In The Alfred Hitchcock Quote Book, Laurent Bouzereau includes a chapter on Hitchcock and food, beginning with a bold statement:

Although Bouzereau merely cites quotations from the films – there is no discussion – he at least provides a start. Because of the number and range of examples, food is a tricky motif to analyse in Hitchcock: there is probably not one of his films in which food (and/or meals) is not an issue at some point. I would like to begin by considering Bouzereau's three main categories – food and marriage, food and sex, food and murder – taking into account both the examples he cites and others. I shall also refer to the very useful ideas in Susan Smith's PhD thesis, Cinematic Point of View in the Films of Hitchcock (1997). Smith includes a section on the food motif in Hitchcock, and although she concentrates mainly on Sabotage, she also discusses Hitchcock's use of the motif elsewhere. I have also included meals, because on occasions the food is less important than the eating occasion itself. In the headings which follow, then, and in references to ‘the food motif’, food is an inclusive term: it also implies meals.

Food and marriage

With the striking and symptomatic exception of Miss Lonelyhearts in REAR WINDOW, characters in Hitchcock do not eat alone – they always have company. Hitchcock thereby uses meals to probe relationships – and this is especially true of his married couples. Sometimes the meal is simply a suitable setting to register general marital tensions: the patronising contempt Lord Horsfield directs at his wife in THE PARADINE CASE; the reconciliation breakfast which turns tense when Ann asks charged questions in MR AND MRS SMITH.