is, at the outset, more about establishing your normalcy than it is about proving how offbeat you can be. So the newly in love are best advised not to eschew champagne and chocolate just yet. When your relationship is still on virgin ground, sometimes you’ve got no choice but to do the expected thing if that’s what’s going to get you laid. But for those in a mature, long-term relationship, surely you can come up with something a little more unexpected.

Now, as an example of what doesn’t constitute the unexpected, take the recent Wall Street Journal recommendation, by that paper’s resident wine-guru couple:

“Champagne is perfect for Valentine’s Day, of course, but the problem is that your valentine is expecting it. So this year, have a glass of champagne and then surprise your valentine with a bottle of red Burgundy.”

Boy, those guys are going to have a wild Valentine’s Day. And so, I suppose, is anybody willing to accept romantic advice from the Wall Street Journal. No, I’m not talking about substituting Burgundy for champagne, mocha for chocolate or clams for oysters. I’m talking about a radical departure, a complete refiguring of what makes food sexy. And being able to do that depends on the realization that, for each person, the universe of trigger foods may be a very personal thing.

There is of course the option of a full-frontal assault: Any food that can be incorporated directly into the lovemaking process is at least arguably an aphrodisiac. Other erotic foods are those that are really messy and can be shared, because they help break down inhibitions. For example, I can think of few food experiences sexier than two lovers sharing cheese fondue. It’s not only inherently sensual, but it also tastes really good. But for me, and I submit this is the case for most people, the truly powerful connections between food and sex are all about memories.

Childhood favorites, in particular, are comforting, reassuring and sneakily seductive. Any woman who wants to get my attention had best learn how to make fettuccine Alfredo that approaches my mother’s. I’m also a sucker for anything with a fresh-baked aroma, a category limited not just to cookies and breads but also extending to pancakes and waffles, especially when doused in good maple syrup. But it’s also important not to project: As soon as you confuse your memories with someone else’s, you’re done for. For each person, there are different foods that strike these deep chords, be they grilled cheese sandwiches, carrot cake, knishes, quesadillas or egg foo yung. Learn your lover’s secret nostalgic favorites (a phone call to any living relative should do the trick — ask for a recipe), and embrace them regardless of your own preferences, and you’re well on your way to an unforgettable Valentine’s Day.

Food is not by definition sexy, however, simply because someone loves it. There’s a big difference between loving food and becoming aroused by it. Every red-blooded American loves a good roast suckling pig, but that sort of carnage doesn’t exactly put most people in the mood. Odors, too, require careful monitoring: In direct contravention of the conventional wisdom about oysters and other shellfish, I strongly suggest staying away from any kind of seafood on account of its ability to generate unpleasant smells and — worse — bad breath. Nothing kills a sexual buzz quicker than halitosis. And no matter how much good food you have around, be it at home in a restaurant, don’t eat a huge meal right before lovemaking. Eat it afterwards.

But in the end, the most powerful psychological aphrodisiacs of all may have nothing to do with food. When Mrs. The Fat Guy makes me fettuccine Alfredo, it’s not the pasta per se that gets me hot and bothered; it’s the gesture. The old adage about it being the thought that counts is especially true in matters of sexuality, where — especially if you’re in a relationship for the long haul — sensitivity and generosity are among the most appealing traits a lover can possess. Technique can be taught; food can be bought; but underlying personality traits don’t evolve much after age 6 — just ask any first-grade teacher who has kept in touch with many former students.

And is it really beneficial to focus so heavily on aphrodisiacs and sex just because it’s Valentine’s Day? Sex centered around special occasions strikes me as utterly devoid of meaning and potentially unhealthy. When oral sex becomes a birthday present, when men give their wives Valentine’s Day gift certificates for full-body massages, and when sex is traded for jewelry or otherwise commoditized, what does that say about the priorities within a relationship? Intimacy is the greatest gift of all, but it should never be given literally as a gift.

So you must all be wondering, then, what did Mrs. The Fat Guy get her husband for Valentine’s Day?

Lunch. In Paris.

Nature may not have intended the tongue to be a sexual organ, but it turns out to be the body’s most effective member for erotic manipulation. No other appendage combines such strength, flexibility and lubricating ability. Indeed, there are plenty of people who admit they simply do not find sex complete without at least some oral manipulation, and the rest are lying.

But though the tongue is gifted at giving pleasure through tactile stimulation, it receives pleasure in an entirely different way: through the taste buds. And the taste of the human body, particularly of the sexual organs, can most generously be described as “interesting.” The tongue is, in addition, set adjacent to the olfactory bulb, which is responsible for your sense of smell: another area in which the human sex organs do not exactly excel. Indeed, smell and taste are so inseparable that, unless you have a bad cold, you’re likely to use the two in one combined sense.

According to the good doctors at Medline, “The tongue can ‘taste’ only sweet, salty, sour and bitter sensations. Much of what is perceived as ‘taste’ is actually smell.” Try eating while holding your nose and you’ll see. Unfortunately, if you try this while performing oral sex, you’ll die.

Thus the tongue seeks other, nonsexual rewards, and my tongue has sought many on your behalf.

In order to determine the best foods for this experiment, I called my friend Chef Will (he doesn’t wish his last name to be known, but he toils at one of New York’s best restaurants) and asked what he thought would be best smeared on his lover’s body. “It’s just like any other culinary decision, really. You look for contrasts of texture, temperature and flavor. You use the best seasonal ingredients. And you strive for unique presentation.” And he was serious.

