The Devil is in the… delectable definitions.

Time to sink the soufflé. As the Food Network elevates so-so chefs to celebrities and wannabe grub-wranglers to on-air “experts,” perhaps we ought remember that our nourishment, while delightfully sustaining, needn’t be taken so seriously. Barry Foy is a foodie — though he despises the term — with a sense of humor more biting than a school of piranhas in Paul Prudhommme’s pool. In Foy’s tome, gourmands are roasted and meaning toasted; with every entry the author serves up a morsel of truth, battered with wit and basted with whimsy. You’re unlikely to learn anything, but are bound to laugh a lot, aloud. In addition to his defining defamations of staples such as chicken (“today’s bird has the brain of a krill, the breast of a porn star and the health of a crack baby, with the flavor and texture of genetically engineered granola”), Foy pokes political correctness (see “collard greens”) and skewers scientific advances in taste (see “umami,” repeatedly). THE DEVIL’S FOOD DICTIONARY, published by Frogchart Press, sates in small bites; there’s no need to devour it in one sitting, especially in the john.