EXTRA VIRGINITY, The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil

By: Tom Mueller

A few pages into Tom Mueller's new book, "Extra Virginity," there's a funny moment when an olive oil expert holds up a bottle that's covered with dubious claims: "100 percent Italian," "cold-pressed," "extra virgin." The man shakes his head and says, "Extra virgin? What's this oil got to do with virginity? This is a whore."

These are sentences to savor. They underscore this book's project, which is to demonstrate the brazen fraud in the olive oil industry and to teach readers how to sniff out the good stuff. It's an unintentional Master Class in how to say waxy and embalming things about fresh food.

The news Mr. Mueller brings about extra virgin olive oil - E.V.O.O., as Rachael likes to put it  - is alarming. The liquid that gets passed off as such in supermarkets and restaurants is often anything but. Shady dealers along the supply chain frequently adulterate olive oil with low-grade vegetable oils and add artificial coloring. Mr. Mueller cites an Italian producer who suggests that 50 percent of the olive oil sold in America is, to some degree, fraudulent. The United States Food and Drug Administration considers this adulteration a low priority.

"Extra Virginity" suggests consumers put a priority on purchasing fresh olive oil, and taste before they buy. The good stuff is peppery and alive and, sipped neat, can make you cough. In the same way that many Americans have never tasted real maple syrup, not believing Aunt Jemima would do them wrong, many have no idea olive oil can be anything but a urine-colored and musty butter substitute.

Mr. Mueller spends time with olive growers, with chemists, with cooks, and with crooks. His history lessons are never less than interesting. He explains how olive oil was a driving force of life in the Mediterranean, a source of wealth and power. "A jug of olive oil on the dinner table," he writes, "marked the triumph of Roman cuisine over barbarian beer and lard."

The Greeks anointed their athletes with olive oil, which could be rather sexy. Mr. Mueller quotes Tom Scanlon, a classics professor at the University of California, Riverside, who says: "The oil on a gleaming, tanned, healthy body was a literally 'flashy' adornment.  Thomas Jefferson was among the first Americans to champion olive oil. He saw to it, Mr. Mueller writes, "that an olive branch, heavy with fruit, was placed in the talons of the eagle on the Great Seal of the United States." Mario Puzo, in "The Godfather," modeled Vito Corleone after a criminal olive oil boss named Joseph Profaci. Puzo even gave Corleone his own olive oil business, Genco Pura, as a front company.

The book focuses on three key themes:

• Relationship of olive oil and world of crime - Enforcement of olive oil laws in Ancient Rome and into modern times 
• Resonance of olive oil throughout history - shaping economic, military, and social history
• Provincialism that surrounds olive oil - history versus new techniques and innovation