With Chef Will’s wise words in mind, I report the following tasting notes, as it were:

Sweet stuff is overrated. Sweet means sticky, and traditional whipped-cream and chocolate-sauce body glazes leave an unpleasant residue and allow for little in the way of subtlety. (The specially engineered body-paint product from Red Envelope, which comes packaged with two paintbrushes, is little better.) And that’s not to mention the problem of body hair, which has a pesky habit of getting caught up in such adhesive mixtures.

Contrast this with a piece of popcorn. Place a piece of popcorn on your partner’s abdomen. The kernel is light, so keeping it in place requires muscular control — itself a source of erotic interest. It makes no mess. Because it does not adhere to the flesh, it can be removed with any level of pressure desired. It can be extracted with no contact at all between the tongue and body, or with an intense, full-mouth grind. In general, I found that lightweight, non-sticky snack foods (cheese puffs, potato chips, pretzel nuggets) were the best all-around utility infielders of the erotic larder. For something a little sweeter, I recommend Cracker Jack and its ilk.

On the other end of the spectrum, though food is an inferior lubricant, slippery foods can be quite stimulating. But whatever you do, no matter how smooth it feels, please don’t rub food on your genitals and then engage in intercourse. You’re going to make a huge mess, and the gritty sensations will be overall unpleasant. Food interferes with the body’s natural lubrication system, and as an assist it doesn’t perform nearly as well as synthetic products like K-Y or Astroglide (which are, in turn, superior to Vaseline). And for those who want to use appropriately shaped food as a surrogate penis, be aware that it can too easily break and become difficult to remove.

But hope is not lost for those who enjoy slimy stimuli. The trick is to use such foods (Jell-O being chief among them, and also some fruits, like kiwi) as an appetizer, and to clean the plate thoroughly before moving on to the entrie.

Artful use of contrasting temperatures virtually guarantees success. The one food (water, actually) that seemed a complete winner during my tests was the humble ice cube. (You may substitute any frozen, edible liquid.) Used with restraint, this guaranteed nipple-hardener can function admirably in a variety of erogenous zones. The trick, however, is to apply it with a light hand and not for so long in any one place that it becomes unpleasant. Warm foods (not hot, please) can also be effective, especially when applied immediately following the ice, though the mouth itself is quite warm (about 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit, as you know) and serves as, in my opinion, the better follow-up to cold stimulation.

The blind-feeding thing is a failure. Remember that great scene in “Nine 1/2 Weeks” where Mickey Rourke feeds the young Kim Basinger all manner of food while she’s blindfolded? I thought the scene was totally, blisteringly hot, and so did every non-frigid person I know. But in real life, if you actually do this with your partner, it’s kind of dumb. For one thing, the amount of mise en place (the technical culinary term for advance preparation) necessary to assemble 20 different, edible items for such a scene is daunting if you don’t have the assistance of a key grip, the gaffer, a best boy and a craft services team. For another thing, the game grows uninteresting after the first couple of foods. Aesthetics are, after all, a major component of food enjoyment (it’s often said that cuisine is the only art that affects all the senses) so it seems a waste to experience food in the context of sensory deprivation. Keep the lights on and your eyes open when feasting in bed. If you want to use the blindfold in sex, do it in another context: It doesn’t pair well with food.

Avoid spicy, hot-pepper-based foods. They contain a chemical called capsaicin. When that stuff comes in contact with delicate membranes, such as those in the eyes, nostrils, female genitals (as well as parts of the male genitals) and anus, it burns — badly. Even when applied to thicker skin, spicy things have a pesky habit of getting on the hands and eventually finding their way into the more sensitive areas.

Carbonation is interesting. Fizzy beverages — champagne in particular — are fun to slurp off of your partner. Still, I recommend you ignore the urban myth of Coca-Cola as contraceptive.

Masking, if necessary, can be effective. By masking we mean application to the actual genitals prior to oral sex in order to conceal the tastes of bodily secretions. On the one hand, oral sex performed in this manner doesn’t feel as good as the unadulterated variety: It’s just plain sloppy. However, aided by a small ice cube (see above), it can be interesting for a short period of time. On the other hand, this trick can encourage a reticent partner to perform with greater frequency an act that not everybody is enthusiastic about performing.

And then there is the issue of calories. I should have seen this coming, but I was surprised to learn that many people — women in particular, I’m sorry to say — are quite concerned about the nutritional content of literally every bite, so much so that they even care in this context. I was particularly alarmed that not one, not two, but eight out of 10 women I polled for this story expressed concerns about the calorie count of semen.

Now, in response to this bizarre concern, I could tell you that having great sex is about loosening up, letting yourself go and not being so neurotic. This is why, I’ve often maintained, happy fat guys and girls have more and better sex than their miserable, anorexic counterparts. But it wouldn’t help to say that, because those who are diet-obsessed are typically deaf to reason, so here’s the lowdown: According to sex therapists Linda Humphries and Jeff Thomas, “A typical ejaculate consists of about 3 to 5 milliliters (one tablespoon) of semen. There are about five calories in this tablespoon of semen. These calories come from simple sugars, which can make the sperm more active. Nutritionally, sperm cells contain small amounts of cholesterol, carbohydrate enzymes, proteins and trace amounts of iron and zinc.”

Whipped cream, by contrast, is an intensely concentrated calorie source, with, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 51 calories per tablespoon, roughly 10 times that of semen. Chocolate sauce is close behind, at 46 calories per tablespoon.

The girls on “Sex and the City,” however, advocate Cool Whip Free as a low-cal, whipped-cream alternative (imagine what a nightmare it would be to date one of them). And Atkins Diet practitioners need not fixate at all — just be sure to whip it yourself (most of the commercial products have added sugar) and sweeten the cream with Equal, or just allow the natural sweetness of the cream to stand on its own.

So we know it’s possible to enhance the act of sex with food, and we know this can be done within the strictures of even the most neurotic diets. But after eating a few dozen meals off my wife’s body and vice versa, I must confess that — though we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and engaged in weeks of heightened activity as a result — we never achieved an experience as erotic as the simple act of feeding one another.

Nor is great, fully clothed conversation over a fine meal to be underestimated as a means of foreplay. After all, the kitchen table isn’t particularly comfortable for lovemaking (though it’s at the ideal height for some things), and it’s no coincidence that most bedrooms don’t come equipped with dishwashers.

My search for — nay, my obsession with — illegal cheese began in France. “Why is this Camembert so much better than the Camembert in America?” I naively asked the waiter at Maisons de Bricourt in Brittany. “Because, Monsieur, it is made from — how do you say? — lait cru?” As I dodged the beads of saliva expelled by his deep guttural pronunciation of “cru,” deliberations ensued among the wait staff. They delivered the verdict: “Row milk!”

Images of dilapidated alcoholic cows drinking malt-liquor out of paper bags sprung to mind, but eventually we determined that what he meant was raw milk. Unpasteurized milk. Milk straight from the cow, still harboring all the wonderful bacteria that constitute the soul of great cheese. But it is this very rawness that makes the cheese illegal, and that’s what makes me a fugitive.

Listeria hysteria

A Frenchman invented the process that ruined most of the world’s cheese, but it took the ingenuity of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration to mandate pasteurization of just about everything.

It is legal to use unpasteurized milk in cheese only if that cheese has been aged more than 60 days (most potentially harmful bacteria die in this time). Tragically, this rules out all the young Brie, Camembert and Epoisses (most of which are aged around 30 days) that many consider to be the pinnacle of the cheese-making art. Steven Jenkins, author of “Cheese Primer” (Workman, 1996) and perhaps America’s leading authority on cheese, calls the pasteurized Brie and Camembert available in America, “pretenders — inauthentic impostors bearing their names.”

Still, there are fabulous raw-milk cheeses available that have been aged for over 60 days. But just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s easy. Artisan raw-milk cheese-makers to whom I spoke said that FDA inspectors pay “extra special attention” to their facilities, and, according to a number of recent articles in the professional cheese press, a forthcoming round of proposed FDA regulations will seek to outlaw raw-milk cheeses altogether.

The ostensible fear is listeria, an obscure food-borne bacteria that the FDA says can, when the planets are in alignment, kill pregnant women, infants, the elderly and the otherwise infirm. But how serious is this threat? Are mothers really feeding raw-milk Camembert to their babies? And why not rely on clear labeling, rigorous inspection and informed consumer choice? It’s hard to believe that raw-milk cheeses are as dangerous as, say, cigarettes.

Cheese is not the only potential source of listeria — it can come from many food products, and, moreover, pasteurization is not a guarantee against listeria because the cheese can contract the bacteria even after treatment. I have consumed about 100 pounds of raw-milk cheese in the past few years; it is my testimony that the listeria threat is overblown. And, as the French are fond of taunting, historically the most severe outbreaks of listeria have occurred in countries like America, where young raw-milk cheeses are illegal.

Of course, the government is not entirely to blame. Accomplice liability for the murder of cheese certainly belongs to corporate laziness and the unimaginative American palate. We get the cheese we deserve, and as long as Cheez Whiz outsells Chevre there is not likely to arise a powerful anti-pasteurization lobby.

We have the winning combination of fear, greed and ignorance to thank for all the raw-milk cheese misinformation out there. These are the lies you will most commonly encounter when trying to ferret out raw-milk cheeses:

Lie No. 1: “It’s legal to import small quantities of young raw-milk cheese for personal use.”

Unpasteurized cheeses aged less than 60 days are illegal in the United States. Period. FDA regulations state in no uncertain terms that it’s illegal to make them, import them or sell them — and there is no exemption for personal use.

For a few months last year, a French company called Fromages.com flew below the radar and quietly shipped young raw-milk cheeses to eager American gourmets. After Fromages.com was outed by the New York Times and Bon Appetit, however, the ever-vigilant FDA swung into action and forced compliance. Marc Refabert, the company’s president, told me, “We think this, as many of our clients do, a violation to the freedom of choice and pleasure, particularly for products that have been around for centuries and are the basis of eating well. But so be it, we have no intention of trying to educate the FDA, or being in violation of their rules.”

Fromages.com still ships raw-milk cheeses, but they’re at least 60 days old (yet the company has not deleted from its site the press clips saying that Fromages.com will ship younger cheeses). Because of Fromages.com’s 24-hour air shipping, however, you can get plenty of cheeses that are 61 days old, and Fromages.com’s cheeses were in fact the best of any mail-order samples I received.

It remains to be seen whether Fromages.com will be able to work around a newly emerging problem: Due to a mini trade war with Europe over Europe’s importation, or lack thereof, of American beef, the United States has targeted Roquefort cheese for termination — imposing a 100 percent duty. At the time of my order, however, there had been no price change at Fromages.com.

Lie No. 2: “This cheese is made from raw milk.”

Now that raw-milk cheeses are trendy and popular with the idle-rich Cigar Aficionado set, merchants trying to capture this market have started pushing allegedly raw products. But even though the law views them as synonymous, there’s a big difference between unpasteurized and raw.

The FDA defines pasteurization along a sliding scale. Milk is pasteurized if it’s heated to 145 degrees Fahrenheit for 30 minutes (which Jenkins calls “good” pasteurization) or to 161 degrees for 15 seconds (“bad” pasteurization, because, according to Jenkins, it fundamentally alters the taste of the milk). Anything else is considered raw by the FDA. So if you heat your cheese to 143 degrees for a hundred years, you can still label it raw. For example, the Grafton Village Cheese Company, an artisanal cheddar cheese producer in Vermont, heats its “raw” milk to 155 degrees for 10 seconds. Then again, Grafton’s cheese is excellent (the 3-year-old Grafton Gold cheddar was vastly preferred by my tasting panel to any other American cheddar we tried), which just goes to show you that pasteurization is not the only factor affecting a cheese’s quality.

Lie No. 3: “It’s impossible to find young, raw-milk cheeses in America.”

Well, they may be illegal, but I got some nonetheless.

I got them three ways: Through flagrant smuggling; by “Don’t ask, don’t tell” mail order; and from stores that had imported small quantities of illegal raw-milk cheese “by mistake.”

When smuggling cheese, your greatest enemy is the smell. A Ziploc bag may as well be a screen door for all it does to conceal the athletic-supporter aroma of a really ripe Epoisses. I suggest you take a cue from drug smugglers: Use multiple alternating layers of foil and plastic — and throw the dogs off the scent by surrounding the whole package with bags of coffee beans.

If you display the proper attitude and bearing, you can get some mail-order operations to send you illegal cheese. Just don’t appear too eager (a sure tip-off that you’re an FDA agent) and your order may be processed without comment.

Finally, a quick survey of the shelves of six New York-area gourmet stores revealed 17 probable incidents of mistaken importation of illegal cheese. A manager at one of the city’s largest cheese merchants told me, “Hey, sometimes it happens, so we sell it. French cheese labels are very confusing, especially to illiterate customs inspectors. We don’t make a big deal out of it, though — you understand?”

Nearly every cheese purveyor I interviewed admitted to trafficking in illegal cheese — and begged me not to use their names.

Secret report from the underground tasting panel

Charles DeGaulle asked, “How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?” and I understood how he felt as I tried to maintain order among a tasting panel of five opinionated and very homesick French people, an even more outspoken Spaniard and two overmatched Americans.

A journalist’s fantasy, when assembling a tasting panel, is to rock the boat. To fly in the face of convention. To have the tasters choose Manischewitz over Mouton. But with my cheese samples, there was no contest. The raw-milk Epoisses and Camembert, which I acquired illegally, beat the pants off the pasteurized poseurs. This superiority was clear from scent alone. Like pigs to truffles, all of the tasters flocked to the unpasteurized cheeses.

“It’s alive!” squealed Giselle, who has never read “Frankenstein,” upon tasting a semi-soft unpasteurized Saint Nectaire from Fromages.com, “It’s not dead like American cheeses.” Every one of the five cheeses I got from Fromages.com (which ships overnight to the United States via FedEx) elicited rave reviews, particularly the nutty Tomme de Savoie (Charles, who hails from that region, was so choked up when he tasted it that all he could do was nod) and creamy Abbaye du Mont des Cats (that must be a strange place).

Of course, you may not want to spring for air-shipped cheese from France every day (as a rule of thumb, figure that the shipping cost will equal the cost of the cheese), but luckily there are some excellent U.S. purveyors that offer cheeses of similarly high quality. We had the best luck with the cheese selection we received from Zabar’s in New York. One bleu cheese from Zabar’s, a piquant sheep’s milk Roquefort (from a French producer called Papillon), was judged superior to its milder Fromages.com counterpart. The group was similarly taken with Zabar’s Fourme d’Ambert, a cow’s milk cheese similar to Roquefort but a bit more subtle. The Fourme d’Ambert also made really good bleu cheese dressing about a week later.

Other first-rate mail-order sources of imported and domestic raw-milk cheeses are Dean & DeLuca, Balducci’s, Ideal Cheese and the Cheese Store of Beverly Hills. Inventories fluctuate rapidly (in part because some of the best cheeses are seasonal, and also because of unpredictable supply lines). Many of the cheeses I tasted for this article were no longer available by the time I put pen to paper just a couple of weeks later, so check each purveyor’s Web site for availability at the time of your order.

When asked to articulate the differences between the raw and pasteurized cheeses, most of the tasters followed Giselle’s lead and spoke in terms of “dead” and “alive.” Monique further explained it in terms of “fuller flavor, but not just fuller — also different.”

“Aha!” cried Victor, after the panel tasted the first of several Spanish cheeses, “The Spanish cheeses, they are superior. They have soul!” Even the French contingent had to admit that the big surprise of the tasting was the near-uniform excellence of the Spanish cheeses. The best was a very young raw-milk Afuegal Pitu (pronounced ah-FWAY-gal pee-TU, which means “sets your gullet on fire”) which one purveyor sent us (in error, of course). He explained, “The Feds are on the lookout for French cheese, but the Spanish stuff can still slip through.”

My personal favorite of the tasting was Ossau-Iraty, from the French Pyrenees. My other favorite was a Portuguese cheese, Queijo Azeitao. Both are from sheep’s milk, and both came from Zabar’s.

Close runners-up to Grafton for best American cheddar were Shelburne Farms Farmhouse Cheddar — call (802) 985-8686 for information — and Tillamook cheddar, at (800) 542-7290, but no American cheddar was able to best the Keens Cheddar (made by Neals Yard dairy in England) we got from Zabar’s. “There’s a hell of a lot going on in there,” said Joey, the other American panelist (besides me). For sheer English cheese selection (including Stilton, my favorite), the ultimate purveyor is the venerable firm of Paxton & Whitfield, on London’s Jermyn Street, which will ship worldwide (Paxton & Whitfield also has an extensive selection of the finest French cheeses). In the United States, there’s a very good selection of English cheeses at The British Shoppe in Madison, Conn.

There was little variation in packaging among the above mentioned purveyors. All cheeses were shipped in insulated boxes with frozen gel-packs. My samples shipped in August and September. On days when the temperature was average, the cheeses arrived well refrigerated. On very hot days, the gel-packs arrived melted and the cheeses were warm and soft. They sprung back to life in the refrigerator, however, and seemed to have suffered no ill effects. All samples arrived within a day of the expected date.

Jenkins recommends that you store cheese in the warmest part of your refrigerator (usually the vegetable drawer), wrapped in foil, wax paper or plastic wrap. Serve at room temperature — the cheeses we tasted were markedly better after they sat out of the refrigerator for about an hour.

And, most important, sweep for wiretaps before ordering illegal cheese.

Of course, we have a term for a person who has too much experience with
hangovers: an alcoholic. But even a social (albeit not particularly
sociable) drinker like the Fat Guy overdoes it once or twice every
December. As long as major corporations continue to foster the great
holiday-party tradition of free liquor, cute secretaries, horny bosses
and bad food, and as long as people are driven to drink in order to dull
the pain of awkward family gatherings, there will be overindulgence at
Christmastime.

And on Jan. 1, 2000, we will be a hangover nation. I predict it will
take days for us to realize we celebrated the millennium a year early.

Most of us know how a hangover feels. “The taste of dead cat in your
mouth,” “a stomach like a million roller coaster rides” and “like
having a spike driven between your eyes” are just a few descriptions I
heard bandied about by experienced drinkers. But what exactly is a
hangover?

According to William Shoemaker, Ph.D., of the University of Connecticut
Health Center (home to the federally-funded Alcohol Research Center), a
hangover is a microcosm of addiction, withdrawal and recovery. “Just as
alcoholics have severe withdrawal reactions when they stop drinking,” he
explains, “a hangover is a withdrawal reaction on a more modest scale.”

In trying to find the best hangover remedies, I figured I’d talk to the
people who drink the most — and then I’d check the science with
Shoemaker. The statistics tell us that the world leaders in alcohol
consumption per capita are France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Portugal,
Switzerland and Spain. Primarily, with the exception of Germany, these
countries are the leading per capita consumers of wine. The leading
consumers of beer are Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, Denmark
and Austria. Distilled spirit consumption is highest in Germany, the
United States, Poland, Iceland, Sweden and France.

But when it comes to drunkenness (and its attendant hangovers), these
statistics don’t tell the whole story. The Italians may drink a lot of
wine with meals, but as a culture they deplore drunkenness — and
everybody knows wine isn’t a real drink. Conversely, even though Finland
doesn’t have particularly high per capita consumption, when the Finns go
out to drink they do it right. This is the phenomenon of so-called
“telescoped drinking,” wherein people skew the statistics by spending
their weeknights sober and then binging on weekends.

Americans do their fair share of drinking too, but we don’t drink like
we used to. As David F. Musto writes in Scientific American, “The young
American ship of state floated on a sea of distilled spirits.” Alcohol
consumption, back in the day, was three times what it is now. But we’ve
been fighting our way back, with steadily increasing consumption over
the last 30 years.

There are also large parts of the world for which the statistics are
unreliable. For example, a million statisticians couldn’t convince me
that the Swiss and Spanish drink more than the Russians. And don’t even
get me started on the Molson-guzzling Canadians, who have somehow
managed once again to display a rosy image to the outside world (there’s
nothing worse than listening to a drunk Canadian recite the who’s who of
hoser comedy: “Jim Carrey, Michael J. Fox, John Candy — you know,
they’re all Canadians, eh?”)

Still, even though they don’t even make it onto the list, I firmly
believe that when it comes to drinking, you want to start your
investigation with the Irish. In my experience, mostly with
Irish-Americans (and mostly with Larry and his rugby team), these people
really know how to drink. And as any Irish-American will tell you, the
real Irish back in Ireland can drink them under the table.

The Irish-American remedies are, on the whole, certainly the most
colorful ones I heard. In each case, it was explained to me that the
concoction in question would “absorb the alcohol.” In addition to
corned beef and cabbage for breakfast, my Irish friends advocate a
number of noxious blender drinks, most of which combine a protein
source (eggs, milk, canned salmon) with something sugary (chocolate
pudding, fruitcake, Jello), all mixed with a little whiskey or beer,
plus, in every case, coffee (served separately). One Irish cop adds,
“It also helps to have a trial date scheduled for the next day, so you
can sleep in the back of the courtoom.”

The Germans have also impressed me as serious drinkers, and it seems
they’re partial to pickled fish for the morning-after meal, including
the delicious-sounding rollmops, bismarkhering and brathering, while the
Finns — perhaps the most worthy drinking rivals to the Germans –
prefer whole salted herring (head on) with a little warm vodka. Indeed,
most every European (both Eastern and Western) hangover remedy I heard
involves some sort of fish product, from caviar in Russia to salt cod in
Spain and Portugal, to herring, herring and more herring all over
Scandinavia and Northern Europe.

Most of my Canadian friends are in Quebec, and they’re big advocates of
poutine — the Quebec national junk food. It consists of French fries,
meat gravy and cheese curds, which are little bits of rubbery cheese
culled early on in the cheddar-making process. The curds actually
squeak when you eat them.

The stereotype is that Jews don’t drink, or at least that they don’t
know anything about drinking, and I certainly grew up in a family with a
“Jewish liquor cabinet” (all top-shelf liquor; all unopened). So I
searched for a subculture of booze-knowledgeable Semites and, luckily, I
didn’t need to go far: My in-laws defy virtually all attempts at
categorization. One brother-in-law is a cop, the other is a Navy
reservist and my father-in-law actually knows how to fix cars (even
better, my wife hates shopping). These guys can drink, and it’s no
surprise that their secret anti-hangover weapon involves preemptive
eating of pastrami. “It lines the stomach,” argues my father-in-law.
“I’d never drink without it.”

America is a nation of immigrants, and most of the ethnic remedies I
heard about from Americans originate in the old country. We do have one
unaffiliated group here in America, though, other than American Indians:
They’re called WASPs, and they put even the Irish to shame because WASPs
don’t drink beer — they drink cocktails. And they don’t eat. So it was
no surprise that my informal poll of the few WASPs who would speak to me
indicated a total lack of culinary spark. The most common answer: “Take
three aspirin and drink three big glasses of water before you go to bed.
Repeat in the morning.”

Despite my best efforts, I was unable to secure the participation of the
Islamic world in my survey. The religion forbids alcohol consumption
and, although plenty of Muslims drink, it’s hard to get them to
acknowledge it publicly. I have it on good authority that
yogurt plus two cloves of garlic is the Turkish remedy of choice.

The list goes on: Korean alder-and-licorice tea, Senegalese jassa (a
kind of chicken stew) and Thai “restitution soup” (basically, a noodle
soup). And then there are the little tidbits of advice: Avoid sugary
drinks, bubbly drinks and mixing drinks — and drink lots of water.

Finally, in the true American spirit of overmedication, it was
inevitable that we’d turn to drugs to fight the effects of alcohol. The
pill known as href="http://www.hangoverstopper.com">Sob’r-K allegedly works “as a
filter taking out all the impurities in the alcohol.” The Sob’r-K Web
site shows an X-marks-the-spot map of the stomach with little pills
floating around the gastrointestinal system like buried treasure. Other
popular pills include the Brazilian drug href="http://www.solarinfo.de/riosolar/engov.html">Engov, the
all-natural Nux Vomica (available in health-food stores), E-mergen-C (a
vitamin supplement), milk thistle and various herbal and aromatherapy
remedies of questionable merit.

But is there scientific support for any of these remedies? “Some of the
folk remedies may help a little,” says Shoemaker, “but the factors they
address are minor compared to total alcohol consumption, which is the
primary cause of hangovers.”

But what about all those carefully planned morning-after menus? “Food
does not absorb alcohol,” explains Shoemaker with finality. “Consumption
of food may, however, increase metabolization, activate absorption and
increase the speed with which the body processes alcohol.” So Larry’s
family recipe was not entirely without merit. It had sugar and protein
to wake up my metabolism, plus a little hair of the dog to ease my
withdrawal symptoms. But I’d have been better off just to drink less.

And what of “lining your stomach” with pastrami or some other fatty
food? According to Shoemaker, it might help a little. “Drinking on an
empty stomach is the most potent way to increase blood alcohol quickly,
and the speed of consumption is related to the severity of the
hangover.”

Shoemaker agrees that alcohol is dehydrating. “Alcohol inhibits a
pituitary hormone called ADH — anti-diuretic hormone — which normally
operates on the kidneys to conserve fluid. That’s why, when you drink,
you’re running to the bathroom all the time and that’s why your urine –
if you’re not too drunk to notice — is nearly colorless. Your body is
losing more water than it should.” He doubts, however, that drinking
water before bed will do much good. “Most likely, you’ll just be going
to the bathroom a lot.”

Aspirin helps with headaches (although it doesn’t actually do anything
about the alcohol in your system), but, according to the Columbia
University Health Service, you have to be careful because, when combined
with alcohol, too much aspirin can cause serious stomach problems.
Regarding coffee, the official position of the good doctors at Columbia
is: “With coffee, what have you got? A wide awake drunk.”

As for the type of liquor having something to do with hangovers,
Shoemaker confirms that “carbonation, as in beer and champagne, does
contribute to quicker absorption.” Likewise, he says, “There is at least
some data indicating that cogeners — pharmacologically active molecules
such as methanol and butanol — contribute to side effects.
Concentrations of cogeners are higher in whiskey, rum and brandy than
they are in, for example, vodka and gin, which are clear and filtered.”

But, ultimately, the only remedies with the scientific imprimatur of the
University of Connecticut Alcohol Research Center are to drink less and to drink slower. And to
that I’d add gaining weight, because it only takes a few minutes with a
href="http://www.interlog.com/%7Ebadinage/BACCHRT.HTML">blood alcohol
content table to see that fat guys can drink a lot more than anybody
else (more so, even, than fat girls).

These days, few animals are slaughtered in the home (my home, at least). We buy most of our meat dead and butchered, wrapped in plastic on little Styrofoam trays that leave no evidence that this was ever an animal.

But a lobster must be alive at the time of cooking because shellfish meat decomposes rapidly once dead and therefore must be killed by the cook. It brings us face-to-face with what we ‘re doing; there is no middleman to insulate us.

Happily enough for us lobster-lovers, it is now possible, on less than 24 hours notice, to have live lobsters shipped from the fishing villages of New England to anywhere in America. There are already more than 30 purveyors of online lobsters, ranging from the tony Dean & Deluca food emporium in New York to The Lobster Guy in Port Judith, R.I. Even with FedEx shipping factored in, mail-order lobster prices are surprisingly low (by lobster standards, that is), thanks to the intense competition. Prices change daily, but today you can expect to get four 1.5-pound lobsters delivered for as little as $70. (Prices are even lower in summer when lobsters are more plentiful.)

What better way to celebrate New Year’s than with lobster? I hate turkey — to the extent that it’s possible to hate something that has no taste — and I hate crowds. So forget Times Square, I’ll kill a crustacean instead.

All of the purveyors reviewed here can deliver lobsters before New Year’s Eve if orders are placed on or before Dec. 29 (for delivery on the 30th). FedEx doesn’t deliver on the 31st, so you’ll have to baby-sit the lobster for an extra day if you want it to join you at your New Year’s party.

As I trolled cyberspace for the perfect lobster, I could barely keep the names of the companies straight: Lobster Stuff, Lobsters Online, Lobster Net, Lobster Gram, Lobster Direct, Lobster Express, Lively Lobsters. I was concerned primarily with freshness and flavor, but I also considered customer service and packing-and-shipping procedures.

To narrow the field, I spoke to trusted sources in the fish business, solicited customer recommendations and eliminated any company that was merely a reseller of someone else’s lobsters (all the major gourmet online food shops offer beautiful lobsters — but you’ll pay double what a New England supplier charges for the same item without the fancy packaging).

There are limits to how much lobster even The Fat Guy can eat, so I called for backup. Matt Seeber, the only professional chef who regularly returns my calls, was over within the hour armed with a 10-inch chef’s knife and a goofy smile. “Boil some water, and lots of it,” he commanded.

While the water was boiling, Matt and I tried to generate a list of objective criteria for judging and comparing the lobsters. My wife joked, “How about a lobster race?” Then, quickly realizing that nothing was sacred to us, she tried to retract the suggestion.

For a little professional background, I called Robert Steneck of the University of Maine and learned that there is much to love about my lobsters, from their highly stylized mating rituals (yes, lobsters engage in courtship and actual belly-to-belly intercourse) to their bizarre habit of “throwing a claw” when attacked.

Then it was time to kill them.

I held a struggling lobster above the bubbling cauldron. He clicked and squeaked. I hesitated. “Just drop him in,” said Matt. “You’ve got to do him yourself, man. If you can’t kill him, you’ve got no right to eat him.”

So I called Steneck again. “Please tell me lobsters don’t feel pain,” I pleaded.

“I don’t know if that’s knowable,” he explained patiently, “but certainly lobsters are unlike humans. They don’t have centralized brains, they don’t remember much and while they definitely feel stimuli and respond to them, like when the lights come on and you squint your eyes, it’s not clear that they experience pain in the way we think of it.”

Armed with that ambiguous answer, I steeled myself and again held the lobster over the pot. The lobster’s cries for help (it not only squeaked but also vibrated) were the last thing holding me back, so Matt popped a Neil Diamond CD into the stereo. As the Jewish Elvis sang “Far, we’ve been traveling far,” I plunged the lobster to its death.

It was delicious, as were all the lobsters I ordered. The variation from lobster to lobster was minor. The same species (Homarus Americanus) is harvested from Nova Scotia to North Carolina, and there’s no way to tell the difference unless you’re a marine biologist. So even though Lobsters-Online.com, for example, sells highly touted Maine lobsters, they are not appreciably better than the slightly less expensive lobsters I got from farther south.

The most reasonably priced lobsters came from The Lobster Guy and Lively Lobsters. If I had to pick a favorite, I’d give a slight subjective edge to the lobsters from The Lobster Guy. Full of life and character, these lobsters tasted the same as all the others but had the baddest attitudes — a strong indicator of freshness.

Lively Lobsters, in its favor, has truly exceptional customer service (I made several anonymous phone calls to every vendor, wherein I asked stupid questions like “Will the lobsters get along with my dog?”). But ultimately, I suggest you get up-to-the-minute pricing and choose that way (remember to consider the cost of shipping, though, so you don’t wind up paying more for a $15 lobster than for a $17 one).

There was likewise no taste difference between male and female; although adult males have bigger claws, only the females, of course, have roe inside, which some consider a delicacy. And contrary to popular belief, the smaller ones taste exactly the same as the larger ones.

Every company shipped via FedEx in similar packaging: a cardboard box insulated with Styrofoam, lobsters nestled in with frozen gel-packs and sometimes seaweed. All the lobsters arrived alive and most mail-order companies guarantee live arrival. They’re sturdy beasts — at one point, one of them made a run for the border, dove off the table and crashed onto the hard floor. He was undamaged, albeit confused.

Are these direct-to-consumer lobsters better than the lobsters you’d get at a fish store or supermarket? To find out, I bought two lobsters in New York, one from a top Manhattan fish market and another out of a tank at a neighborhood supermarket. The fish market lobster was of high quality. It was perhaps not quite as lively as the online lobsters, but there was no noticeable difference in flavor. The price was similar, even factoring in the FedEx shipping costs. But remember, New York is a major Northeastern city — you’d have trouble finding lobsters this good at even the best fish market in a Midwestern city.

The supermarket lobster, however, was an inferior specimen. If I hadn’t put it out of its misery, it probably would have expired within the hour anyway. Judging from its tough, constricted meat, it had been starving and feeding off its own tissue for days. It didn’t taste like much of anything.

There’s also the question of convenience. On the plus side, online-ordered lobsters get delivered right to your door. On the minus side, someone has to wait for the FedEx guy to show up and you have to plan your meal a day or two in advance.

Overall, I preferred the online lobsters because I liked knowing exactly where my lobsters came from. I don’t want lobsters that have been penned up and subjected to the maritime equivalent of factory farming. I want to buy lobsters from a guy with a ratty old boat and a damp cigarette hanging out of his mouth, who calls everybody “Captain” and pronounces yes as “aye.”

I was hoping Capt. Tim Hadrigan, aka the Lobster Guy, would be that man, but his boat is new and clean (“I’m a pisser for cleanliness on my boat,” as he put it). He insisted on calling me “Mr. Shaw,” and he doesn’t even smoke.

Nonetheless, he does personally go out on a boat and catch lobsters, and he is a Red Sox fan who hates the Yankees and applies guilt by association to all New Yorkers. His boat, the Courtney Elizabeth, sails for three or four days at a time, accumulating lobsters in a saltwater tank through which 2,000 gallons of seawater are pumped every minute.

Capt. Tim is a second-generation lobsterman — his father has been in the business for 40 years — and he is therefore full of stories. He told me that when he was a boy and his family was poor and on food stamps, the other kids at school had peanut butter and jelly sandwiches while Capt. Tim had to eat lobster because PB&J was too expensive.

In addition to plain old live lobsters, there are several other lobster purchase options. One of the most interesting ways to get them is as part of a prepackaged clambake. The Lobster Guy, for example, sells a clambake that comes in its own pot ready to steam. It includes two live lobsters, a couple of pounds of live steamer clams, delicious pork sausage wrapped in flounder filets, corn, potatoes and onions. Just add water and steam for about an hour. You can even order lobster bibs and a cool lobster-patterned tablecloth.

If you’re just too squeamish, you can get your lobsters pre-killed and cooked, shipped frozen from MaineLobsters. Although the frozen meat is not quite as tender as the fresh-cooked meat of a live lobster, it’s still very good. And if you’re using the meat in a chowder or lobster salad or other recipe, the difference is hard to notice.

For the truly convenience minded, there’s also the option of purchasing a whole stuffed lobster from Lobster Stuff. These beautiful lobsters come split, with the claws cracked, and filled with a lobster-and-crumb stuffing. You just stick them in the oven and bake for half an hour.

To cook live lobsters, the simplest method is boiling. Use the largest stockpot you own, it should be big enough to accommodate several whole lobsters. Ryan Bartholomew of Lively Lobsters recommends cooking a 1.5-pound lobster (the most common online-order size) for 12 minutes. To test for doneness, Julia Child suggests, “Pull off one of the little legs, and suck out the meat — if it’s done, the lobster’s done.”

Lobsters aren’t cheap, so it pays to use every bit of the animal when cooking. Matt’s recipe for lobster chowder uses the claws for meat and the bodies for stock while allowing for separate consumption of the tails. Sure, there’s some meat in the body as well, but as Leslie Land, author of the “Yankee New England Cookbook,” writes, “It is almost impossible to pick out enough lobster body meat to get fat on before you die of boredom.”

Chef Matt’s “Fat Guy” Lobster Chowder

(Makes enough for two fat guys as a meal, or for four as an appetizer.)

Separate the tails and claws from four live 1.5-pound lobsters. Boil them until the meat is just cooked, approximately four minutes for the tails and eight minutes for the claws (measured from the time the water comes back up to the boil). Serve the lobster tails immediately, or refrigerate for use in lobster salads or other recipes. Remove and chop the claw meat, and refrigerate for use in the chowder.

Remove all innards from the lobster body, setting aside the roe if the lobster is a female. Rinse the bodies thoroughly.

In a 4-quart or bigger pot, place the bodies, a peeled and quartered onion, a peeled and roughly chopped carrot, a chopped celery stalk, and, if available, half a small fennel bulb. Cover with approximately 2 quarts of the cooking water from the claws and tails (or use plain water). Do not add salt (lobster is naturally salty). Bring to a boil and simmer for three hours.

Strain the stock, discard the solids, and place the liquid back on high heat. Reduce until you have about two cups of thick, rich lobster stock.

Add an equal amount of heavy cream, two diced boiled potatoes and the lobster claw meat. Bring back to the boil, heat through and serve.

Optional: