tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49538048818237299832024-03-12T21:26:20.852-07:00Homo GastronomicusTasting the British Enlightenment ... one venison pasty at a timeAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.comBlogger82125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-43488109744059876752014-01-28T08:54:00.002-08:002014-01-28T08:57:59.513-08:00The Rise of the Electronic Cigarette Cognoscenti<div style="background-color: white; border: 0px; font-family: Georgia, Century, Times, serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 21px; list-style: none; margin-bottom: 14px; padding: 0px;">
The electronic cigarette has been on the scene for only a couple of years, but its proponents are already creating a vibrant culture of their own. The web is rife with thousands of forums, meet-ups, and virtual marketplaces dedicated to the theoretical and practical aspects of smoke-free "vaping." Shops and tasting lounges that allow customers to peruse an extensive menu of devices and flavors have swept Southern California like wildfire, and much of the world is following suit. Several months ago the city of Anaheim hosted America's first three-day electronic cigarette convention. The event attracted over 7000 attendees.</div>
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Electronic cigarette mania has also sparked an explosion in 'top shelf' e-juices -- the nicotine-laced chemical solutions that are vaporized in the device. As the market swells with new brands slinging increasingly complex flavors, seasoned "vapers" are starting to give wine snobs a run for their money. For example, the brand P.O.E.T.'s new release, "Dolce Miele Crema," ($14 per 30 ml) purportedly exhibits cascading flavors of "rich honey" and "vanilla custard," finishing with notes of "graham crackers and cream." J and M Vapor's "Turkish Select" ($30 per 30 ml) beguiles the palate with "smooth, rich tobacco... with a subtle hint of dark caramel and an oak barrel finish." Profiling the internationally acclaimed "Grant's Vanilla Custard" (currently out of stock) left one YouTube reviewer nearly lost for words. "This juice," he solemnly tells us, "is very, very complex."</div>
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Perhaps no one has carried the e-juice to higher pretensions than the California-based brand Five Pawns. Named for the five elemental tastes known to mankind -- sweet, salty, bitter, sour, and umami -- a signature Five Pawns liquid incorporates up to eleven different flavors in each recipe. Small wonder that it's currently the most expensive e-juice on the market. Its sold-out "Castle Long Reserve," which has been aged in oak for three weeks, retails at a whopping $37.50 per 30 ml bottle. "You'll taste toasted coconut, roasted almond, brown sugar, two different vanillas (Madagascar vanilla bean and French vanilla), Kentucky bourbon, and charred oak," its website claims. But, as is de rigueur with any artisanal product, no two batches, the producer advises, are completely alike.</div>
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<em style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Aging e-juices in oak barrels has allowed Five Pawns to justify high price tags</em></center>
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The electronic cigarette world may have yet to discover its own version of the wine critic Robert Parker. But given the droves of self-appointed 'experts' saturating YouTube with exhaustive reviews, this may not be for much longer. Some sites are even trying to carve out reliable and unbiased "standards of taste" by evaluating products according to designated categories. (Ratemyejuice.com uses three categories scaled out of five: throat hit, flavor, and vapor production. A rival site, juicedb.com, employs four categories scaled from one to ten.) However, any experienced vaper will tell you that an e-juice is only as good as the device used to inhale it. Some of the high-end models, such as the ProVape ProVari -- described by one reviewer as "bordering on the sublime" -- can command up to $200. True connoisseurs swear by the flexibility they get with more advanced "mechanical mods" like the Ba Gua 22 Ti ($280) or the hand-engraved Otto Carter GGTB 2 ($1,000).</div>
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<em style="border: 0px; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">This electronic cigarette, the Otto Carter GGTB 2, retails at $1,000</em></center>
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As our concept of quality tends to revolve around some sort of nostalgia for a pre-industrial world, it should come as no surprise that e-juices bottled in more expensive, recyclable glass preserve taste more effectively than their cheaper, less environmentally friendly plastic counterparts. To succeed in the top-shelf e-juice market, it is wise to ensure that all the ingredients are domestically sourced and responsibly manufactured. In fact, company President Rodney Jerebek has stated that the Five Pawns concept was a conscious reaction to the ceaseless flood of unregulated ingredients coming from China: "I didn't like not knowing what I was bringing into my lungs." There is now a brand -- Organliq -- that caters to the kosher, the vegan, and the gluten-sensitive.</div>
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If you think that the concept of old-world style e-juice sounds a little oxymoronic, you're right. It is. E-juice vapor is basically made out of two things: a synthetic chemical called propylene glycol (PG), an odorless, tasteless vaporizable base, and vegetable glycerin (VG), which increases the quantity of vapor produced. Next, basic water-soluble flavors, usually ordered from a third-party supplier -- are added and blended to a desired profile. After that, each batch of juice is aged or "steeped" for anything from a few days to a few weeks, allowing the flavors to develop complexity. This isn't always an easy task. Perfecting the best-selling "Earl Gray," recently released by San Francisco-based Frisco Vapor, was a product of blood, sweat and tears. "It took us five months to get the balance right," the owner recalled. The last ingredient to be added is the pharmaceutical grade liquid nicotine, which is sold to consumers in several different quantities ranging from nothing at all to 24 milligrams.</div>
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When it comes to the merits of electronic cigarette inhalation, the jury is still out. We are still debating whether they should be allowed in restaurants and bars, and whether they should be taxed and how much. Nicotine's status as a public health risk remains a subject of heated controversy. But add a burgeoning market to a deepening culture of expertise, and we can safely assume that electronic cigarettes aren't going away anytime soon. In fact, by grabbing the public's attention, these very high-profile regulatory wars are probably helping rather than hindering business. Oftentimes, curiosity alone is sufficient motivation to wander into a vape shop.</div>
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But what gets customers coming back? While many people start using electronic cigarettes to help them quit smoking (and thus avoid bringing tar and carbon monoxide into their lungs), nicotine addiction alone is too simplistic an explanation. Equally if not more important is the fact that electronic cigarettes offer consumers a space to experiment with perception in a new way. After all, how often do we get to entertain the senses of taste, smell, and touch ... without ingesting any calories? In contrast to many of our favorite indulgences, the pleasures of vaping not only can be enjoyed around the clock, but they also come virtually guilt-free. Most tasting bars don't even sell coffee and alcohol -- our society's most beloved psychoactive beverages -- to accompany the simulated smoking experience. One employee I spoke with at Frisco Vapor, a new San Francisco shop, observed that a growing proportion of the clientele is eschewing the buzz altogether by choosing the nicotine-free liquids. "It's just a really interesting way to play with flavors," she said.</div>
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For a new generation of e-cig connoisseurs, that's often stimulation enough.<br />
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This post originally appeared on <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/india-mandelkern/the-rise-of-the-electroni_b_4634423.html?utm_hp_ref=los-angeles&ir=Los+Angeles" target="_blank">January 27, 2013</a> at the Huffington Post. </div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-36497107174478540722013-09-17T10:35:00.003-07:002013-09-17T10:51:55.350-07:00Does the Foodie Have a Soul?I'm pleased to report that one of my essays is now featured in the latest issue of <a href="http://gastronomica.org/" target="_blank">Gastronomica: A Journal of Food and Culture</a>.<i> </i><br />
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If you are unable to swing by Berkeley Bowl and pick up a copy, I've attached the article here. (You can also download it off my profile on academia.edu.) <br />
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Thanks again to all my readers. I've been a little slow with the blog updates, but I shall do my best to keep regaling your palates with tales of calves brains and turtle soup as I power through the dissertation home stretch.<br />
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Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-49140318564403669662013-08-02T10:28:00.000-07:002013-08-02T10:28:02.345-07:00Toad-in-the-Hole RevisitedI'm pleased to report that Homo Gastronomicus was recently featured in the Telegraph UK. <br />
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In her piece "Potted Histories" (July 24, 2013) Leah Hyslop discusses the beloved English dish "Toad in the Hole," bringing the dish's early history discussed in <a href="http://homogastronomicus.blogspot.com/2012/10/toad-in-hole-revisited.html" target="_blank">one of my earlier posts</a> up to the present day. Despite its humble origin, I was amused to learn that Pippa Middleton is a great fan of this hearty pub food, although she includes some extra flourishes such as Parma ham. <br />
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Check out Leah's article <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/10185830/Potted-histories-toad-in-the-hole.html" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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Thanks very much for the shout-out! <br />
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<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-55206628953726576512013-06-26T10:47:00.000-07:002013-08-07T10:29:41.130-07:00Histories of Bad Habits<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="background-color: #eeeeee;">It's served to us in many different styles - some more palatable than others - but we can’t deny the surge of historical interest in food taking place over the past few years. Drawing on various forms of expertise</span><span style="background-color: #eeeeee;">, food history seems to be one of the few topics to connect the world of investigative journalism to the ivory towers of academia. </span><span style="background-color: #eeeeee;">We would expect that historians, perhaps, would gravitate towards broad processes –– such as the spread of industrialization
that gave birth to the grocery store and the tin can, or the culinary impact of
immigration and the rise of ‘counter-cuisine.’ We might expect journalists, on
the other hand, to unmask more immediate concerns, such as the arduous journey
from farm-to-table or the politics of GMO labeling, compelling us to think
twice about what we select from our grocery store shelves. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: #eeeeee;">But maybe our interests are more alike than
we think. The last two food history
books I have read have grappled with several ancient yet still exigent issues in food
history worthy of further exploration. The
first one, historian Dr. Emma Spary’s <i>Eating the Enlightenment: Food and the Sciences in Paris 1670-1760 </i>(University of Chicago Press, 2012) examines
the animated debates about alimentary knowledge during the 18<sup>th</sup>
century, ranging from the physiology of digestion to the chemistry of alcohol
distillation. The book is written with a
specialist audience in mind: rewarding reading provided one reads with a pen in hand. The second, Pulitzer
Prize winning journalist Michael Moss’s<i>
Salt: Sugar, Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us </i>(Random House, 2013), examines the understudied
phenomenon of modern processed food and the political machinations of the
industries that design and sell it. The
reading is as addicting as the Cheetos and Twinkies that he describes. I picked these books up for very different
reasons, but both, I think, raise important questions about our understandings
of taste preferences, addiction, and the relationship between food and
drug. </span><span style="background-color: white; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; color: #222222;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">1) Matters of
Taste<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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Straddling self-preservation and leisure, philosophers and
physicians have long considered taste to be the most enigmatic sense. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The Roman Epicurean poet Lucretius posed the
question in the first century B.C.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lucretius, Roman poet<br />
and Epicurean</td></tr>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">“Now, how it is we see
some food for some, <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Others for others … <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I will unfold, or
wheretofore what to some <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Is foul and bitter,
yet the same to others<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Can seem delectable to
eat?” <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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Drawing on the works of eminent French physicians and cooks,
Spary examines the heated debates ignited by the rich, delectable flavors of fashionable
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">nouvelle cuisine</i>. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>As culinary masterminds attempted to dazzle
the palate with seasoned ragouts and fricassees, they also marketed gustatory enjoyment
of them as a social virtue. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Over the
first half of the 18<sup>th</sup> century, she argues, physicians anatomically
linked a delicate palate attuned to culinary artistry and subtle flavors to a
lucid and productive mind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Spary’s physicians are essentially the ancestors of the food
scientists today working at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, where the manufacture
of gustatory delight is now a multi-billion dollar industry.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Moss invites us into this Wonka-like behemoth in Philadelphia, where chemists tinker with smell,
taste, texture, and aesthetic appeal to design the cookie or soft-drink guaranteed
to bring in the biggest profits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I was
particularly struck by the fact that heavy loads of salt, sugar, and fat do equally great wonders for texture as much as taste, making Wonder-Bread puffy, Cheetos crispy,
and Lunchables chewy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> Indeed, seems like t</span>he processed food
industry has whittled our flavor preferences down to a science. “People like a chip that snaps
with about four pounds of pressure per square inch, no more or less,” one food
scientist matter-of-factly reports, leaving me wondering whether the
subjectivity of human taste preferences celebrates the individual as we like to think.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">2) Nourishing Bad
Habits<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Likewise, the relationship between taste and habit formation is
hardly new.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The famous 17<sup>th</sup>
century physician Thomas Willis described the pleasure of eating tasty foods as
a God-given <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">reward</i> for the monotonous
and laborious act of eating necessary to keeping us, and the human race, alive.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(The same logic was also used to explain the
pleasure of sex.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iRNjOapXrWc/Ucsj_GXIRDI/AAAAAAAABa4/t16qeCVvT5E/s1600/220px-Thomas_Willis_ODNB.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iRNjOapXrWc/Ucsj_GXIRDI/AAAAAAAABa4/t16qeCVvT5E/s1600/220px-Thomas_Willis_ODNB.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In his theory of two souls,<br />
Thomas Willis (1621-1675)<br />
speculated why food tastes good</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #222222; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Our understandings of
habituation and addiction are quite different today. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>As eating was necessary to human
survival yet was also subject to the spontaneous grumblings of the stomach,
“alimentary pleasure” Spary observes, “occupied a grey zone of permissible
indulgence.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>So long as he could <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sublimate</i> his appetite to his faculty of
reason, the 18<sup>th</sup> century enlightened eater was permitted to enjoy
the delights of haute cuisine. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But not
everyone was capable of handling these gustatory pleasures. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The aspirational parvenu and the coarse
country brute, unsurprisingly, were most at risk of getting carried away.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The 18<sup>th</sup> century science of
addiction, Spary explains, therefore had little to do with the chemical
composition of tasty foods themselves, but was enmeshed in the ideas of luxury,
decadence, and indulgence that eating these foods presupposed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The delicate 18<sup>th</sup> century <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ragout</i> thus bore a striking resemblance to the taunting motto
emblazoned on every bag of Lay’s potato chips: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Betcha Can’t Eat Just One.</i><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Moss, however, is less interested in the social forces informing the
production of physiological knowledge, proudly standing by his oh-easy-to-hate
culprits: salt, sugar, and fat.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It is the
expert manipulation of these substances that induce people to inhale a bag of
potato chips in one sitting and to (falsely) believe that their waistlines can
get away with it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I found Moss more
compelling when he discusses the disingenuous tactics by which corporations
have hooked populations on processed foods.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>Virtually all of the food scientists he interviews –– the engineers of
everything from Dr. Pepper to Lunchables –– do not dare touch the food that
their employers unscrupulously market to our society’s most impoverished and
vulnerable demographics.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When it comes
to our habituation and addiction to the “wrong” foods, the forces of social
distinction always seem to be at work. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="color: #222222; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span>
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Fyzr6QCC2ZQ/Ucs-SpowvXI/AAAAAAAABbg/aqfoMZFbmg4/s1600/Bert-Lahr-Frito-Lay-05-1967.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="247" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Fyzr6QCC2ZQ/Ucs-SpowvXI/AAAAAAAABbg/aqfoMZFbmg4/s400/Bert-Lahr-Frito-Lay-05-1967.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Are the processed food industries mocking our lack of willpower?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">3) Food and
Medicine<o:p></o:p></span></b><br />
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #222222; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #222222; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">Last, Spary and Moss both explore the relationship between food
and medicine.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These distinctions are also
thousands of years old.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>In the 4<sup>th</sup>
century B.C., Hippocrates exhorted us that every doctor should <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">also</i> be a good cook, as pleasant tasting
food was easier to digest than nutritionally identical food that was perhaps
less pleasing to the palate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>(Ayurveda
and many other forms of alternative medicine are gaining interest in the West because they operate according to a similar logic, <a href="http://homogastronomicus.blogspot.com/2013/03/why-we-drink-ayurvedic-kool-aid.html" target="_blank">discussed in a previous post.</a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span>Spary
shows us how the medical categories assigned to food –– whether they are
“addictive” or “healthy,” “nourishing,” or even counted as food at all –– are
highly unstable and are constantly evolving.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>While today’s food scientists might balk at classifying coffee and
liquor in one alimentary category, 18<sup>th</sup> century chemists believed
the essential salts in both substances shared certain healthful medical
properties –– “spiritual gasoline” –– that affected the brain and nerves in
ways more alike than different. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></b>Nutritional beliefs are shaped by far more
than science alone, but also incorporate political, social, and cultural
factors.</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r56DqBt7z94/Ucsmn5jJ3YI/AAAAAAAABbQ/KVOImn2EpKo/s1600/tang_advert.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r56DqBt7z94/Ucsmn5jJ3YI/AAAAAAAABbQ/KVOImn2EpKo/s320/tang_advert.jpg" width="232" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tang Advertisement, c. 1960</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #222222; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">But does this apply to Tang and potato chips? It might be hard to believe that processed food had ever been
touted for its medical properties, but Moss warns us not to forget that the
1950’s “Golden Age” of food processing once signified the triumph of American
progress and ingenuity.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Tang, for
example, fortified with nutrients, was considered an effective and tasty
solution to the high cost and limited accessibility to regular orange juice. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Today, however, the gurus of food processing
are singing a different tune, as Moss learns during his trip to Nestlé’s
research center in Switzerland. Here, food scientists keep busy testing potential state-of-the-art alimentary solutions to the obesity problem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #222222; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The nature of their research, unfortunately, suggests that it
might be too late. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>We hear about new products
like “Peptamen” ingested through a tube to feed the alarming numbers of men,
women, and children that have undergone gastric bypass surgery to shrink their
stomachs yet <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">still</i> can’t rein in
their cravings for nutritionally devoid processed food. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Indeed, the new ‘science’ of medical nutrition
seems to be suggesting that maintaining health and losing weight the
old-fashioned way –– by eating –– might be a relic of a by-gone era.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>This might be more serious than a
capitulation to the obesity epidemic, bad as that sounds.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>These new products suggest that the
distinctions between food and medicine, which part ways during the 17<sup>th</sup>
century, might now, in the 21<sup>st</sup> century, be drawing back
together.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">I picked up both of these books for very different reasons, and
I enjoyed both of them tremendously, albeit in different ways.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Despite the differences in subject matter and
approach, both of these books illuminate the messy political, social, and
intellectual forces that inform our knowledge of food.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is nothing inevitable, both books
conclude, about the ways whereby our food decisions take shape.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>But both of these books open new questions
about our relationship to food –– about consumption, about agency, about the
politics of alimentary knowledge –– that show us that there is far more
research to be done.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-22407262653845135342013-03-18T07:48:00.001-07:002013-03-25T12:33:46.555-07:00In Defense of Gross-Out Foods<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
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In 1687, Hans Sloane, the Irish born collector, antiquarian,
and botanist, traveled to Jamaica as the personal physician of the newly
appointed Governor of Jamaica. </div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IU9GvK8LkR0/UUJXk4weDbI/AAAAAAAABYM/yihpEUQtnH4/s1600/sloane.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-IU9GvK8LkR0/UUJXk4weDbI/AAAAAAAABYM/yihpEUQtnH4/s1600/sloane.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13.333333969116211px; text-align: center;">Hans Sloane: 1660-1753</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Sadly,
the Governor died the following year and Dr. Sloane, bereft of his noble
patron and probably eager to dodge suspicions of medical malpractice, traveled around
the West Indies for the next 15 months.
In 1707 he finally published a compendium of his observations about these distant English colonies, entitled <i>A Voyage to the Islands Madera, Barbados,
Nieves, St. Christopher’s and Jamaica</i>.</div>
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Many scholars have shared my fascination with Sloane’s book, and have analyzed everything from his attitudes towards
slavery to his meticulous, semi-obsessive collections of insects and plant
specimens.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[1]</span></span></span></a> (Sloane was pretty much the quintessential
early modern hoarder. Yet unlike the
<a href="http://www.aetv.com/hoarders/about/" target="_blank">people portrayed on A&E</a>, his bizarre and compendious collection of
curiosities eventually became the British museum.)</div>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y5OIixS9hq8/UUJWntr4lGI/AAAAAAAABX8/JiglTN4AbBE/s1600/17thc_jamaica.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Y5OIixS9hq8/UUJWntr4lGI/AAAAAAAABX8/JiglTN4AbBE/s400/17thc_jamaica.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A 17th Century Map of Jamaica</td></tr>
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My interest in Hans Sloane is slightly different. I’m interested in what kinds of food Sloane
encountered during his time in Jamaica and how these foods informed his
impressions of the people he met there.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> At first glance, Sloane didn’t seem terribly pleased
with what he saw (or tasted). Take basic
English staples: beef and veal. Not only
were these products terribly overpriced (due to the fact that meat rotted in a matter of hours under the oppressive Jamaican sun – meat markets
were usually sold out by 7am) but English imports often tasted terrible to begin
with. This, Sloane surmised, had to do
with the <i>Calabash Tree Leaves</i> that
grew everywhere in Jamaica, which infected cow’s kidneys and milk to the extent
that “Everything made of Milk tasts … so strong of it that there is no using
with pleasure any thing made therewith.”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn3" name="_ednref3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <o:p></o:p></div>
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Neither could Sloane stand the cassava bread, so dry that it
had to be dipped in sugar-water to be palatable at all. (Sloane did acknowledge, nevertheless, that
it kept men healthy in spite its insipid taste.) The black slaves, cattle and poultry happily
fed on maize (Indian Corn) but Sloane had qualms about its suitability for Europeans. <o:p></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T4DTzrP2bBI/UUJW-oJGrGI/AAAAAAAABYE/m8_6br8oNDU/s1600/cassava_bread.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="214" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T4DTzrP2bBI/UUJW-oJGrGI/AAAAAAAABYE/m8_6br8oNDU/s320/cassava_bread.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sloane wasn't a big fan of cassava bread<br />
He called it "rank and poisonous"</td></tr>
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So alien were these Jamaican foods, so distasteful were they
to the European palate, that Sloane began to ponder the very <i>definition of food </i>in the first place. After all, Sloane surmised, there was no hard and fast rule separating "food" from "non-food." What was unique about mankind, Sloane
reasoned, was his ability to extract nourishment from pretty much
anything. Good to keep in mind during a
famine, “should it please God to inflict the like Calamity.” Thankfully, God had also equipped man with the
tools needed to deal with such situations –– teeth, spittle, digestive fluids –– enabling men to extract nourishment from nearly anything. “[T]hough Stalks and Leaves afford no great
Nourishment,” Sloane confessed, “they have sometimes kept many from
starving.” Indeed, Sloane points out,
the hungry will even eat inanimate objects such as shoes and belts “soak’d and
eaten” when man found himself in dire straits.</div>
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Even though the dietary divisions between man and beast
collapsed under threat of hunger, Sloane didn’t see anything cruel or
unjust about this inevitable state of nature.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn4" name="_ednref4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
<i>“All these several differing Bodies;
which, when no other are at hand, must be the Food of Mankind in the places
where they are produced,” </i>he wrote, “<i>are
… digested by the Artifice of Nature into good Sustenance to repair its Losses,
and propagate its Kind.”</i> To the
contrary, man’s ability to turn non-food into food was knowledge worth
learning and passing on to future generations.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn5" name="_ednref5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a><o:p></o:p></div>
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But necessity alone does not determine one’s taste
preferences. [<i>H]owever strange to us,” </i>Sloane continues, strange and un-food-like
foods<i> “are very greedily sought after by
those us’d to them. Thus Person not us’d to eat Whales, Squirrils, or
Elephants, would think them a strange Dish; yet those us’d to them, prefer them
to other Victuals.”</i></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5r-qwD_Prek/UUJsJz2E9SI/AAAAAAAABYU/0Hr2cLo4k1k/s1600/racoon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="346" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5r-qwD_Prek/UUJsJz2E9SI/AAAAAAAABYU/0Hr2cLo4k1k/s400/racoon.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Sloane noticed raccoon-meat for sale in Jamaica<br />
Ralph Beilby, <i>A General History of Quadrupeds</i> (1790)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Why, Dr. Sloane wonders, do people <i>willingly</i> eat foods that taste disgusting? As Sloane wandered the towns, markets, and
plantations of Jamaica, he recoiled at the sight of snakes and lizards relished
by polite and supposedly “understanding” people “with a very good and nice
Palate.” Rats and raccoons –– bred among
the sugarcanes to sweeten their meat –– were sold in local markets as good
meat. His Jamaican observations sent
Sloane straight to his gigantic English library, where he found many instances of gross-out foods consumed throughout history. <o:p></o:p></div>
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–– Ancient Greek grasshoppers “eat
like shrimps.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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–– Peoples of the East Indies
dining on bird’s nests <o:p></o:p></div>
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–– Hottentots enjoying the guts of
cattle and sheep <o:p></o:p></div>
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While 17th century scientific literature often attributed racial and cultural differences to the distinct climates of foreign lands, taste-preferences could not be explained this way. The American Indians, displaced African
slaves, as well as the ancient Romans apparently considered <i>Cossi</i> (Cotton Tree Worms) “so great a
dainty” in spite of their distinct cultures and geographical origins. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But neither were new tastes so quickly learned. Slaves from the East
Indies were less desirable to plantation owners than the Jamaican born Creoles, Sloane pointed out, as the former arrived in Jamaica with a taste for meat and fish as opposed
to a cheaper diet of yams, plantains, and potatoes. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Are we in fact what we eat?
It’s a well-worn adage, but Dr. Sloane didn’t seem to think so. In fact, precisely because the definition of
food was so malleable, Sloane concluded that one’s dietary preferences should <i>not</i> be a pretext to classify, categorize
and enslave other peoples.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn6" name="_ednref6" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> The Spanish very unjustly enslaved the Aztecs
because “the Indians … eat Piojos [lice], and Gusanos [larva], and intoxicated
themselves with their kinds of wines … and the smoak of tobacco:” incredibly
flimsy justifications for extermination. Sloane did not know how to explain the acclimation and habituation of taste preferences, but he knew that they did not conform to one's moral or cosmological worth. Indeed, several scholars have pointed out that early modern conceptions of identity, such as race and gender, were far more fluid and mutable than we now believe them to be.<a href="http://homogastronomicus.blogspot.com/2013/03/in-defense-of-gross-out-foods.html" target="_blank">[7]</a> Where does the sense of taste fit into the discussion? <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
<div id="edn1">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"> See, for example, Kay Kriz’s Curiosities,
Commodities, and Transplanted Bodies in Hans Sloane’s ‘Natural History of
Jamaica’ in <i>The William and Mary
Quarterly</i>, Third Series, Vol. 57, No. 1 (Jan., 2000), pp. 35-78 and James
Delbuorgo,</span> <span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">“Sir Hans Sloane’s Milk
Chocolate and the Whole History of Cacao”<b>
</b><i>Social Text</i> (2011) 29:1:106 pp.
71-101.<b> </b>Sloane is often credited
with the invention of chocolate milk, althought the “Sloane Brand” was actually
invented in the 1750s. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div id="edn2">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"> I share this curiosity with the high Tory satirist
William King, who published a satirical send-up of Sloane’s interest in
Jamaican food, entitled “Concerning several sorts of odd dishes used by
epicures and nice eaters throughout the world” in <i>Useful Transactions</i> (London, 1700). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref3" name="_edn3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"> The Calabash plant was even rumored to kill horses by
the fruit “sticking so fast to their teeth that they are not able to open their
Chaps to feed.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn4">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref4" name="_edn4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"> My favorite book about early modern famine is
unquestionably Piero Camporesi’s <i>Bread of
Dreams: Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Europe </i>(Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1989) orig. 1980. But while Camporesi focuses on the divisions between the fed and the hungry, emphasizing the latter's wretched, drugged-out, state –– </span><span style="font-size: 13.333333969116211px;">bran, for example, “soaked in hot water and formed into a bran mash for the pig-men, so reduced to wallowing as to resemble snuffling animals” (38) –– </span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"> Sloane focuses on famine as a natural calamity that men should learn to deal with their reason and ingenuity. </span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn5">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref5" name="_edn5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"> Sloane cites some well known “famine guides,” such as
Joachimus Struppius’s <i>Anchora Famis</i>
(1578) that advises making bread out of almonds, hazelnuts, and pine-kernels,
as well as the work of the Bolognese cleric Giovanni Battista Segni, who
documented instances of cannibalism in his work (1602). talks about veg and animal productions made
use of in times of famine – “most attentive and sensitive treatise writers on
hunger and its excesses” - <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn6">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref6" name="_edn6" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"> Lest we be too hasty with the praise of Dr. Sloane as an enlightened cosmopolite, I
should point out that he married a Jamaican planter heiress and owned
slaves. Just sayin!’<o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"><a href="http://homogastronomicus.blogspot.com/2013/03/in-defense-of-gross-out-foods.html" target="_blank">[7]</a> See Dror Wahrman, <i>The Making of the Modern Self: Identity and Culture in Eighteenth Century England</i> (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2004) and Roxann Wheeler, <i>The Complexion of Race: Categories of Difference in Eighteenth Century British Culture</i> (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000). </span></div>
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<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-45995023883585742642013-03-04T11:16:00.002-08:002013-03-07T13:40:16.278-08:00Why We Drink the Ayurvedic Kool-Aid<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
This past weekend, I went to my first-ever Ayurvedic cooking
class. I drove up there feeling excited yet uncertain about what I might learn. Ayurveda had been getting a lot of press lately as an alternative form of medicine, and I wasn't sure if I was ready to jump on the bandwagon. But when I arrived, my worries were allayed with a glass of spiced raw
milk: the quintessential Ayurvedic kool-aid. </div>
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<br /></div>
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Guess it was time to jump down the rabbit hole ... </div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eV6rpZgAXEM/UTTw7aT8IqI/AAAAAAAABXs/XpRo4_id4sE/s1600/rawmilk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eV6rpZgAXEM/UTTw7aT8IqI/AAAAAAAABXs/XpRo4_id4sE/s320/rawmilk.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I couldn't get enough!<br />
#ayurvedicexperiments #histmed</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Seasoned with saffron, turmeric, cardamom, ginger, black
pepper and sugar, I savored it to the last drop. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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The class was a lot of fun, and we learned to make many
simple, delicious, and healthful dishes.
But the whole time, I couldn’t help privately wondering why Ayurveda
had become so popular? Why were we all
frantically writing down everything the teacher had to say about the “pungent”
and “drying” properties of turmeric, or the “cooling” and “digestive” qualities
of cardamom? Why was I anxiously
scribbling down the names of websites where I could find out if I had a <i>vata,</i> <i>pitta</i>, or <i>kapha </i>constitution? And how would that help me determine what I
should eat? Throughout the class, I had
this strange sense of déjà vu. I knew I
had heard this language somewhere before.
<o:p></o:p></div>
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Then it hit me. I
suddenly realized that Ayurvedic cooking had a whole lot of similarities with the
dietetic teachings of the 2<sup>nd</sup> century Greek physician Galen. Galen had ruled that all foodstuffs contained
at least one of four intrinsic qualities –– hotness, coldness, dryness, and moistness
–– which corresponded with the four humors in the body: blood, phlegm, yellow
bile, and black bile. As Ken Albala has
shown, this was an incredibly complicated system, whereby every quality in
every foodstuff could also exhibit various degrees of intensity.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Certain foods acted as “correctives”
that tempered qualities in other foods.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RioFmttjN_c/UTTkRNzy_WI/AAAAAAAABXU/jeYNwmDP5YY/s1600/galen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-RioFmttjN_c/UTTkRNzy_WI/AAAAAAAABXU/jeYNwmDP5YY/s320/galen.jpg" width="258" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Galen's dietetic teachings persisted for<br />centuries after his death in the 3rd century AD</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
Even though physicians tinkered with the system here and there,
these theories of diet dominated Western medical thought from Latin Antiquity
to the present. Over the past twenty
years, historians of science have attempted to explain its remarkable
resilience. There were many reasons for
this.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--The system was <i>flexible</i>. It avoided “one size fits all”
dietary prescriptions in favor of tailoring diet to one’s individual
constitution. <i>Of course</i> one person got sick from eating asafoetida-flavored mung beans while the same dish cured another man’s illness. As no
two constitutions were the same, the same food could not be expected to work
the same way on everyone. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--It was a “do it yourself” type of medical thinking. Instead of accepting that the doctor always
knew best, laymen wielded a lot of power over their physical and
emotional wellbeing. Historian Steve Shapin describes doctors and laymen as exercising “joint ownership” over their health.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> In fact, as Harold Cook has shown, becoming a
respected physician wasn’t just about accumulating a lot of medical expertise. It was also about developing good
character. And good character meant
paying attention to your patients' thoughts and habits.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn3" name="_ednref3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <o:p></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ce6Dyd2yHI4/UTTnjGdKq4I/AAAAAAAABXc/wLCvT6AIsdY/s1600/Archer_John-Every_man_his_own_doctor-Wing-A3608-1375_09-p1+(1).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ce6Dyd2yHI4/UTTnjGdKq4I/AAAAAAAABXc/wLCvT6AIsdY/s640/Archer_John-Every_man_his_own_doctor-Wing-A3608-1375_09-p1+(1).jpg" width="361" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">There were zillions of these"do it yourself"<br />
health guides printed in the 17th century!<br />
This one was published in 1671</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--It relied on <i>tangible</i>
evidence. It didn’t depend on invisible
things like “calories” and “vitamins,” both 19<sup>th</sup> century discoveries
that physicians exhort us to accept on faith.
Sensory qualities of foods that one could directly experience, such as
taste, were far more important to maintaining your health. Indeed,
Galen believed that whatever tasted good to an individual was actually easier
to digest than other dishes that may be equally nutritious.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn4" name="_ednref4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> But this was not just about taste; physicans also
took into account the texture of food, or whether the food was heated up or
served cold.<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--The system was <i>moderate</i>
and impervious to fads. As I mentioned
before, the system changed very little over time. Common sense reigned supreme. In fact, only during the 17<sup>th</sup>
century do historians witness a slow disappearance of Galenic dietetics from academic
discourse.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn5" name="_ednref5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Why was that? Well, given that the scientific revolution was getting underway, it isn’t surprising that Galen's system started to crumble at the moment when scholars
were cautioned to look down upon ancient received wisdom and instead put faith in their own sensory
experiences.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Keeping a Galenic <i>or</i> an Ayurvedic diet can be complicated
and very time consuming. For these
reasons, I’m pretty sure that few people actually followed either of them to
the letter to the law ... both in antiquity and in the present. But for both of these systems, the massive appeal lied in the <i>agency</i> granted to us laypeople
as our own medical masterminds. As I
whipped up my first glass of spiced raw milk, I realized how tinkering with all
these new spices –– now medical tools as well as flavor enhancers –– can be
very empowering indeed. And also a lot
of fun! <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<u>Spiced Milk<o:p></o:p></u></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What you Need:<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--Whole, cow milk (preferably raw … admittedly more
expensive but so much tastier!)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--2 cardamom pods<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--1 whole clove<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--1/2 tsp turmeric<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--2 strands of saffron (I had no idea that this was so expensive! For this blog post, I bit the bullet, but next time I will order this online!)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--1/4 tsp ginger powder<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--pinch of black pepper<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
--sugar (to taste)<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How to do it: <i>Add milk
to a pan. Follow by rubbing saffron
strands in finger and then add them to the milk. Follow with the turmeric, cardamom, clove,
ginger powder and pepper. Add sugar and
bring the milk to a low boil, where just the sides start to bubble a
little. Strain and serve. You can top with a little ghee if you like!</i> </div>
<div>
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="edn1">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Ken Albala, <i>Eating
Right in the Renaissance</i> (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002)</span><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Steven Shapin, “Trusting George Cheyne:
Scientific Expertise, Common Sense, and Moral Authority in Early Eighteenth-Century
Dietetic Medicine,” <i>Bulletin of the
History of Medicine</i> 77 (2003), 263-297.</span><span style="font-size: 10pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref3" name="_edn3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
<span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Harold Cook “Good Advice and Little Medicine:
The Professional Authority of Early Modern English Physicians” <i>Journal of British Studies</i> (Jan., 1994)
33:1 pp. 1-31. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn4">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref4" name="_edn4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
<i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;">Galen on
Food and Diet</span></i><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"> ed. Mark Grant (London:
Routledge, 2000) p. 131.</span><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn5">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref5" name="_edn5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></span></a><span style="font-size: 10.0pt;"> J. Worth Estes,
“The Medical Properties of Food in the 18<sup>th</sup> Century,” <i>Journal of the History of Medicine and
Allied Sciences,</i> vol 51, number 2, 1996 pp. 127-154. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-2406686244168810572013-02-15T17:12:00.002-08:002013-03-05T11:30:01.425-08:00A Matter of Haut-Gout<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="text-align: justify;">Usually I
like to cook, but the other day I home late and was too lazy to go to the store. Luckily my neighborhood offers plenty of take-out options; I ordered out from a Chinese
place down the street. I had never eaten
there, but it’s usually pretty busy whenever I walk by. The Yelp reviews said it
specialized in something called “meatless chicken.” It was the most popular thing on the menu. </span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;">
I ordered
the so-called meatless chicken, along with lo mein and an order of pot-stickers. But when the order arrived and I swallowed a
forkful, I found the dish a little suspicious. The meatless chicken tasted unmistakably
chicken-y – that part they got right. It
was chopped up into small cubes and the texture felt a little spongy, spongy
enough to pass as tofu. But it felt firm
enough to also pass as chicken, chicken so heartlessly raised and artificially
processed, I worried, that it barely qualified as chicken at all. Could the restaurant have made a mistake?</div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rJv42grOnjU/UR7WhdhXgzI/AAAAAAAABWo/GIsFykIBgv8/s1600/meatless_chicken_bite.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rJv42grOnjU/UR7WhdhXgzI/AAAAAAAABWo/GIsFykIBgv8/s320/meatless_chicken_bite.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">#meatlesschicken #hautgout #deepfriedgoodness</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
The
only way to find out for certain was to order the meatless chicken again,
which I decided to do for lunch today. (Note to self: they have a great lunch special.) This time I was relieved
to experience the same type of meatless meat I had ordered the first time. I now believed myself to
like meatless chicken. The texture felt
more assuredly tofu-like, and the flavor somehow less artificial. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Why
was meatless chicken considered such a delicacy at this place? Yelpers called
it a “specialty” that “brings me back to my childhood,” and “the best fake meat
I ever had.” The glowing reviews made
clear that the appeal of meatless chicken also depended on a combination of appearance,
taste, and texture: “tasty fried, slightly chewy goodness!” A combination of sensory and social qualities made
meatless chicken an acquired taste. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
What
conditions must be satisfied in order to transport a food from the realm of the
disgusting to the delicious? Our
enjoyment of food has little to do with just one taste or one texture, but
food’s ability to conform to our expectations of what it <i>ought to taste like. </i>Confirmation
of the chicken’s meatlessness exhorted me to re-evaluate my former sensory
observations. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Has
this always been the case?<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> As some readers might know, I have been
working on a history of food connoisseurship during the 18<sup>th</sup>
century, and I often find myself struck by the passionate responses that new edible delicacies aroused. Take, for example, the dawn of the 18<sup>th</sup>
century, when well-to-do tables were invaded by French styles of cooking.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> The English found French cuisine distinctive
for the culinary artistry that went into making rich <i>cullises,</i> dainty <i>poupetons,</i>
the <i>fricassees</i> and <i>ragouts</i>.
The flavors of these new dishes were considered so strong, so peculiar
and so indescribable that a new word entered the English lexicon to describe
them: they had <i>haut-gout.</i></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XWHyGdWYlfE/UR7WBqLEttI/AAAAAAAABWg/D2fAixVQu_A/s1600/cuisinier.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XWHyGdWYlfE/UR7WBqLEttI/AAAAAAAABWg/D2fAixVQu_A/s320/cuisinier.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Most French cooks working in Britain were male,<br />
but this was the best picture I could find!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
What
was <i>haut-gout</i>? Well, it’s hard to say. While the OED traces it back to 1645, using
it in the same phrase as a “<i>pickant sawce,”</i>
<i>haut-gout</i> wasn’t exactly a flavor. You won’t find it in an English cookbok. Even
so, haut-gout connoted rich and highly seasoned properties that could not be
described in words.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn3" name="_ednref3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> For example, the pungency of soy sauce –- enthusiastically
described in 1736 as having “the highest gust in the world” –– opened the taste
buds to pleasurable new sensations. Others, such as Jonathan Swift, were more dubious. “If a lump of soot falls into the soup … stir
it well,” he sarcastically advised in <i>Directions
to Servants</i> (1731) “and it will give the soup a <i>high French taste</i>.”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn4" name="_ednref4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Because <i>haut-gout</i> didn’t represent one
particular flavor, what it actually tasted like was anyone’s guess. Tasting “expensive” could adopt a variety of
guises, leading one to confuse it with the all-out revolting. </div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pwWLEPddGA0/UR7UTANkkRI/AAAAAAAABWY/x3nhuaO1XBQ/s1600/first_course_gazetteer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-pwWLEPddGA0/UR7UTANkkRI/AAAAAAAABWY/x3nhuaO1XBQ/s640/first_course_gazetteer.jpg" width="308" /><span style="text-align: justify;"> </span></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Smell
also wielded power over the likeability of various foods. In the <i>Comical
Don Quixote</i> (1702) the stench of garlic breath might be so bad as to deal a
man a “double death” yet it added a “curious hautgoust” to one’s dinner. Moreover, smell ensured haut-gout’s ability to invade personal deoderized spaces. “I have some
curious green rabbits,” a fictional French character observed in a
1719 play, “with an haut-gout that may be smelt from the forecastle to the
great cabbin.”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn5" name="_ednref5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
Finally,
<i>haut-gout</i> was closely linked to the new
textures of food. Indeed, English
writers dwelled upon the <i>French sauce</i>
–– viscous, rich and pungent sauce –– that provided each dish a little
something extra. But what kind of meat
swam in the creamy goo? Who was to say
that the meat was what the cook said it was? How do we know it hadn’t spoiled? Sauce
provided a dish a sense of artful mystery, but it also exhorted the diner to
trust in the cook’s expertise and benevolence. (Indeed, it’s no surprise that the <i>saucier</i>
is still the highest paid position in a French kitchen.) Perhaps our cultural ambivalence about sauce
is innate. The famous British
anthropologist Mary Douglas noticed that “polluting” substances are often
sticky or viscous. Halfway between a
solid and a liquid, sauces defy easy classification. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
But
coming back to my original question, did we arbitrate between disgust and
delight the same way then as we do now? I have noticed that 18<sup>th</sup> century ambivalence towards <i>haut-gout</i> often emanated not only from the strange sensations it elicited, but also from fears over
where a new food’s enjoyment could lead.
Eating foods with questionable sauces or smells was believed to have psychologically
addicting properties, inevitably leading connoisseurs to seek out new gustatory thrills. Such an affliction could
cause genteel eaters to consume substances that lacked culture or cultivation
–– substances such as these dishes below. So much for the civilizing process. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-C_kNep3l680/UR7Ygi4rMnI/AAAAAAAABW4/7XN0aOIJUow/s1600/viper.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="272" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-C_kNep3l680/UR7Ygi4rMnI/AAAAAAAABW4/7XN0aOIJUow/s320/viper.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This image, as well as the French bill of fare above<br />
come from the Universal Journal, or British Gazetteer:<br />
April 15, 1727</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<i>Post-script: </i>By
the way, the meatless chicken was ordered from <a href="http://www.yelp.com/biz/big-lantern-san-francisco" target="_blank">Big Lantern</a> –– 16<sup>th</sup>
street and Guerrero. Try it out
sometime! </div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div>
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="edn1">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Over the
past fifty years or so, scholars of various disciplinary backgrounds have<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
written about
taste and disgust. The experimental
psychologist Paul Rozin has published oodles of articles about preferences and
disgust, famously linking disgust to fears of our animal origins. In his lucid and fascinating book, <i>The Anatomy of Disgust</i>, William Ian
Miller treats disgust as an emotion that organizes the social and moral
universe. I’m still searching for more
work on transforming associations of disgust into associations of taste, so if
you know of any work please let me know!<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
The rise of French cuisine has been well documented by scholars. For the culinary changes happening in France,
see Susan Pinkard, <i>A Revolution in Taste:
The Rise of French Cuisine</i> (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2009). For the reception of French
cookery in Britain, see Gilly Lehman, <i>The
British Housewife</i> and Stephen Mennell, <i>All
Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to
the Present </i>(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996). <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref3" name="_edn3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> During
the late 17<sup>th</sup> century, botanists became exceedingly interested in
creating taxonomies of flavor, the most famous of which was devised by F.R.S
Nehemiah Grew. (I’ll talk about him in
an upcoming post.) Yet nowhere in Grew’s
taxonomy or anywhere else does “haut-gout” gain any scientific elaboration.</div>
</div>
<div id="edn4">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref4" name="_edn4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> I’ve
always wondered whether Jonathan Swift got food poisoning from a French
fricassee, for he loved to mock Augustan food fashions. <i>The
Modest Proposal</i> –– which recommended turning Irish babies into culinary
delicacies –– can certainly be read as an indictment of connoisseurial
eating. <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn5">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref5" name="_edn5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Thomas
D’Urfey, <i>The Younger Brother, or the Sham
Marquis</i> (London, 1719).</div>
</div>
</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-20801896127722059832012-12-12T19:40:00.001-08:002013-03-05T11:53:44.603-08:00To the Health of Martin Lister<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Ah yes. Gay Paris. For centuries, Englishmen have viewed Gallic comestibles with a mixture of longing and suspicion. Throughout the 18th century, the English decried French cooks in public whilst French cookbooks sold like hotcakes. Throughout the 19<sup>th</sup> century, English
tourists journeyed to Paris specifically to dine in <i>restaurants</i> such as Véry’s or the Rocher
de Cancale. (Their letters, however, often discussed the restaurant’s
luxurious ambiance more than the food.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title="">[1]</a>)</span></span></span> By the 1950s, Elizabeth David lauded Paris
as a foodie haven from the tinned peas and oversized, over-salted olives
that typified London’s abysmal culinary scene. Even today, Paris remains a site of gastronomic pilgrimage. </div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZM_496v70B8/UMlJGxX6OwI/AAAAAAAABRk/yjGZh_COkZ0/s1600/lister.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZM_496v70B8/UMlJGxX6OwI/AAAAAAAABRk/yjGZh_COkZ0/s320/lister.jpg" width="207" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Martin Lister:<br />
Foodie Virtuoso</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Permit me to add Dr. Martin Lister to the ranks of
English-born culinary Francophiles. Lister
was your early modern jack-of-all-trades: a physician, a botanist, and an
antiquarian rolled into one.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
He wrote and published prolifically on a
smorgasbord of exigent 17<sup>th</sup> century intellectual matters. The
anatomy of a scallop. A boy bit by a rabid dog. The flavor of a
“very peculiar mushroom.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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The anatomy of a scallop?
You might be rolling your eyes right now, Reader, at the apparent
superficiality of Lister’s scholarly interests. (And if you <i>are </i>rolling your eyes, be assured that you are in good company;
neither Jonathan Swift nor Alexander Pope could stand the guy.) To them, Lister was a narcissistic fool who
liked to talk and write just for the sake of being heard, regardless of whether his
so-called “research” was totally useless and imbecilic. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But let’s not dismiss Lister’s schemes too quickly. At the dawn of the Enlightenment, many regarded these
studies as critical and cutting edge gateways to new and modern knowledge. How were we to understand the decline of the
Roman Empire if we don’t know the historical conditions –– the weird fish sauce, the
feasting rituals, the <i>vomitoria</i> –– in
which the Romans lived?<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn3" name="_ednref3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
How were we supposed to understand the
diversity of different cultures and peoples around the world if we don’t
consider the ins and outs of their everyday lives? '<o:p></o:p></div>
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So in 1698, Lister set off to Paris.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn4" name="_ednref4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Did he study French politics? Nope.
Did he study art or architecture?
Nope – Lister admitted he “had no taste” for those things. But he <i>did</i>
spend a great deal of time studying the diet of the Parisians.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn5" name="_ednref5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Indeed, according to his published memoir of the trip, Lister was pretty impressed with what he saw. He was “much pleased” with the French
lentils, found French turnips to be “sweeter and “less stringy” than the
English kind, and rated the French (Roman) lettuce as superior to the Silesian
varieties grown in England. Hell, he
even thought French salt tasted better, finding it <i>“incomparably better and far more wholesome than our white salt, which
spoils everything that is intended to be preserved by it.”</i> I wonder if it's Lister's fault that French sea-salt has such a huge mark-up in stores today? <o:p></o:p></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xjvqAlKb8Lc/UMlK7ys2UnI/AAAAAAAABRs/TgY3CSYgyxQ/s1600/williams_sonoma_french_sea_salt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="211" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xjvqAlKb8Lc/UMlK7ys2UnI/AAAAAAAABRs/TgY3CSYgyxQ/s320/williams_sonoma_french_sea_salt.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Can the inflated prices paid for French sea-salt<br />
be attributed to F.R.S. Lister?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Like many gastronomes, Lister was equally, if not more,
excited over the wines he tasted in Paris than he was about the food. Champagne and Burgundy topped Lister’s list,
being “light and easy on the stomach,” and noticed that all the best French
taverns sought to serve them. Some of
Lister’s favorites:<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Volne</i> <i>(known today as Volnay, in the Cote de
Beaune region of Burgundy):</i> Lister described this as a “pale champaigne”
made on the borders of Burgundy. He
deemed it “exceedingly brisk upon the palate.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Vin de Rheims:</i>
“Like all the other champaignes, it is harsh,” Lister said. He describes it as “pale or gray.”<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i>Chabri (Chablis?):</i>
“Quick and much liked.” <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>St. Laurence (Red):</i>
The town is situated in Provence, between Toulon and Nice. This, Lister said, was “the best wine that I
ever tasted.”<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-L1ai5o6DmLg/UMlNuxcWfuI/AAAAAAAABSE/B6qxio_2ibg/s1600/wine.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="250" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-L1ai5o6DmLg/UMlNuxcWfuI/AAAAAAAABSE/B6qxio_2ibg/s400/wine.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">18th century wine Bottles<br />
Bottoms up!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br /></div>
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<br />
There you have it. A
17<sup>th</sup> century antiquarian tasting wines in the name of science. But Lister did not think of his Parisian
edible experiences as mere vanity projects, or half-assed rationalizations for
pigging out. Lister claimed that access to good food and fine wine were essential measurements of civilization’s
progress: </div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>“Natural philosophy
and physick had its origin in the desire to discover a better and more
wholesome food than the beasts have, and taught mankind to eat bread and flesh,
instead of herbs and acorns, and to drink wine instead of water. These, an a thousand other advantages, were
blessings conferred on mankind by the science of medicine.” <o:p></o:p></i></div>
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To reject these comforts, according to Lister, <i>“seems to me the most ungrateful to the
author of good.”</i><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn6" name="_ednref6" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Before Brillat-Savarin sung the praises of <i>gourmandise</i> in the 1820s, Lister in 1699
was living it up as a testament to man's ingenuity and God’s infinite benevolence. </div>
<div>
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<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="edn1">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
For analyses of 19<sup>th</sup> century English reactions to Parisian
restaurants, see chapter seven in Rebecca Spang’s <i>The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture</i>
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000). <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
J.D. Woodley, “Martin Lister,” <i>Oxford
Dictionary of National Biography</i>. <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref3" name="_edn3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
The sketchy boundaries between serious science and frivolous dilettantism are
discussed at length in this is Joseph Levine’s <i>Dr. Woodward’s Shield</i>: <i>History,
Science and Satire in Augustan England </i>(Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1977). The subtitle speaks for
itself, but does not do justice to how acerbic and hilarious this book really
is! <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn4">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref4" name="_edn4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Martin Lister, <i>Journey to Paris in the
Year 1698</i> (London, 1699).<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn5">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref5" name="_edn5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Even at the publication of the Journey to Paris, the wits were suspicious of
Martin Lister’s foodist proclivities.
William King mocked him in his famous <i>Art of Cookery</i>: <i>in Imitation
of Horace’s Art of Poetry </i>rhyming “sing that man did to Paris go, that he
might taste their soups, and mushrooms know.” <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn6">
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref6" name="_edn6" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Lister, <i>A</i> <i>Journey to Paris in the Year 1698</i>, p. 108.</div>
</div>
</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-84074067365986193682012-11-26T17:14:00.001-08:002013-01-13T12:48:48.824-08:00Tempeh Taco Tuesday<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
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Have you ever had an authentic San Francisco “tempeh
taco”? They are hearty, healthy,
delicious, and oh so easy to make. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wiwiEg3D9rs/ULQH6Sf45mI/AAAAAAAABNw/ETzSJsBiDBs/s1600/photo+(1).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wiwiEg3D9rs/ULQH6Sf45mI/AAAAAAAABNw/ETzSJsBiDBs/s400/photo+(1).JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tempeh Tacos: A vegan, gluten-free bite of goodness! </td></tr>
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I’d love to take credit for the invention of the tempeh
taco, but that honor belongs to my old roommate. If you ever get to San Francisco and manage
to find him, make sure you ask him to whip some up!<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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Now, I would love to enlighten my clever and efficacious
readers with a tale about how the tempeh taco singlehandedly shaped centuries of British culinary history. Maybe I'd add an epilogue that chronicles the exploits of the tempeh-loving diaspora now in the United States. But I don’t think the British ate very
much tempeh in those days. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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However, tempeh-tacos broach another question in the history of
food: the history of “substitutions.” Now,
substitutions are timeless facts of cookery. We
make use of them all the time: when we want something healthier, something
tastier … or when we’re just too lazy to go to the store. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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How might one write a history of the substitute? <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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On the one hand, the substitute provided men of limited
means with vicarious enjoyment that would otherwise be out of their reach. Shortly after turtle feasting took the
British public by storm during the 1750s, “mock turtle” made its culinary
debut. It was made from calves brains
and forced meat and dressed up with a few Creole influences, such as Madeira and
cayenne pepper, to remind people of the real thing. Indeed, mock turtle wasn't all that different
from “calves head hashed:” an older traditional stand-by. It used similar ingredients, similar methods of
preparation and required the same amount of labor to prepare.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
Calling the dish “mock turtle,” however, implies some degree of culinary
expertise, a familiarity with <i>real</i>
turtle, and a finished product that is somehow more than the simple sum of its
ingredients. There was nothing
very embarrassing or humiliating about this substitute at all. In fact, it was often served alongside real
turtle! </div>
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<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eWDWqTQBSTk/ULQa6KLTefI/AAAAAAAABO4/KIIPH14Aelo/s1600/calves_head-turtle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="251" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eWDWqTQBSTk/ULQa6KLTefI/AAAAAAAABO4/KIIPH14Aelo/s320/calves_head-turtle.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">This is the first reference to "calves head turtle" I have found<br />
Dated November 27, 1760</td></tr>
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By the turn of the 19<sup>th</sup> century, however, it
seemed as if the substitute’s status began to decline. War, a few bad harvests and impending bread
riots prompted social ‘reformers’ to devise all kinds of wacky substitutes for
bread. The pamphlet below, published in
1796, included an entire glossary of underutilized comestibles that that were sure to please the pauper’s palate. "Dogstone" soup, anyone?</div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mm2uNhJAGtU/ULQYMROCHWI/AAAAAAAABOg/qCP8Sxo9jDQ/s1600/enumeration.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mm2uNhJAGtU/ULQYMROCHWI/AAAAAAAABOg/qCP8Sxo9jDQ/s400/enumeration.jpg" width="250" /></a></div>
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Historians of this age have also linked edible substitutions to the abstracted
impersonality of industrial life.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
As men and women became increasingly
disconnected from the food they ate, they came to be nourished on spurious
imitations that, in society's eyes, <i>did not even count as
food</i>, robbing them of the last vestiges of humanity.</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KB8TAX3mxw4/ULQJZiLk3ZI/AAAAAAAABN4/AGrPWuKNvyg/s1600/enumeration.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
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The reigning king of all substitutes, unquestionably, was
the potato. This is the Irish lumper,
known colloquially as the “famine potato.” </div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mvzOAS4AEcM/ULQMXhmkpzI/AAAAAAAABOM/99poH9BG9us/s1600/lumper_pic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="238" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-mvzOAS4AEcM/ULQMXhmkpzI/AAAAAAAABOM/99poH9BG9us/s400/lumper_pic.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A student recoiled in horror when she saw these warty, mutant potatoes. <br />
"However might one peel such a thing?" </td></tr>
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Yet the potato seemed to create even more controversy over
substitutes. Potatoes grew like weeds,
they were easy to store, and they didn’t even require any preparation. In many ways they resembled fast food: simply
boil and serve. Potatoes unarguably
provided a lot of nutritional bang for the buck, yet they raised serious red
flags even for the most well-meaning and morally upstanding 19<sup>th</sup> century social
reformer. According to the literary critic Catherine Gallagher, there was something a little dirty and blasphemous about the fact that it was the “substitute for the very food that most commonly stood as a signifer for all food.” Second, given the pauper’s overly
picky palate, how could one encourage the poor to choose tubers over
wheat? And last, in a political climate
where the mere sight of a poor person chowing down portended Malthusian
apocalypse, reformers wondered whether all these edible substitutes were really
such a good thing after all.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn3" name="_ednref3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[3]</span></span></span></a>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Alas, noble readers. Have
the processes of industrialization robbed the substitute of its soul? For many Britons, the most visceral (and
painful) reminders of World War II were the fascinating edible inventions ––
margarine, powdered eggs, <i>snoek piquante </i>–– that sought to artificially approximate feelings
of culinary normalcy in war-time.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn4" name="_ednref4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> But perhaps we are today turning a culinary
tide in the history of substitutions. After
all, many of today’s most expensive breads now regularly eschew glutinous wheat in favor
of beets, turnips, almonds and rice …. the edible symbols of poverty at the
turn of the 19<sup>th</sup> century. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<b><i>How to Make Tempeh Tacos </i></b><o:p></o:p></div>
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What you need:<o:p></o:p></div>
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--1 package of tempeh (I like the flax kind from Whole Foods)<o:p></o:p></div>
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--Half of an onion, diced<o:p></o:p><br />
--A handful of shiitakes, chopped</div>
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--Corn tortillas<o:p></o:p></div>
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--Salsa <o:p></o:p></div>
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--Hummus<o:p></o:p></div>
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--Kale<o:p></o:p></div>
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--Pumpkin or sunflower seeds<o:p></o:p></div>
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Sauté your onions, shiitakes and crumbled pieces of tempeh in a skillet
with olive oil. Add add soy sauce in
small intervals and mix vigorously. Add
the kale last to the mixture … it tastes best when it retains a little
crunch. In a separate sauce pan, sauté
some pumpkin seeds in olive oil mixed with a teaspoon of cayenne pepper. Keep your eye on the pumpkin seeds … they’ll
keep browning well after you take them off the heat. Add the tempeh mixture on top of the corn tortilla. Now comes the magic. Reader, I know what you’re thinking … salsa
and hummus … together?! But these contrasting
flavor properties actually work surprisingly well together. If you are lucky enough to live in the Bay
Area, try to snag a bottle of salsa from <i>Papalote</i>
Tacqueria. Spicy, creamy and smooth, this hummus-salsa combination is divine. Top
with your crunchy-spicy cayenne-pumpkin seeds.
Enjoy!<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br />
<div id="edn1">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
To compare the two dishes, I drew on a recipe for “Calves Head Hashed” from
Susanna Carter’s The Frugal Housewife (London, 1759) and a recipe for “Mock
Turtle” in Francis Collingwood’s The Universal Cook (London, 1792.) Both call for many of the same ingredients,
are around the same length, and involve the same number of “steps” to prepare
the dish. <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a>
See, for example, Sandra Sherman, <i>Imagining
Poverty: Quantification</i> <i>and the
Decline of Paternalism </i>(Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2001) <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref3" name="_edn3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> The original, published in 1798, doesn't mention potatoes much, but by the time the 6<sup>th</sup> edition of the <i>Essay
on the Principle of Population </i>came out in 1817, Malthus had added a bunch of extra sections devoted to potatoes in
Ireland. The potato's many roles in British (and Irish) history are meticulously documented in Redcliffe
Salaman’s <i>The History and Social
Influence of the Potato</i> (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1949) an
“oldie but a goodie” to say the least.
But my favorite piece of potato-eating scholarship is Catherine
Gallagher, “The Potato in Materialist Imagination” in <i>Practicing New Historicism</i> (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2000). <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn4">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref4" name="_edn4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> See Lizzie Collingham, <i>The Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food</i> (London: Allan Lane, 2011). Also check out Ina Zweiniger-Bargeiolowska's <i>Austerity in Britain: Rationing, Controls and Consumption</i> <i>1939-1945 </i>(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000). </div>
</div>
</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-90389506719219026112012-11-07T19:18:00.000-08:002013-01-23T16:07:32.356-08:00Confessions of an English Turtle-EaterIn 1755, the weekly periodical <i>The World</i> published an “insider’s account” of an English
turtle-feast.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span></span></a> To call it unflattering would be an
understatement; the piece viciously satirized the gastronomic obsession that
had suddenly afflicted high society.<br />
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-E66liIkgwps/UJr6HfwQfhI/AAAAAAAABMc/67Eb7Np1jdo/s1600/worldcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-E66liIkgwps/UJr6HfwQfhI/AAAAAAAABMc/67Eb7Np1jdo/s400/worldcover.jpg" width="236" /></a></div>
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<i>The World</i> only ran for a few years, yet the two penny periodical reputedly had a high circulation. Much of the content involved some sort of
playful social critique intertwined with a moral lesson; the editor, Adam
Fitz-Adam, attempted to be “witty when I can, and instructive when I dare.”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Readers most likely would have treated the
piece as entertainment more so than as investigative journalism. But when there’s smoke, there’s fire; after
all, separating fact and fiction was a far more ambiguous enterprise in those
days. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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What went down at a metropolitan turtle feast? If you will remember <a href="http://homogastronomicus.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-first-turtle-season.html" target="_blank">from a few posts ago</a>,
back in 1744, when Lord Admiral George Anson’s scurvy ridden crew lay stranded
off the coast of Panama, sharing fresh-caught turtle was described in glowing
terms. The meat was abundant and readily
shared among all ranks of the crew. Even
the superstitious Spanish prisoners were encouraged to give it a try. Sharing food together –– done with cheerful,
convivial swagger –– turned a distant tropical island into a home away from
home. Ah yes. The good old days. <o:p></o:p></div>
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By 1755, the party was over.
Or more accurately, turtle feasting had degenerated into an exclusive
libertine bacchanal replete with fetishistic rites and rituals. The uninitiated narrator watches the host of
the turtle-feast carefully fold his turtle clothes around his body “like a
nightgown,” alluding to the loose fitting Roman attire of Apicius’s day.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn3" name="_ednref3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Forks and knives are substituted for
customized cutlery inventions –– “fine saws, chisels and instruments of
different contrivance, as would have made a figure in the apparatus of an
anatomist” –– designed to scrape the calipash dry.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn4" name="_ednref4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Finally, the turtles are treated more like
sacrificial victims than food. Turtle-shells
–– “trophies of his luxury” –– adorn the gates of the host’s house. Six turtles swim around a giant cistern
erected in one of the rooms. But instead
of seaweed or algae, these naturally vegetarian creatures fatten in England on
a leg of mutton per day.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"></span></span></span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9PDjV5n-drI/UJsW7C9wxQI/AAAAAAAABNA/nQS_Mph4wyk/s1600/apicius.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-9PDjV5n-drI/UJsW7C9wxQI/AAAAAAAABNA/nQS_Mph4wyk/s200/apicius.gif" width="195" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The craze for "new foods" might have<br />
started with Apicius: the 1st century<br />
Roman foodie</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
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There was certainly something a little cannibalistic about
maintaining a sea turtle in England, but actually <i>eating</i> one, as we soon find out, turns men into figurative
beasts. “The plunderers were sensible to
no call but their own appetites,” the narrator observes; they ate with “eagerness”
and “rapacity,” trying to stuff their faces with the best parts before the rest
of the company could get to them. The
formerly gracious host, meanwhile, has “taken care of nobody but himself.”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn6" name="_ednref6" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <o:p></o:p></div>
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The more brutish the men appear, the more we as readers are
invited to sympathize with the plight of the poor turtle. For example, the young initiate recoils in
shock when he first glimpses the enormous turtle lying in the kitchen, still
alive despite having been “cut and two full twenty hours.” Things go from bad to worse when a “jolly
negro wench” appears out of nowhere and callously sprinkles a handful of salt
over its body, provoking <i>“such violent
convulsions, that [the narrator] was no longer able to look upon a scene of so
much horror and ran shuddering out of the kitchen.”</i> We learn that hundreds of innocent turtles are
violently killed during the arduous reptilian middle passage from the West
Indies, their shells dashed against one another during storms. It’s hard to see the turtle’s plight as disconnected from the slave’s.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn8" name="_ednref8" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <o:p></o:p></div>
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What should we make of this literary representation of
turtle feasting? In my opinion,
mid-century obsessions with turtle feasts underscored widespread cultural
anxieties about foodism. They warn us that knowledge and appreciation of fine food does not prime people to appreciate the finer
things in life. Instead, all notions of civility
go out the window. <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
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In fact, turtle eating was often talked about as if it were
an <i>addiction</i>. After a bad day in the stock market, one
fictional stockbroker finds temporary solace in a turtle seasoned with cayenne
pepper, which “operated so strongly, that his heart was dilated, his spirits were
exhilarated…”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn9" name="_ednref9" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> It's likened to a mind-altering substance rather than a meal. When it came to
the turtle <i>overdoses</i>, satirists had a
field day. In George Lyttleton’s <i>Dialogues of the Dead</i>, an historical
foodie Charles Darteneuf fantasizes about coming back to life simply to taste green turtle fat, pledging “to kill myself by the Quantity of it I would eat before
the next morning.”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn10" name="_ednref10" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <o:p></o:p></div>
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<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C53DT8j8rhw/UJr8S7Lb13I/AAAAAAAABMk/7YKecXM22Jc/s1600/hampie.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="228" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-C53DT8j8rhw/UJr8S7Lb13I/AAAAAAAABMk/7YKecXM22Jc/s320/hampie.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;">According to his friend Alexander Pope,<br />
Darteneuf's or "Darty's" favorite food was ham pie<br />
Delicious! </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Eating turtle effectively turns back the clock on the
civilizing process, but it also called into question what <i>counted as food.</i> Now, during
the 18<sup>th</sup> century, the jury was out when it came to the exact flavor
of turtle. Some argued that it tasted
like beef; others posited that it the flavor was closer to veal or lobster.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn11" name="_ednref11" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Still others found it utterly
disgusting. <o:p></o:p><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JtSvKEebh0Y/UJsWPuAGVOI/AAAAAAAABM4/a1sCCvDw5hI/s1600/alligator_banks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="302" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JtSvKEebh0Y/UJsWPuAGVOI/AAAAAAAABM4/a1sCCvDw5hI/s400/alligator_banks.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">If turtle became so popular, why not alligator?<br />
Where did the madness end?<br />
Rowlandson, "Sir Joseph Banks about to eat an Alligator, or the Fish Supper"(1788)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
But if turtle wasn’t universally accepted as food, its skyrocketing
popularity raised some red flags. Turtle
was more than just an acquired taste imported from abroad; it opened up a
Pandora’s box full of limitless gastronomic possibilities that threatened to
destroy the bonds of a common culture.
No longer were men satisfied with the roast beef of old England at their
feasts; in the sea turtle, nativists suspected a “conspiracy of Creolian
epicures to banish [roast beef] from the island.”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn12" name="_ednref12" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> And if sea turtle could so easily become a
culinary rage, who was to say that the English palate couldn’t be reconciled to
an alligator? How could tradition
survive within a relentless quest for novelty?<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With all this bad press, turtle risked losing its status as
a delicacy. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div>
<!--[if !supportEndnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="edn1">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[1]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> If you’d
like to read it yourself, the article is called “A Humourous Account of a
Turtle Feast and a Turtle Eater,” in <i>The
World</i> 123, May 8, 1755. <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[2]</span></span></a> Fore more on <i>The World,</i> see Patricia Demers "Sir Edward Moore" <i>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography</i>, online edn, Jan 2008. </span><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref3" name="_edn3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[3]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Apicius
was the Roman <i>bon-vivant</i> who lived in the 1st century BC. In 1705 F.R.S. and antiquarian Martin Lister edited and privately printed a cookbook supposedly authored by him, sparking off vigorous debates among intellectuals about what kinds of foods Britons should be eating. His name became associated with insatiable gluttony and love of luxury during the 18th century. <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn4">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref4" name="_edn4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[4]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> Did
“turtle clothes” actually exist? I have
yet to find any evidence of real turtle eating uniform. Most likely this simply meant loose-fitting
clothes. The only other reference I have
found comes from “A Scene of Shades” published in the <i>General Evening Post, </i>October 11, 1770. This article tells the story of fictional
“Common Councilman Guzzledown” who announces “because I knew there was to be a
great deal of turtle, I put on my light drab frock and gold-laced scarlet
waistcoat that laces down the back.” If you are a textile historian with any knowledge
of 18<sup>th</sup> century turtle-clothes, please get in touch! </div>
</div>
<div id="edn6">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref6" name="_edn6" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[5]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> This account isn't the only turtle-feast to turn men into ravaging monsters with no sense of hospitality. In 1770, a disappointed guest at a
corporation dinner wrote an angry letter to the <i>General Evening Post,</i> reporting that <i>entire tables received only empty platters and empty turtle shells</i>
because the people served first had eaten it all. </div>
</div>
<div id="edn8">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref8" name="_edn8" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[6]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> I’ve
always wondered if there is a critique of the slave trade hidden in this
indictment of turtle feasting. Fitz-Adam
reconstructs a topsy-turvy world where reptiles seem more human than men. And after all, it’s hard to deny that the
turtle’s body seems to symbolize a failed economic and moral system associated
with the West Indies. In 1755, these
kind of critiques were ahead of their time.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn9">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref9" name="_edn9" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[7]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> John Hall Stevenson, <i>Yorick's Sentimental Journey, continued</i> vol 2, (London, 1774) 27.<o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn10">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref10" name="_edn10" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[8]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> George
Lyttelton, <i>Dialogues of the Dead</i>
(London, 1760). Darteneuf actually
existed; he was a member of the Kit Kat club and died before
turtle-eating had penetrated Great Britain. You can find out more about him in Philip Carter's article "Charles Dartiquenave," <i>Oxford Dictionary of Nationanl Biography, </i>online edn,<i> </i>Jan, 2008. <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn11">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref11" name="_edn11" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[9]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> The only reference to turtle's resemblance to veal and lobster comes from James McWilliam's <i>A Revolution in Eating</i> (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005) who references Richard
Bradley, a gentleman traveling in Barbados during the 18<sup>th</sup> century and found it "extremely pleasant either roasted or baked." Many contemporaries believed that turtle tasted fresher and better in the West Indies. <o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref12" name="_edn12" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]--><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;">[10]</span></span><!--[endif]--></span></a> <o:p></o:p><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">Adam Fitz-Adam, </span><i style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">The World</i><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">, June 5, 1755, 115-120.</span><br />
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<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-28009034456982628082012-10-29T08:38:00.000-07:002013-01-23T15:58:55.693-08:00Turtle Mania<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
In my <a href="http://homogastronomicus.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-first-turtle-season.html" target="_blank">last post</a>, I traced the culinary transformation of the
sea turtle: from sailor’s scurvy-fighting aid into high society’s chicest
luxury food.<b> </b>But this does not explain why the British obsession
with turtle spread over the 1750s and 1760s. “A Turtle-feast is equally relished at both Ends of the
Town,” a satirist observed in 1756; the mere invitation was understood as a
gateway to power and prestige. Rumors
abounded of clandestine turtle-orgies, where overzealous eaters would gorge
themselves to the death. Why did
the sea turtle become the 18<sup>th</sup> century’s greatest culinary
sensation?</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QxVwafCa3_g/UI7VxGyaB3I/AAAAAAAABMI/IWjeBCba-jM/s1600/turtlefeast.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QxVwafCa3_g/UI7VxGyaB3I/AAAAAAAABMI/IWjeBCba-jM/s400/turtlefeast.JPG" width="306" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A local politician does<br />
the post-turtle-feast "walk of shame" c 1770</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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Let’s count the ways. </div>
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<br /></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2UAQftEd6L4/UI6aqT1xdEI/AAAAAAAABLQ/58IogYUPQPw/s1600/Samuel_Scott_1_.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2UAQftEd6L4/UI6aqT1xdEI/AAAAAAAABLQ/58IogYUPQPw/s200/Samuel_Scott_1_.jpeg" width="193" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The turtle eaters' capture<br />
of this Spanish Galleon<br />
was a national triumph</td></tr>
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First, Britons regarded turtle as a quasi-patriotic treat,
as it testified to the limitless possibilities offered by the expanding Empire.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[i]<!--[endif]--></span></a> No longer need connoisseurs rely on <i>cullises</i>, <i>puptons</i>
and frivolous little “kickshaws” prepared by overpaid French cooks. In the Englishman’s eyes, dainty,
over-seasoned fare of this sort could barely sustain a weak-chested woman. Turtle, by contrast, was a hearty and
masculine repast that <i>got the job done. </i>One thirty-pound turtle,
so the cookbooks claimed, could create five to six different dishes and feed a
large family. Others were rumored
to feed 100 men.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[ii]<!--[endif]--></span></a> It was the epitome of head-to-tail
cooking. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Well … easier said than done. When it came to cooking a turtle, England had no
pre-established culinary traditions.
Contemporary recipes –– which are about 3x lengthier than those
regarding other large haunches of meat –– make clear that turtle-cookery was no
easy feat. And even then, as the
gentlemen of White’s Chocolate House discovered, the oven just might not be big
enough. <o:p></o:p></div>
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But therein laid the appeal; turtle-eating catered to a love
of novelty, fashion and exoticism so intrinsic to 18<sup>th</sup> century
consumer behavior.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn3" name="_ednref3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[iii]<!--[endif]--></span></a> It also engendered a new language of
culinary expertise; one must distinguish the “calipash” –– the large upper
shell that took longer to cook –– from the “calipee,” or the bottom shell. And
every true connoisseur knew that the turtle’s green fat –– described as having
the “consistence of butter” –– was the tastiest part.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn4" name="_ednref4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[iv]<!--[endif]--></span></a> By the 19<sup>th</sup> century, cookery
writers had established rigid aesthetic guidelines for serving turtle.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn5" name="_ednref5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[v]<!--[endif]--></span></a> Small wonder that one so rarely reads
about turtle dinners: only of turtle <i>feasts.</i> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
By 1770, turtle was a permanent fixture in the British
cookery book. But as I rifled
through a sampling of contemporary cookbooks, I found that the recipes listed
were nearly identical, copied word for word.<b> </b>Was it possible that
the cookbook authors simply<b> </b>plagiarized
each other’s recipes … without ever tinkering around with the dish
themselves? I suspected there was
a good chance that many cookery authors never even tasted turtle; its
astronomical price tag –– commanding as much as 4 shillings and 6 pence a pound
–– suggests that the English cultural imagination profited from turtle meat more
than the English stomach. It was
not uncommon to see auction notices and “wanted ads” appear in London
newspapers, showing that demand consistently outstripped supply.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D4OyRGaiT0U/UI6eMoh-5fI/AAAAAAAABLk/TejrJ7BfPEY/s1600/turtle_wanted.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="81" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D4OyRGaiT0U/UI6eMoh-5fI/AAAAAAAABLk/TejrJ7BfPEY/s400/turtle_wanted.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From Classified Section, <i>The Public Advertiser,</i> September 7, 1758<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kfYFJG07sV0/UI6gmmcX7yI/AAAAAAAABL0/tfpR7HD5kR4/s1600/turtle_die.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="303" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kfYFJG07sV0/UI6gmmcX7yI/AAAAAAAABL0/tfpR7HD5kR4/s400/turtle_die.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;">October 12, 1750: An eating club is forced to dine on<br />
hashed calves heads, tongues and udders.<br />
The turtle didn't survive the transatlantic journey</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Historians often describe the mid 18<sup>th</sup> century as
a period of state building, a time when more and more people began to
collectively think of themselves as Britons.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn6" name="_ednref6" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[vi]<!--[endif]--></span></a>
But turtle eating threw a wrench
to any pretensions of a so-called ‘common taste.’ The unlikely reptile even threatened to usurp the roast beef
of old England at the feasting table, substituting Creole luxury for English
hospitality. This raised more than
a few eyebrows, for in spite of its delectable flavor, no one had studied the
long-term effects of unregulated turtle-feasting upon a nation. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div>
<!--[if !supportEndnotes]--><br clear="all" />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="edn1">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[i]<!--[endif]--></span></a> See my last
post –– “How Turtle Became Haute Cuisine” –– for a more complete discussion of
George Anson’s role in connecting turtle to patriotism. </div>
</div>
<div id="edn2">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[ii]<!--[endif]--></span></a> Newspaper
accounts often boast about the number of people sated by a single animal. See, for example, the <i>London Evening
Post</i>, Oct 5-Oct 8, 1754 (London, England)
Issue 4198. </div>
</div>
<div id="edn3">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref3" name="_edn3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[iii]<!--[endif]--></span></a> Many
excellent books have been published on the consumer revolution in 18<sup>th</sup>
century Britain. My favorites are
Maxine Berg’s <i>Luxury and Pleasure in 18<sup>th</sup> Century Britain</i>, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) and
Plumb, Brewer and McKendrick, <i>Birth of a Consumer Society: The
Commercialization of 18<sup>th</sup> Century England</i> (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982). But little has been published about the
meaning of changing food fashions, especially turtles. For a great piece on how Englishmen
understood food trends in a cosmopolitan context, see Troy Bickham’s “Eating
the Empire: Intersections of Food, Cookery and Imperialism in 18<sup>th</sup>
Century Britain” in <i>Past and Present</i>
(2008) vol. 198, no. 1, pp. 71-109.
</div>
</div>
<div id="edn4">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref4" name="_edn4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[iv]<!--[endif]--></span></a> ibid. <i>London
Evening Post</i>, issue 4198. Hannah Glasse describes the coveted
green fat by a new term –– the “monsieur” –– although I haven’t run across this
term in other contexts. Elizabeth
Clifton Cookery Book, (1775) – the recipe for how to dress a turtle is a page
and a half long. 3 hours for
callepash to cook for 30 pound turtle, 2 hours for calipee. </div>
</div>
<div id="edn5">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref5" name="_edn5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[v]<!--[endif]--></span></a> Britons
enjoyed symmetry, and cookbooks generally instruct the server to set one turtle
shell at each end of the table, and arranging the other dishes in between. See, for example, John Farley, <i>The
London Art of Cookery, and Housekeepers Complete Assistant</i> (London, 1800) and Elizabeth Clifton, <i>The
Cook Maid’s Assistant, or art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy</i> (London, 1775). </div>
</div>
<div id="edn6">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref6" name="_edn6" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[vi]<!--[endif]--></span></a> Linda
Colley, <i>Britons: Forging the Nation 1707-1837</i> (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1992). </div>
</div>
</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-50246291098114958142012-10-19T12:11:00.001-07:002013-01-23T15:46:21.616-08:00How Turtle Became Haute CuisineFrom calipash to calipee,<b> </b>turtle was unarguably the most expensive, status-laden, and morally
contested feat of English gastronomy between 1750-1850. But surprisingly, historians know very little about how it came to be so popular. We know that at least a
handful of intrepid Englishmen had tasted sea turtle by the 17<sup>th</sup>
century, but this delicacy had yet to grace fashionable London tables. Aside from the arduous overseas
journey, the stuff was apparently an acquired taste. Many of those who <i>did</i>
get the chance to taste it were rather ambivalent about its flavor. One Restoration-era virtuoso reporting
on his trip to the Caribbean observed, diplomatically, that it was “not
offensive to the stomach.”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[i]</span></a> Eating it also turned his urine
“yellowish-green, and oily.”<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Over the first half of the 18<sup>th</sup> century,
turtle-consumption was mostly limited to sailors and overseas adventurers. A sea turtle containing “three score”
eggs was a welcome surprise for Robinson Crusoe after having spent nearly nine
months subsisting on island goats and fowls.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[ii]<!--[endif]--></span></a> This small detail, keeping in line with
accounts of “turtle-catching” happening in the West Indies, doubtless made the
novel seem more life-like to English readers.<b> </b>Indeed, the flavor of that slimy green fat defied traditional hierarchies.
King George II enjoyed red deer, ortolans and lampreys at the Lord
Mayor’s Banquet in 1727, but sea turtles were conspicuously absent.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn3" name="_ednref3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[iii]<!--[endif]--></span></a><b> <o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><br /></b></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wtbYpO95e0w/UIFmtwnKkCI/AAAAAAAABKA/q5akhLsnXqA/s1600/anson_pic.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-wtbYpO95e0w/UIFmtwnKkCI/AAAAAAAABKA/q5akhLsnXqA/s320/anson_pic.jpeg" width="256" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">George Anson: </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
How then was turtle transformed into the quintessential
symbol of enlightened <i>foodie-ism?</i> Perhaps no one did more to popularize
turtle among London’s high society than did Baron George Anson
(1697-1762). A naval man all his
life, Anson was dispatched in 1740 to attack Spanish possessions in the Caribbean during the War of Jenkins Ear.
His successes were mixed.
While he succeeded in capturing a Spanish galleon full of silver, making
himself a celebrity and a very rich man, his crew didn’t fare nearly as well. Only 188 out of 1900 men returned to
England with him after his circumnavigation of the globe, the majority having
succumbed to starvation or scurvy.
Anson was promptly made an MP, and was elevated to the peerage in 1747.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn4" name="_ednref4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[iv]<!--[endif]--></span></a>
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It didn’t take long for the secret of Anson’s success to get
out. In a first-hand account of
his voyage, his official chaplain, Richard Walter, described the sea turtle as
a nutritional miracle. Exhausted and
scurvy-ridden while stationed in Quibo<b> </b>(modern
day Coiba off the coast of Panama) green sea turtles “in the greatest plenty
and perfection” nourished the ailing crew back to health. This time around, the reviews were more enthusiastic. Walter called it “a pleasant and salubrious meat.” In a separate account, one of Anson’s
midshipmen attested <i>“the green turtle are the
sweetest, and the best meat, their fat is yellow, and their Flesh white, and
exceedingly sweet.”</i><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn5" name="_ednref5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[v]<!--[endif]--></span></a> <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1eV9_-OtAak/UIFm8Tfq6bI/AAAAAAAABKI/fmfRMO12Jb0/s1600/anson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1eV9_-OtAak/UIFm8Tfq6bI/AAAAAAAABKI/fmfRMO12Jb0/s400/anson.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For the curious, self-reliant and freedom-loving British
sailors, it was love at first bite. But the Spanish prisoners (being naturally
“superstitious” and “prejudiced,” Walter observed) were more reluctant,
perceiving turtle to be “unwholesome, and little less than poisonous.”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn6" name="_ednref6" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[vi]<!--[endif]--></span></a> But after keenly observing that none of
English died from this modification to their diet, the Spanish became eager to
take the plunge. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i>“…they at last got so far the better of their aversion,
as to be persuaded to taste it, to which the absence of all other kinds of
fresh provisions might not a little contribute. However it was with great reluctance, and very sparingly,
that they first began to eat of it, but the relish improving upon them by
degrees, they at last grew extremely fond of it, and preferred it to every
other kind of food, and often felicitated each other on the happy experience
they had acquired, and the luxurious and plentiful repasts it would always be
in their power to procure, when they should again return back to their
country.”</i><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn7" name="_ednref7" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[vii]<!--[endif]--></span></a><i><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As far as I know, this was the first modern turtle feast, enjoyed among a motley crew of sailors<i> </i>on the sun-drenched beaches of Coiba. Yet its convivial informality also carried symbolic weight. Connoisseurship of turtle had unmasked the superstitious follies perpetuated by the declining Spanish Empire to its innocent subjects. After licking their lips with turtle
grease, the Spanish considered the meal “<i>more</i> delicious to the palate than any their haughty lords and masters could
indulge in,” which Walter deemed “doubtless … the most fortunate [circumstance]
that could befall them.” The
pleasure and nourishment derived from the turtle feast had symbolically liberated them from the tyranny of
the Spanish crown. "Britishness" may
be an acquired taste, Walter seems to imply, but any man would be a fool <i>not </i>to desert a despotic political system such as Spain's in favor of a physically and spiritually nourishing one based on self-reliance and cheerful camaraderie. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Oid2sn9RHWM/UIGg83QCiPI/AAAAAAAABK4/txrMvQg8EaU/s1600/coiba_map.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Oid2sn9RHWM/UIGg83QCiPI/AAAAAAAABK4/txrMvQg8EaU/s400/coiba_map.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Some editions of <i>Voyage Around the World </i>included maps<br />
illustrations of Anson's Voyage. This one shows the location<br />
of Quibo (modern Coiba): location of the turtle feast.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Even so, turtle still remained a “novelty” food back in
England, evidenced by the fact that three turtle body-parts were on permanent
display in the collection of curiosities at Don Saltero’s Coffee House.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn8" name="_ednref8" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[viii]<!--[endif]--></span></a><b> </b>Nevertheless, print culture continued to nourish reptilian desires in the public’s
imagination. Throughout the 1750s, newspapers reported a number of enormous turtles brought into England, some of which reputedly clocked in at 500
pounds and measured eight feet from fin to fin.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn9" name="_ednref9" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[ix]<!--[endif]--></span></a> A few months later, the <i>London Evening
Post</i> reported that some French fishermen off of the <i>Ile de Ré</i> had apparently caught a turtle weighing nearly 800
pounds.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn10" name="_ednref10" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[x]<!--[endif]--></span></a> The head alone apparently weighed 25
pounds, a single fin weighed 12; “the whole community made four plentiful
dinners of the liver alone.” Newspapers also educated the uninitiated about the
turtle’s peculiar taste. The meat
tasted recognizable, like a “three-year-old steer,” but one could not escape
its peculiar musk-like smell while eating it. The most praise was reserved for its fat, which had the
consistency of butter when cooled, and “relish’d very well.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CsEs6osFzgA/UIGaW5MLISI/AAAAAAAABKc/M-S0BI_-4_M/s1600/hogarth_rakes_progress_whites.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="327" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CsEs6osFzgA/UIGaW5MLISI/AAAAAAAABKc/M-S0BI_-4_M/s400/hogarth_rakes_progress_whites.jpeg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The party starts to get weird after dinner at White's Club<br />
(This plate of Hogarth's The Rakes Progress was supposedly<br />
based on the actual club room)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">In July of 1754, the </span><i style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Whitehall
Evening Post or London Intelligencer</i><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">
reported that Lord Anson (now First Lord of the Admiralty) had gifted a three
hundred pound turtle to the gentlemen of White’s Chocolate House, one of the
most notorious and exclusive gambling clubs in London.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">The turtle even laid five eggs, a feat “looked on to be very
extraordinary after so long a passage.”</span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn11" name="_ednref11" style="text-indent: 0.5in;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xi]</span></a><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-indent: 0.5in;">White’s had already established a reputation for enjoying luxurious meals by the 1750s; only one month before newspapers reported Anson’s gift, the satirist George Colman observed “these gentlemen … are no less adept in the science of Eating than Gaming.” </span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-indent: 0.5in;">But even to high society’s crème de la crème, turtle was a one-of-a-kind treat, evidenced by the fact that when it came time to eat the turtle, the gentlemen realized that they had to find a bigger oven.</span><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 16px; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><br />
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Apparently this didn't deter other prominent clubs, who soon conquered these pesky technological limitations. </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Two months later,
Anson presented another turtle to the <a href="http://homogastronomicus.blogspot.com/2012/08/cultures-of-gastro-connection.html" target="_blank">Thursday's Club call'd the Royal Philosophers</a>,
the Royal Society’s semi-official dining club. The event was so highly anticipated
that news of the dinner was sent out by penny post, and Anson's health was drank in claret and thanks ordered to him for his "magnificent present."</span><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn12" name="_ednref12" style="text-indent: 0.5in;" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference">[xii]</span></a><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><br />
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"><br /></span>
<span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">Why did these two turtle dinners garner so much attention and excitement? Anson's ability to connect turtle-eating to Britain's growing imperial muscle certainly had something to do with it. By 1754, w</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">hen the Thursday’s Club members
enjoyed the delicate green fat back in London, they not only were experiencing
vicariously Anson’s overseas adventures, but they were also commemorating the
edible tool that capacitated his victory over the Spanish.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;">By selectively introducing turtle to elite dining
clubs, Anson reworked turtle consumption from the diet of swashbuckling adventurers to a
genteel, manly and quasi-patriotic practice.</span><span style="text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-indent: .5in;">
<o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div>
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="edn1">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[i]<!--[endif]--></span></a> “Observations
made by a curious and learned person, sailing from England, to the
Caribe-Islands, communicated by the author to R. Moray” in <i>Philosophical
Transactions</i>, Vol. 2 (1666-1667) pp.
493-500. </div>
</div>
<div id="edn2">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[ii]<!--[endif]--></span></a> Daniel
Defoe, <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> (London, 1726) p.
43. Crusoe found the turtle flesh
“the most savoury or pleasant that ever I tasted in my life.”</div>
</div>
<div id="edn3">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref3" name="_edn3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[iii]<!--[endif]--></span></a> All
archival material pertaining to the Lord Mayor’s Banquet and the Corporation of
London can be found at the London Metropolitan Archives, Clerkenwell. <i> <o:p></o:p></i></div>
</div>
<div id="edn4">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref4" name="_edn4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[iv]<!--[endif]--></span></a> N.A.M
Roger, “George Anson” in <i>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography</i>, (Oxford University Press, 2004). </div>
</div>
<div id="edn5">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref5" name="_edn5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[v]<!--[endif]--></span></a> John
Philips, Midshipman, <i>An Authentic Journal of the late expedition under
Commodore Anson</i>” (London, 1744). </div>
</div>
<div id="edn6">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref6" name="_edn6" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[vi]<!--[endif]--></span></a> Richard
Walter, <i>A Voyage Around the World, in the years MDCCXL</i>, Vol. 2, (London, 1748) p. 39. </div>
</div>
<div id="edn7">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref7" name="_edn7" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[vii]<!--[endif]--></span></a> Walter, <i>ibid.</i><o:p></o:p></div>
</div>
<div id="edn8">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref8" name="_edn8" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[viii]<!--[endif]--></span></a> See “The
Rarities display’d at Don Saltero’s coffee house” (London, 1750?). Two (ostensibly stuffed) turtles
emerging out of shells and one (decapitated) turtle head are included in the
catalogue. For more on Don
Saltero’s as a permanent exhibition of curiosities, see chapter five in Brian
Cowan’s <i>The Social Life of Coffee</i>: <i>the
Emergence of the British Coffee House</i> (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).</div>
</div>
<div id="edn9">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref9" name="_edn9" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[ix]<!--[endif]--></span></a> See, for
example the <i>London Magazine, or Gentleman’s Monthly Intelligencer</i> (London, 1760).</div>
</div>
<div id="edn10">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref10" name="_edn10" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[x]<!--[endif]--></span></a> <i>London
Evening Post</i> (London, England) October 5
1754, Issue 4198. But this “news”
was reported in several other papers too. </div>
</div>
<div id="edn11">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref11" name="_edn11" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[xi]<!--[endif]--></span></a> <i>The
Whitehall Intelligencer</i>, (London, England) July
13-July16, 1754, Issue 1274.<b> </b></div>
</div>
<div id="edn12">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref12" name="_edn12" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[xii]<!--[endif]--></span></a> A note in
the Thursday’s Club dinner books dated September 2, 1754 stated the penny post
letters to the members on account of Anson’s turtle cost the club 2
shillings. Thursday’s Club Dinner
Books, RSC Papers, Royal Society Archives. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
Additional note: Just ran across another blog with a lively discussion of Anson's voyage around the world as an important antecedent to Darwin's voyages. <a href="http://beagleproject.wordpress.com/2012/05/22/george-ansons-voyage-round-the-world/" target="_blank">Here's the link to check it out.</a> </div>
</div>
</div>
<!--EndFragment-->Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-12338524833000796162012-10-11T15:29:00.000-07:002012-11-08T09:30:10.626-08:00The Secret History of Toad-in-a-Hole<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Toad-in-a-hole. Ostensibly it's been around for centuries;
by the mid-19<sup>th</sup> century, cookery books were already calling it
"an excellent <i>old</i></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">
English dish."<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn1" name="_ednref1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[i]<!--[endif]--></span></a> Along with ‘bubble and squeak’ and
‘angels on horseback’ it captures that sense of playful eccentricity associated
with British cuisine that we've all come to love. Indeed, the innocent
referentiality of the name –– “toad-in-a-hole” –– evokes that syrupy Dickensian
nostalgia for the good old days, when kids still played together in the garden and before our imaginations were stifled by the
bottom-line. </span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BsYrK_JZZGQ/UHYaWryp1tI/AAAAAAAABIw/fADvBs25MKs/s1600/toadhole.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="290" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BsYrK_JZZGQ/UHYaWryp1tI/AAAAAAAABIw/fADvBs25MKs/s320/toadhole.jpg" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sausages, red onions, and lots of butter make this treat</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">the star of every dinner party</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Toad-in-a-hole makes no elitist claims for itself.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn2" name="_ednref2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[ii]<!--[endif]--></span></a>
It's cheap comfort food, after all, characterized by its elastic portions
and its high caloric content. In 1861 Mrs Beeton described it as "a homely but
savoury dish" noting that it could serve 4-5 people for a measly 1
shilling and 9 pence.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn3" name="_ednref3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[iii]<!--[endif]--></span></a> <span class="apple-converted-space"> In his comprehensive study about the tastes
and preferences of</span> 1960s Paris, the influential sociologist Pierre
Bourdieu distinguished the airy delicacy of the bourgeois "taste of
liberty" from the proletarian "taste of necessity" This latter
category eschewed the gratuitous plating rituals, the social decorum, the
restraint of our life-sustaining appetites at the table in favor of <i>letting the good times roll</i></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">. Toad-in-a-hole
fits into this category like meat and beans in your grandmother’s <i>cassole</i></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn4" name="_ednref4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[iv]<!--[endif]--></span></a> It's your protein and your carb-heavy side rolled into one, baked to perfection, and doused in gravy. It
requires only one plate, and there's virtually always extra enough for a second helping.
What's not to love? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">But
toad in the hole was not always the beloved tradition it is today. The
OED does not reference it until 1787. The term is attributed to the
English antiquary and lexicographer Francis Grose, who included it in his<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>Provincial Glossary</i></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">, a haphazard
collection of forgotten proverbs and words gleaned around rural England.
Included in that glossary is a forgotten Norfolk dish called "Pudding
Pye Doll," which Grose defines as "the dish called toad-in-a-hole, or
meat boiled in a crust."<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn5" name="_ednref5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[v]<!--[endif]--></span></a>
Remarkably, the first time that toad in-a-hole is acknowledged in print,
Grose presupposes its antique, pre-literary existence.</span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">How did he come to know about it in the
first place?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-M-DePqDcR74/UHYlYxiHbCI/AAAAAAAABJE/UFtD7BrJ1LQ/s1600/francis_grose.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-M-DePqDcR74/UHYlYxiHbCI/AAAAAAAABJE/UFtD7BrJ1LQ/s320/francis_grose.jpeg" width="305" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Francis Grose, Antiquary.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">A man keenly interested in historic dishes</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">and with the gut to prove it</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Thanks to the fastidious accounting skills of F.R.S. and F.S.A Josiah
Colebrooke, Grose's colleague in the Society of Antiquaries, we know now
that toad-in-a-hole was known in London circles as early as the 1760s. The dish was even served to the illustrious group of natural philosophers and <i>virtuosi</i> known as the<span class="apple-converted-space"> <a href="http://homogastronomicus.blogspot.com/2012/08/cultures-of-gastro-connection.html" target="_blank">Thursday's Club call'd the Royal Philosophers</a></span></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">, the Royal Society's semi-official dining club. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">The dish first appeared in 1769, and for the next ten years, the
Royal Philosophers enjoyed toad in a hole once or twice a year or so.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn6" name="_ednref6" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[vi]<!--[endif]--></span></a> At the Mitre Tavern, the dining club’s
chosen dining venue, toad in a hole was served alongside such delicacies as
venison, fresh salmon, turbot, and asparagus. (The Mitre was also
frequented by the likes of Boswell and Johnson as well as Grose’s Society of Antiquaries.) Sometimes
the dish pops up in winter, sometimes in spring; toad in the hole was neither
season specific nor associated with any particular holiday. On several
occasions Mr. Colebrooke felt compelled to include an additional description
like “<i>alias beef baked in a pudding”</i></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> in the club's dinner books, lest there should be any confusion
among posterity. Obviously, the term was not yet familiar to everyone.
<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ock1qjZd1JE/UHY5EvIf02I/AAAAAAAABJY/D0t8SVT1SVI/s1600/toad_hole_example.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" height="246" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Ock1qjZd1JE/UHY5EvIf02I/AAAAAAAABJY/D0t8SVT1SVI/s400/toad_hole_example.jpg" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Royal Philosophers bill of fare dated February 21 1771</span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;">Note the additional description of toad in a hole</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Of course, it is extremely unlikely that Englishmen<span class="apple-converted-space"> </span><i>hadn't</i></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> </span></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">enjoyed various cuts of meat baked in
batter long before the 1760s; the idea is certainly clever, but it’s not
exactly rocket science. But the funny name –– even if it didn’t describe a
completely novel dish –– was important, for it drew the dish into an emerging
culinary canon with which Britons could collectively identify.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Alas, not everyone appreciated the lexicographical whimsy of toad in
a hole. I’ve managed to find a
print reference from as far back as 1762, which calls toad in a hole a “vulgar”
name for a “small piece of beef baked in a large pudding.”<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn7" name="_ednref7" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[vii]<!--[endif]--></span></a> In George Alexander Stevens’s popular
satirical monologue, <i>A Lecture on Heads</i></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> (1764), toad in a hole is supposedly “bak’d for the devil’s
dinner.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;">Why such contempt for a silly name? It might well have to do with a growing sense of culinary
patriotism cultivated during the Seven Years
War (1756-1763). The English had long prided
themselves on their stately haunches of grass-fed roast beef as opposed to the
effeminate and over-seasoned <i>ragouts</i></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> preferred by the French. Yet toad in a hole wasn’t <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKqYac1xgdM" target="_blank">all about the beef</a>; the meat could be disguised in pudding and dressed up with spices such as
ginger and nutmeg.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn8" name="_ednref8" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[viii]<!--[endif]--></span></a> As several Victorian cookery writers would later attest, it was the perfect occasion to use up
leftovers and "veiny pieces of meat" that one would otherwise throw away. Culinary nationalists likely
bristled at the fact that one could put virtually <i>anything</i></span><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"> in ‘toad in a hole’ and still utilize a
quaint English name. Perhaps the
literary celebrity Fanny Burney most perceptively summed up the social
anxieties associated with the dish in 1797. Toad in the hole was “ill-fitted,” she said, as it submerged
“a noble sirloin of beef into a poor paltry batter-pudding."<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_edn9" name="_ednref9" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[ix]<!--[endif]--></span></a>
Not only was British culinary decline linked to the lamentable decay of
traditional class distinctions, but an international reputation could also be
at stake. If toad-in-a-hole was admitted to the British culinary repertoire, how would anyone know what the jolly roast beef of old England tasted like? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><br /></span></span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CwYm7bGAFVI/UHdHQb1K_aI/AAAAAAAABJs/vsWABGcRt7g/s1600/beef_song.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CwYm7bGAFVI/UHdHQb1K_aI/AAAAAAAABJs/vsWABGcRt7g/s400/beef_song.jpg" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Many patriotic songs about roast beef<br />
were penned during the 18th century</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin: 0in;">
<span style="font-size: 13.5pt;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">It might be for this reason that the genteel and civilized members
of the Thursday’s Club abandoned the dish when they relocated from the Mitre
Tavern to the larger and better equipped Crown and Anchor on the Strand in
1780. The Crown and Anchor catered
to gentlemen’s clubs, polite families, and political societies. Dinners there didn’t come cheap. But the absence of toad in a hole at
this finer, more upscale establishment might provide new insight into the
social politics of English cuisine.
When toad-in-a-hole first came on the culinary scene as an potential exemplar of quintessential British cookery, it was
reviled as vulgar, unpatriotic and ungodly –– an affront to tradition. Only as the dish accordingly sled down the social scale did it begin to command respect as part of the laboring man's diet. Once harnessed to 19th century "industrial" values –– such as frugality, versatility, and time-management –– toad-in-a-hole was reborn as the quirky yet savory tradition that still is today. </span></span></div>
<div>
<!--[if !supportEndnotes]--><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br clear="all" />
</span><br />
<hr align="left" size="1" width="33%" />
<!--[endif]-->
<br />
<div id="edn1">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref1" name="_edn1" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[i]<!--[endif]--></span></a> Charles
Francatelli, <i>The Cook’s Guide and Housekeeper’s and Butler’s Assistant</i> (London, 1861). </span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref2" name="_edn2" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[ii]<!--[endif]--></span></a> For more on
working and middle class rhetoric of puddings, see Fiona Lucraft, “General
Satisfaction: A History of Baked Puddings” in <i>The English Kitchen:
Historical Essays</i> (Devon, Prospect Books,
2007) pp. 103-119. </span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref3" name="_edn3" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[iii]<!--[endif]--></span></a> Isabella
Beeton, <i>Book of Household Management</i>
(London, 1861). </span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn4">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref4" name="_edn4" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[iv]<!--[endif]--></span></a> Pierre
Bourdieu, <i>Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste</i> (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984). <i> </i> </span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn5">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref5" name="_edn5" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[v]<!--[endif]--></span></a> In addition
to the <i>Provincial Glossary</i>, <i>with
a collection of local proverbs and wider superstitions,</i> Grose also wrote several books spreading the 18<sup>th</sup>
century vogue for “antiquities” to a wider market, notably in <i>The
Antiquities of England and Wales</i> (London,
1772). </span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn6">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref6" name="_edn6" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[vi]<!--[endif]--></span></a> See the
dinner books, RSC Papers, kept in the Royal Society Archives, London. </span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn7">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref7" name="_edn7" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[vii]<!--[endif]--></span></a> <i>The
Beauties of All Magazines Selected</i>, <i>including
the several original comic pieces</i>, vol. 1
(London, 1762) p 53. </span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn8">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref8" name="_edn8" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[viii]<!--[endif]--></span></a> Indeed,
the first English recipe for toad in the hole, recorded in Richard Briggs’s The
<i>English Art of Cookery</i> (London, 1788)
also suggests that the dish might be suited for less desirable “veiny pieces”
of beef. </span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn9">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=4953804881823729983#_ednref9" name="_edn9" title=""><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[ix]<!--[endif]--></span></a> Frances
Burney, <i>Letters and Journals, </i>(London: Penguin, 2001).</span></div>
</div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-87262420273600112732012-08-10T11:30:00.001-07:002012-11-08T09:30:26.557-08:00Cultures of ConnectionCheck out this "map" detailing the gifting networks of the <i>Thursday's Club call'd the Royal Philosophers</i>, an elite dining club active in 18th century London. Beginning in 1748, both members and benefactors presented various foods to the society –– from venison pies to "Aegyptian Lettuces," from Malaga Watermelons to West Indian turtles. <br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
With some outside help, I was able to export all of the gifting data out of the club's dinner books and import it into Gephi, an open-source data visualization software. The map you see below charts all gifts from 1748-1785.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dS5ICp6-4eY/UCU_qMKvEII/AAAAAAAABHs/bJCFISRQzrY/s1600/big_gift_giver.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-dS5ICp6-4eY/UCU_qMKvEII/AAAAAAAABHs/bJCFISRQzrY/s640/big_gift_giver.jpg" width="596" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gephi calculates the strength of both "nodes" and "edges." Nodes are the red and blue circles denoting<br />
both gift-givers and gifts. The edges are the grey lines between the nodes, which demonstrate the<br />
strength of the connection between nodes. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
Feeling overwhelmed? How about a few close-ups? As avid readers of this blog may know, the men of the Thursday's Club had a thing about venison. So much so that in 1749, a rule was enacted entitling men who paid annuities <i>"no less than a haunch"</i> to be honorary members of the club. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v-uZV66JJzU/UCVAtUg4RwI/AAAAAAAABH0/iriezcTrZVg/s1600/venison_blog1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="333" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v-uZV66JJzU/UCVAtUg4RwI/AAAAAAAABH0/iriezcTrZVg/s400/venison_blog1.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Philip York, later to become Viscount Royston and the Earl of Hardwick<br />
was the most prolific gifter of venison. He is followed by the 4th Earl of Shaftesbury,<br />
who donated venison to celebrate day of the annual meeting each July. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
By this map, we can see right away that the most popular gift by far was the "haunch of venison" followed by the 'neck' and the all-important pasty. Apparently these guys viewed it as the most fail-safe gift to give. Stately, aristocratic, yet still quintessentially 'English,' venison would always impress fellow diners ... and would offend nobody. We can also easily see that venison was given by all kinds of people. Notice all the grey lines of different widths extending outwards from the "hub" of venison givers and gifts. <i>All of those people</i> were connected to giving venison in some way. </div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JTrjeZHmKjk/UCVGrGnz_3I/AAAAAAAABIQ/-EMYQoTIDRc/s1600/2ndEarlOfHardwicke.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JTrjeZHmKjk/UCVGrGnz_3I/AAAAAAAABIQ/-EMYQoTIDRc/s320/2ndEarlOfHardwicke.jpeg" width="257" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Philip York, the most illustrious<br />
venison gifter of them all. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
<i><br /></i></div>
<div>
Sure, the most conspicuous venison donor was the extremely powerful Philip York, later to become the 2nd Earl of Hardwick (he sent a shipment every summer for decades) but that didn't stop others from joining in when they could afford it. Moreover, Hardwick hardly ever benefitted from his own largesse ... he only shows up on the club attendance books a handful of times. Gifting, for Hardwick, was a performance of patronage rather than of connoisseurship. </div>
<div>
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-JTrjeZHmKjk/UCVGrGnz_3I/AAAAAAAABIQ/-EMYQoTIDRc/s1600/2ndEarlOfHardwicke.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; text-align: center;"><br /></a> </div>
<div>
Some other edible gifts were a little more daring. I've already mentioned Josiah Colebrooke, the club's diligent treasurer, in <a href="http://homogastronomicus.blogspot.com/2011/10/lessons-in-coin-collecting.html" target="_blank">earlier posts</a>. Did I mention that he got in on the gifting action too? </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NcxVqsRA85A/UCVF_wLn1LI/AAAAAAAABII/16NdaQq3Tvo/s1600/cole_test.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="361" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-NcxVqsRA85A/UCVF_wLn1LI/AAAAAAAABII/16NdaQq3Tvo/s640/cole_test.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
I am not yet qualified to comment on Colebrooke's angling skills, but the gifts he gave –– potted charr, 'pike and soles' and a turbot –– certainly made a different statement than did the haunches of venison. Colebrooke was more closely allied with the middling sort –– he worked for a living, made it into the Society of Antiquaries and had enough leisure time to pursue his hobbies, such as coin collecting -– but he certainly wasn't trying to call attention to his fabulous wealth by these gifts. </div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
What was he trying to do? I'm not really sure. And it's quite possible that I might be making too much of these gifts. Whose to say that Colebrooke wasn't simply trying to get rid of the extra stuff in the kitchen before it went bad? In many ways this map teases us, hinting at passing conversations, subconscious motivations, and unrealized ambitions that haven't, unfortunately, been preserved for posterity. For all the unseen patterns and relationships within my data that Gephi is able to detect, the larger meaning of this map remains, for now, a mystery. </div>
</div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-34377917902716353392012-07-25T07:40:00.002-07:002012-11-08T09:30:38.575-08:00Mutton Chops à la ModeFrom antiquity to the present, cookbooks have taught us about the social protocols, the dining rituals, and the flavors of the past. 18th century Britons were no exception; they were fascinated by everything from the Roman epicure Apicius and his tales of exotic fish sauces to the sumptuous banquets described in <i>The Forme of Cury</i>, a medieval cookery book compiled by the cook to Richard II (1377-1399). But only recently have the scholars of our day started to take them seriously.[1]<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LZ65kLUEI_s/UA3ALtUgULI/AAAAAAAABHU/Zl6GhHZzFRc/s1600/cover_warner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LZ65kLUEI_s/UA3ALtUgULI/AAAAAAAABHU/Zl6GhHZzFRc/s400/cover_warner.jpg" width="296" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Late 18th century antiquarians began<br />
to take interest in their own culinary heritage,<br />
largely drawing on old cookery books.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div>
The study of cookbooks is undoubtedly important when we think about how people <i>imagined</i> food and cooking, but think about it for one moment ... when was the last time you ever made something you found in a cookbook? Let's admit it; the more intrepid among us might attempt to replicate every recipe, daunting as that may be. But most of the time, I mostly like to read the recipe and look at the pictures, fantasizing about the meal that I will some day make time to prepare.<br />
<br />
So if we want to know more about the actual habits of eating during the long 18th century, perhaps we should consider some alternate culinary sources. In this spirit, I have been logging nearly 40 consecutive years of tavern menus into a database (with some much needed and much appreciated help, of course.)[2]<span style="background-color: white;"> </span></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
We've found that real dining habits lagged significantly behind those described in cookery books. Take, for example, two dishes with which 18th century Britons enjoyed a love/hate relationship: the "fricassee" (a fried meat dish coated in sauce) and the "ragout" (a similarly highly seasoned dish featured chopped up meat stewed in gravy, wine, herbs and spices). Derailed as pernicious French importations in 1700, these dishes were initially blamed for everything from inciting sympathy for the Catholic religion to disguising the flavor of rancid meat.[3]<br />
<br />
Yet even the most patriotic of British cookery book authors soon began to incorporate them into their culinary repertoire.[4] By the 1740s, there are tons of recipes such as these, leading one to think that the dishes had been all but acculturated. Tavern menus, however, tell a different story. The first of these dishes did not appear at the table until 1758. Apparently it went over well, for it gradually became integrated into the tavern bills of fare. Yet acculturation happened slowly, and seemed to be treated more as a novelty than a dinner staple. Below, I flagged all dishes of self-proclaimed French lineage (dishes, for example, styled <i>a la daube, </i>or <i>a la mode</i>, in addition to ragouts, fricassees and harricots. <span style="background-color: white;"> </span><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Wu9OdTuZfPY/UA9orTsNp6I/AAAAAAAABHg/r38RIXl7kkg/s1600/frenchgraph.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="272" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Wu9OdTuZfPY/UA9orTsNp6I/AAAAAAAABHg/r38RIXl7kkg/s400/frenchgraph.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Graphing the Growth of 'French' Influence in Meals<br />at the Mitre Tavern, Fleet Street</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
This doesn't mean, however, that tavern fare was unsophisticated. To the contrary, I've found evidence of immense variety in tavern fare impressive even to urbane 21st century diners. You might have heard of Paul Greenburg's <i>Four Fish: The Future of the Last Wild Food</i>, where he points out that, today, the vast majority of restaurants offer, at most, four varieties: cod, salmon, sea bass, and tuna. Not the case in early modern London. Indeed, while cod and salmon made indelible marks on the English palate, so too did mackeral, trout, carp, soles, whitings, skate, lobsters, oysters, plaice, eels, thornbacks, ling, haddock and halibut. I've graphed them according to their seasonality using Gephi, a new data visualization software, below. <br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xGwDZI7rJNo/UA25ln85yWI/AAAAAAAABHI/gTJ5WzfJF1c/s1600/blog_fish-by-month_7-16-12_1748-57.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="385" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xGwDZI7rJNo/UA25ln85yWI/AAAAAAAABHI/gTJ5WzfJF1c/s400/blog_fish-by-month_7-16-12_1748-57.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Every 'Fish' Dish from 1748-1757<br />
at the Thursday's Club on the Mitre Tavern, Fleet Street<br />
(Charted According to Season)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
We need to recognize that metropolitan public dining cultures in the 18th century were quite distinct than the ones discussed in the cookery books with which we've grown so familiar. Culinary fashions and flavors varied significantly when one chose to eat out, but this didn't mean that taste and connoisseurship mattered less in these contexts. <br />
<br />
In the coming posts, I will highlight some other ways in which cultures of 'eating out' were evolving over the 18th century. <br />
<br />
<br />
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[1]<!--[endif]--></span> See Steven
Mennell, <i>All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from
the Middle Ages to the Present. </i>Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1996 and Gilly
Lehmann, The British Housewife: Cookery Books, Cooking and Society in 18<sup>th</sup>
Century Britain. London, Prospect Books, 1993. <o:p></o:p></div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[2]<!--[endif]--></span> This has been an
ongoing component of the <i>Thursday Club Project</i>, which has focused on the “Thursday’s Club call’d the Royal
Philosophers,” a dining club semi-officially connected to the Royal
Society. (RS Archives: RSC
Papers.)</div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[3]<!--[endif]--></span> For example, see
the criticisms of the “present luxurious and fantastical manners of eating” in <i>Weekly
Journal or British Gazeteer</i> (London,
England) Saturday April 15, 1727, Issue 101. </div>
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"><!--[if !supportFootnotes]-->[4]<!--[endif]--></span></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: 12.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US;"> Despite devoting an entire chapter to criticizing
the frivolity and expense of French sauces, Hannah Glasse includes numerous
recipes for ragouts and fricassees in her well-received <i>The Art of </i></span><i style="background-color: white;">Cookery Made Plain and Easy</i><span style="background-color: white;">.</span><span style="background-color: white;">
</span><span style="background-color: white;">London, 1747.</span><span style="background-color: white;"> </span><br />
<!--EndFragment--></div>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-10336281852698997282012-06-27T20:35:00.001-07:002012-11-08T09:30:55.396-08:00Top London Foodie Destinations in 1788Ever wondered when and where the modern restaurant review got started? <br />
<br />
In 18th century London, there weren't really restaurants, but eating establishments of all shapes and sizes –– taverns, coffee-houses, inns and cookshops –– abounded. And while you couldn't exactly stop in all of these places and order <i>a la carte,</i> the fare offered could be incredibly sophisticated, and many taverns became renowned for their talented cooks. <br />
<br />
In fact, in the same way that Spago launched the celebrity of Wolfgang Puck in the early 1980s, or French Laundry is today intertwined with the celebrity of Thomas Keller, the cook was integral to a tavern's culinary reputation. English cooks even wrote cookery books, which always mentioned the well-known tavern where they were employed. <br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fVI-FpChFFk/T-tmqK52E5I/AAAAAAAABGQ/C4vbhOuXUi0/s1600/collingwood_cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fVI-FpChFFk/T-tmqK52E5I/AAAAAAAABGQ/C4vbhOuXUi0/s640/collingwood_cover.jpg" width="426" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Check out the bottom: Collingwood and Woollams used their jobs at the<br />
Crown and Anchor Tavern as advertising gimicks</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Yet the modern <i>restaurant review </i>that attempts to be objective and useful to patrons,<i> </i>the kind that we read in newspapers and blogs today, was quite a different beast. In 1788, however, I found such a review in the monthly<b> </b><i>New London Magazine. </i>And not only did the magazine run it once, but these reviews were featured for not one, not two, but three consecutive months!<br />
<br />
Here they are ... plotted on a modern day map:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--4Av4UOlCFw/T-vQqVPWuGI/AAAAAAAABG0/OtJUv_AXTgQ/s1600/india+map.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="594" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/--4Av4UOlCFw/T-vQqVPWuGI/AAAAAAAABG0/OtJUv_AXTgQ/s640/india+map.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
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<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7md6uyIIrYQ/T-vOcCcC7KI/AAAAAAAABGs/GGsahnkf_kI/s1600/india+map+text.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="564" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-7md6uyIIrYQ/T-vOcCcC7KI/AAAAAAAABGs/GGsahnkf_kI/s640/india+map+text.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
Obviously I'm not terrible surprised by the inclusion of Wood's and Dolly's: the places I've run across in 18th century literature. But I'm surprised that so many less expensive and less assuming places are included. Who knew that home-made barley broth could be a chic Enlightenment treat? <br />
<br />
Stay tuned, loyal readers, for there will be more in July.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-54817062565148623302012-06-07T14:15:00.002-07:002012-06-08T12:47:40.559-07:00To the Curious in Fish Sauce...On August 12 1784, Faujas de St Fond, a respected French geologist, was invited to dine with the <a href="http://homogastronomicus.blogspot.com/2012/05/royal-philosophers-venison-pop-up.html" target="_blank">Royal Philosophers</a>, the elite London dining club composed of British scientists and intellectuals. He wasn't terribly impressed. In his memoirs, he disdainfully observed the bad flavor of the coffee and the lack of napkins. (Messy English tables were apparently common complaints among "enlightened" French visitors. Faujas's famous contemporary, Arthur Young, remarked that "dining without napkins seems ridiculous to a Frenchman, but in England we dine at tables of people of tolerable fortune without them.")<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lBZwyVP1A_0/T9EBkUMa4JI/AAAAAAAABGE/GnSUXS0B-l4/s1600/rowlandson_satire_no_napkin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="260" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lBZwyVP1A_0/T9EBkUMa4JI/AAAAAAAABGE/GnSUXS0B-l4/s400/rowlandson_satire_no_napkin.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Detail from a Rowlandson caricature, 18th century<br />
(Observe the absence of napkins. Even forks, at this time, were a rarity)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
When it came to the food, our French visitor seemed slightly more bewildered. "The dishes were of the solid kind, he recalled, "such as roast beef, boiled beef and mutton prepared in various ways, with [an] abundance of potatoes and other vegetables, which each person seasoned as he pleased with the different sauces which were placed on the table in bottles of various shapes." The poor guy, however, had no idea what, exactly, these bottles contained, and his account makes it pretty clear that he didn't exactly eat very heartily that night. "The dinner, he concluded, "was truly in the English style."<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-E3nlxL1jah8/T85Ha50izGI/AAAAAAAABFk/MaK0xQfe0s4/s1600/faujas_meal.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-E3nlxL1jah8/T85Ha50izGI/AAAAAAAABFk/MaK0xQfe0s4/s640/faujas_meal.jpg" width="362" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dinner that night included soles, cold ribs of lamb, veal cutlets, and fruit pies<br />
Faujas was one of 12 guests that day; his name is fourth from the top right</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-a-GVuaUFd4s/T85JpIIdmnI/AAAAAAAABFs/USWyAAs6iMQ/s1600/haunch_ven_cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-a-GVuaUFd4s/T85JpIIdmnI/AAAAAAAABFs/USWyAAs6iMQ/s320/haunch_ven_cover.jpg" width="246" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Venison attracted a lot more literary<br />
attention than the seasonings did</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
What was in those bottles? While the bill of fare from that afternoon (listed above) recorded boiled chicken, roast mutton, veal cutlets, a minced lamb's head, and yes, potatoes, no sauces are mentioned. This is not an uncommon dilemma in culinary history. While one needn't look very long in order to find various literary and cultural references to "sir loyns" of beef or haunches of venison, I've had a lot more trouble discerning attitudes towards the hot condiments of the age: "Zoobditty Match" –– a popular East India fish sauce –– and "Sauce Cherokee" from North America.<br />
<br />
We do know, however, that these various condiments were both well-known and relatively standardized by the turn of the century. In fact, the authenticity of a particular condiment became the subject of a well-publicized lawsuit in 1814, when James Cocks sued a London oilman for replicating his celebrated <i>Reading Sauce </i>and passing it off as his own. Cocks' sauce, invented "twelve years earlier" and named after his small town on the Thames (about 50 miles west of London) was a fish sauce that paired with fish, game and cold meat. At the time of the lawsuit, Cocks' brand was sold by about 100 different retailers from London to Edinburgh, from Oxford to Dublin. <br />
<br />
The fact that a lawsuit even happened tells us that as much as metropolitan Londoners wanted curry powder from Bengal and genuine pepper from Cayenne, this didn't put a damper on the demand for authentic regional condiments. By the turn of the 19th century, the average London oilman (a seller of preserved condiments and other goodies) acted as a one-stop shop for all of these things, hawking India soy and Gorgona anchovy paste next to genuine Stilton cheese. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T8IAmnc-QdA/T85QUKcdGWI/AAAAAAAABF4/AlSOFVf_WVE/s1600/reading_ad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-T8IAmnc-QdA/T85QUKcdGWI/AAAAAAAABF4/AlSOFVf_WVE/s640/reading_ad.jpg" width="411" /></a><br />
To determine the outcome of the case, the judge assembled a panel of witnesses from Dover, Taunton, Chichester and London. All of them claimed that the London version was far inferior to the 'real' Reading version, the former apparently "being thick, and leaving a sediment" and "bringing great dissatisfaction to the parties who purchased it." (Sadly, no blind tasting occurred.) Regardless, James Cocks ended up winning 100 guineas in damages. This was certainly nothing to sneeze at in those days, but perhaps the most lucrative aspect of his victory was the fact that he could use it as the basis of a future advertising campaign (here's an example to the left). <br />
<br />
So the authentic flavor of Reading, England –– a product demarcating a geographical region rather than an individual or an idea –– was not a centuries old artisanal tradition only uprooted in the 18th century, but was consciously invented and marketed as a local product by a savvy retailer. But even so, the considerable interest that this case piqued in the reading public (I've found record of it printed in at least six or seven newspapers) makes plain that Englishmen cared a great deal that they were getting the real thing.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-53352708865946925862012-05-30T13:08:00.002-07:002012-06-01T11:46:49.823-07:00Venison SurprizeI returned from the archives in London last fall with a hard drive full of JPEGS and vague but eager dreams of storing this information within some sort of database, with which I could map quantitively the psychology of social connections forged over food. I had uncovered the records belonging to the <i>Thursday's Club call'd the Royal Philosophers</i>, an 18th century dining club semi-officially affiliated with the Royal Society, and the Philosophers' meticulous attendance and dinner records lent themselves well, I thought, to this sort of thing.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wW2DDlYhYPo/T7vpLt2Tg0I/AAAAAAAABDU/a7zbgLnCAl8/s1600/nov_14_1754.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wW2DDlYhYPo/T7vpLt2Tg0I/AAAAAAAABDU/a7zbgLnCAl8/s400/nov_14_1754.jpg" width="280" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;">Here's the contents of the dinner books<br />
found in the archives<br />
(Please excuse my pinkie)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I had never really worked with these kinds of sources before, and my inspiration, admittedly, was at first largely literary. The project I had in mind reminded me of that scene in David Lodge's <i>Small World: An Academic Romance</i> (1984) in which a respected novelist is invited to a new cutting edge academic department –– <i>the Centre for Computational Stylistics</i> –– only to witness his entire literary oeuvre deflated by the state-of-the-art computers into a single adjective: "greasy." With a few effortless keystrokes, a machine could analyze a career's worth of subconscious mores and social hang-ups, revealing literary proclivities unnoticed by the naked eye.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rXZcDaXYr-c/T7vr7WrGx5I/AAAAAAAABDk/rl-OwxkXML8/s1600/smallworld_cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rXZcDaXYr-c/T7vr7WrGx5I/AAAAAAAABDk/rl-OwxkXML8/s320/smallworld_cover.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="211" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;">30 years before the Digital Humanities<br />
became an academic buzzword,<br />
Lodge anticipated some of its<br />
humorous pitfalls<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
Nearly 30 years after this fictional work was published, I stubbornly believed that the ability to analyze my 18th century records in a similar fashion would significantly contribute to our understandings of friendship and social networking. Linking these patterns to the elaborate records of weekly meals shared by the Thursday's Club illustrates how consumption of particular dishes in particular contexts engendered new collective tastes and civic identities. Indeed, the the era that exalted the so-called "man of taste" it is hard to dispute the fact that the provision, sharing and connoisseurship of food were integral to the making of the gentleman. <br />
<br />
The problem was that my rudimentary Excel spreadsheet was full of holes and wasn't able to answer the queries that I asked of it. So this past semester, I have been working with an OpenOffice database that allows me the flexibility to address a range of queries as well as generate new ones. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BYDUi-8qTwM/T7vrKsr8_HI/AAAAAAAABDc/N_ZgLyNh0d0/s1600/screenshot_nov_28_1754.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BYDUi-8qTwM/T7vrKsr8_HI/AAAAAAAABDc/N_ZgLyNh0d0/s400/screenshot_nov_28_1754.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The same information in the OpenOffice database</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Over the course of the summer, my worthy and efficacious readers will learn of my findings. But because my <a href="http://homogastronomicus.blogspot.com/2011/04/getting-in-club-haunches-of-venison.html" target="_blank">very first post</a> on <i>Homo Gastronomicus, </i>over one year ago, addressed the special status of venison among members of the Thursday's Club, I'll begin by playing around with the database as a tool ... to track man's love of tasty treats.<br />
<br />
First, I tracked all the venison references made in the first fifteen years of the club's weekly meetings. Below, I show how often it was served as a gift versus how often it was served in the bill of fare without reference nor further comment. Venison was obviously something out of the ordinary, appearing as a gift 47% of the time it was served. But that's nothing too surprising.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4XMLPFdinhs/T72qS4mjhKI/AAAAAAAABEc/0d08OEcQ81s/s1600/vendonation.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="353" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4XMLPFdinhs/T72qS4mjhKI/AAAAAAAABEc/0d08OEcQ81s/s400/vendonation.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
Moreover, out of the venison references listed in the bills of fare, the ones that <i>were</i> received as gifts were larger and more expensive cuts –– such as haunches and necks. On the chart below, you can see that the venison dishes that frequently appeared on the <i>normal</i> bill of fare mostly comprised of pasties and pies, dishes typically prepared with less expensive cuts of meat mixed with giblets, vegetables and herbs. (Gifts are marked as blue, while dishes on the regular bill of fare are red.) <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TUAyCBN_WQ0/T727ja0QAtI/AAAAAAAABEo/raPZ-n3Ld_U/s1600/ven_percent.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="285" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TUAyCBN_WQ0/T727ja0QAtI/AAAAAAAABEo/raPZ-n3Ld_U/s400/ven_percent.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Finally, I wondered what attendance looked like when a juicy haunch was gifted to the club. One would think that it would be disproportionately higher. After all, who would turn down this aristocratic delicacy, especially when washed down with a few glasses of claret? Surely its consumption would be a pretty big deal. <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F5ipiImPGQ4/T8Z5MU7bNpI/AAAAAAAABFY/j-qh9cqr7vw/s1600/attendance_ave.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="265" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F5ipiImPGQ4/T8Z5MU7bNpI/AAAAAAAABFY/j-qh9cqr7vw/s400/attendance_ave.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
But surprisingly, the mean attendance between 1748-1762 was only marginally higher when a haunch of venison was on the table. Venison dinners attracted an average of 15.8 members per meeting, while the average attendance hovered around 15.5. What does this mean? <br />
<br />
It seems hard to believe that the members didn't care whether venison was served or not. After all, venison was the most frequently gifted food to the club, and annual gifts of a haunch could secure honorary membership for the donor. Perhaps the evidence suggests instead that gifts were not very well publicized. Venison dinners, as a result, took place on a largely ad-hoc basis. Sort of like a secret pop-up catering to the well-connected gentleman "in the know."Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-79323373937590077742012-05-18T10:58:00.000-07:002012-05-20T11:57:12.928-07:00Adventures of a Bouillon Cube: c. 1750Who plays the English tastemaker? The cook? Or the customer always right? This question has reared its head several times as I've been mining old newspapers for references to <a href="http://homogastronomicus.blogspot.com/2012/05/bringing-on-sauce.html" target="_blank">sauces and condiments</a>. Unlike the main ingredient, such as a chine of beef or a leg of mutton, the garnishing powerfully illustrates the individual's will in the construction of a national "taste." Late 18th century advertisers believed that the application of a sauce could transform British cuisine into French, Italian, American or even Indian food. As much as plumb pudding and roast beef were considered hallmarks of English cuisine, it appears that the possibility of choice, variety, and convenience of <i>good eating</i> were also crucial parts of that story. <br />
<br />
Meet Elizabeth Dubois. I haven't been able to find much biographical information about her as of yet; it seems like she might have been married to someone in the book trade. I have only heard of her through her advertisements printed in the 1740s and 1750s as a seller of delicious and practical "Portable Soups" all over London. <br />
<br />
She starts running the ads in the London Evening Post for what appears to be solid cubes of bouillon in 1744. <i>"This useful Commodity never spoils if kept dry,"</i> she claims, <i>"and is dissolved in a few Minutes in boiling Water; and for Gravy Sauce is much cheaper and better than any usually made on the Spot." </i>Apparently, the single-serving sized cubes were the brainchildren of her uncle, the reputed cook to the late Duke of Argyll, invented while the Duke was engaged with wars overseas. But she points out that they are perfect for other occasions ranging from long hunts <i>"when the chace proves long"</i> (you could chew it like a protein bar) to prolonged naval engagements abroad (when the diet of salted meats rendered good English gravy particularly difficult to obtain.) <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nXl0rS_ajoA/T7V0zSuheHI/AAAAAAAABCQ/EcUyRZR00K0/s1600/DUBOIS_PIC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="285" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-nXl0rS_ajoA/T7V0zSuheHI/AAAAAAAABCQ/EcUyRZR00K0/s400/DUBOIS_PIC.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">As advertised in the London Daily Advertiser, 1747</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
A new (portable) means of preserving the flavors of herbs and fresh meat? <i>And</i> it happened to be cheaper by the dozen (with a nifty tin box thrown in)? Indeed, Dubois's advertising scheme had a sophisticated plan of attack. <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KZ1dUpsRDj8/T7VesrNGljI/AAAAAAAABCE/NRMIbBcb1Oo/s1600/bouillon_blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-KZ1dUpsRDj8/T7VesrNGljI/AAAAAAAABCE/NRMIbBcb1Oo/s400/bouillon_blog.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A 21st century incarnation of Mrs Dubois's invention</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
But Mrs Dubois was constantly revising her advertising scheme. In late 1749, she starts offering a special soup made of <i>"shell and other types of fish, which is very palatable"</i> for her customers who keep Lent. Clearly, she saw these folk as an important untapped market. <br />
<br />
Before long, she begins to expand her enterprise, selling her products in taverns and coffee shops all over London: from Billingsgate to Westminster, from her own place in Long-Acre all the way to Bath.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4ZPKZQeeap0/T7aFqLbMo1I/AAAAAAAABCc/c_wXU_vKEhk/s1600/mistake_dubois.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="35" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4ZPKZQeeap0/T7aFqLbMo1I/AAAAAAAABCc/c_wXU_vKEhk/s400/mistake_dubois.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;">As her market expanded beyond the parish,<br />
she vigilantly protected her ideas from theft</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Bath, you say?! The fact that her bouillon cubes made it all the way to this famous spa-town over one hundred miles away suggests that she believed that these portable soups would appeal to a fashionable health conscious crowd. Wonder if <a href="http://homogastronomicus.blogspot.com/2011/12/resolutions-for-blue-stockings.html" target="_blank">Elizabeth Montagu</a>, given her love of spa water and other health fads, ever got into these. <br />
<br />
Service becomes more and more personalized. After a few years, Du Bois begins to encourage customers to experiment with mixing her four flavors –– veal, chicken, mutton and "gravy" –– to their own personal liking. She suggests adding salt to taste. But still unsatisfied, she decides to take custom-orders beginning in October, 1752. An ad in the <i>London Evening Post</i> proclaims:<br />
<br />
<i>"Having been often asked, why I did not make some solid Soups of Venison, this is to inform such who may be inclined to send their own Meats, of what kind soever, with Directions as to what Spice or Herb are approved, may have their Commands punctually obeyed by their laudable Servant Elizabeth Du Bois, at tte Golden Head ... near Long-Acre; where her strong Gravy Soup, Mutton Broth, Veal Broth, and Chicken Broth, may be had in the utmost Perfection..." </i><br />
<br />
Who knows whether her venture succeeded? I never hear of her after 1756. Regardless, Elizabeth Dubois's marketing ploys suggest that conceptions of eating "on the go" changed drastically around mid-century. No longer would bread and hard cheese monopolize the market on portable foods. Moreover, Du Bois wasn't just selling five different types of bouillon cubes. Her use of culinary expertise –– selling something you couldn't get at home –– and her regard for customer choice imply that she was also selling an idea of <i>English convenience</i> to bring to the the most far flung corners of the earth.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-32431339890661998822012-05-08T16:18:00.002-07:002012-05-08T16:20:11.467-07:00Bringing on the SauceWell before the early 19th century culinary celebrity Antonin Careme postulated the four classic French "mother sauces," France enjoyed an international reputation for its rich and flavorful seasonings. The introduction of fricassees and ragouts into the British culinary lexicon was lauded by <i>bon-vivants,</i> yet decried by cultural commentators. "I look upon a French ragout to be as pernicious to the stomach as a glass of spirits ... [f]or as I in everything love what is <i>simple</i> and <i>natural</i>," Isaac Bickerstaff observed in the <i>Tatler</i> in 1709, "so particularly in my food." <br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FCKBwHMbNQI/T6lGL9FpIdI/AAAAAAAABAk/SzA14fV73LU/s1600/opsonium_blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="293" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-FCKBwHMbNQI/T6lGL9FpIdI/AAAAAAAABAk/SzA14fV73LU/s400/opsonium_blog.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From the Classified Section, The Daily Post, Wed, January 6 1731.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Fortunately for us, the naysayers didn't prevail. If we take a look at contemporary newspapers, it becomes obvious that cosmopolitan Londoners loved to season their food with exotic sauces and condiments. So important were these novel commodities that in 1739, the <i>London and Country Journal</i> felt compelled to report the breakage of a single bottle of soy sauce at the Custom House. "Soy is a rich catchup," the article explained, <i>"the best is made in India, and gives the highest Gust of any Sauce in the World."</i><br />
<br />
By the late 18th century, enthusiasm for bottled condiments seemed to reach its height. Many of these bottled sauces were advertised especially for merchants, traders, and men in the navy. And while the condiments weren't exactly 'English,' this doesn't mean that there wasn't some sort of patriotic message implied –– why shouldn't people on the go be able to enjoy the fruits of the British commercial empire? <br />
<br />
I did a little sleuthing, and found five major condiment retailers operating in late 18th century London:<br />
<br />
<b>1. T. Young, 44 Bond Street.</b> While many vendors obtained their goods from abroad, this guy whipped up his sauces in-house. On April 4, 1788, he advertised a concoction of <i>"extracts from the Gorgona Anchovies. This sauce, which is most general, and one of the best Sauces for most kinds of fish, has many advantages over the common mode made use of."</i> He followed up on the success of his "essence of anchovies" with a new sauce specifically designed to be eaten with <i>"real and mock Turtle, Game Pies, and roasted Game and Fowl or any kind, but is a great heightened and finisher of all kinds of Fricandos, Harricoes, Daubs, Stews, and Hashes." </i><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jvdKIrh1-xo/T6lU-4PH4-I/AAAAAAAABAw/Uqy5fYu2d2E/s1600/18th_c_Sauce_Boat_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="206" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jvdKIrh1-xo/T6lU-4PH4-I/AAAAAAAABAw/Uqy5fYu2d2E/s320/18th_c_Sauce_Boat_1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I also noticed a dramatic rise of "sauce-boat"<br />
advertisements in the 18th century<br />
(Here's a simple pewter one)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>2. Skill and Son, Italian and French Warehouse, 15 Strand, near Charing Cross. </b>While they touted themselves as the cheese-merchants to the Prince of Wales (the hard partying glutton later to be crowned George IV) the tone of their ads seem to cater more so to the polite middle classes, emphasizing their "family friendly" nature and convenience –– using their products, a meal could reputedly take only two minutes time to prepare. They also win out in terms of variety; 16 different sauces and 12 different vinegars –– ranging from "imperial sauce" to "walnut ketchup" to "chilly vinegar" –– appear in their ads. <br />
<br />
<b>3. J. Burgess, No 107 Strand.</b> He competed with T. Young to prepare the best essences of anchovies, which produced <i>"an excellent sauce in a few minutes, for all kinds of Tendons, Harricots, French Pyes, Ragouts, Cutlets, Collops, Stewed Beef, Pigs Ears and Feet, Broiled and Brazed Poultry of all kinds."</i> Added bonus: each bottle of sauce came with printed recipe suggestions. J. Burgess also dealt in a bunch of other foreign delicacies as far flung as "Bengal Currie Powder" to authentic reindeer tongues from Russia. <br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-g2JAhVSSnFY/T6mk4zQN8BI/AAAAAAAABA8/SgHan9vBeAA/s1600/turtlesauce_excerpt_world_1787_blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="360" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-g2JAhVSSnFY/T6mk4zQN8BI/AAAAAAAABA8/SgHan9vBeAA/s400/turtlesauce_excerpt_world_1787_blog.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Purveyers of sauce had to innovate to stay relevant<br />
The World (1787) </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b>4. The New Warehouse for Foreign Rarities, No, 79, New Bond-Street.</b> Seemed to specialize in <i>"sauce verte a la d'Artois"</i> priced at 4 shillings a bottle. Ouch! For that, one could buy a whole dinner at a nice tavern. <br />
** <i>If any kindly readers of this Blog happened to know what exactly that entailed, as contemporary cookery books abounded in different versions of 'green sauce,' and would care to share this important information with the Authoress, she would be incredibly grateful. </i><br />
<br />
<b>5. The Depository, No 34, St James Market.</b> Didn't advertise as much but touted its "sauce a la Provencal" 'Saluci tout fait" and "Remoulade." With these three sauces, the ad explains, <i>"there is scarcely three dishes in French, English or Italian Cookery, that cannot be made either with any one, or any two of them combined."</i><br />
<br />
One mere bottle can fashion boring old beef-steaks into specialties of three different culinary traditions? Well, who can argue with that? <br />
<br />
<br />Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-70401090719040232602012-04-06T12:25:00.001-07:002013-02-07T16:59:32.984-08:00The Best Turtle-house in TownThe 18th century epicure is an elusive character, slippery to pin down and all too cryptic when he rests his fork and knife for a brief moment and tells us of his gastronomical adventures. And all too often, I find only brief, posthumous traces of him, as this satirical will illustrates: <br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CC7-yWhS-Gk/T332nKt2MQI/AAAAAAAAA-A/9O-cRnE-UYI/s1600/foodie_will_1784.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="358" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-CC7-yWhS-Gk/T332nKt2MQI/AAAAAAAAA-A/9O-cRnE-UYI/s400/foodie_will_1784.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Memoirs of the dying, or, a collection of wills, executed by several<br />
of the most eminent characters, of both sexes, now living, in Great Britain</i> (1784)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Who was <i>B---- G----ne</i>? Perhaps a thinly veiled reference to particularly gluttonous City alderman, or maybe an East India Company official hooked on the good life. (The famous London Tavern was their unofficial hangout throughout the second half of the 18th century.) Maybe he was based on nobody at all, a mere invention for the public's amusement. But whoever he was, he must have been very well-to-do, because only the upper crust –– both in title and in wealth –– could afford to dine "at the best Turtle-house in town" on a semi-regular basis. And only the most zealous connoisseur would select a turtle house as his legacy to posterity.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BioRCI2hS38/T38rHs1CQuI/AAAAAAAAA-M/tek7uquE73U/s1600/turtle_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-BioRCI2hS38/T38rHs1CQuI/AAAAAAAAA-M/tek7uquE73U/s320/turtle_2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Out of many breeds, "green turtle" was the most highly valued</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Indeed, "this pleasant and salubrious meat," in one contemporary's terms, was not so easy to come by. The astronomical prices paid for it –– it could get as high as 4 shillings, 6 pence a pound (shell included) –– likened it to imported luxuries like truffles or caviar today. I guess the price starts to make a little more sense when one considers the hardships of the reptilian middle passage. One contemporary lamented:<br />
<br />
"The green turtle Indeed has become a branch of commerce, and ships are provided with conveniences for supplying them with water and provision ... this cannot, however, always be effected; for though they scarce require any provision upon the voyage, yet the workings of the ship occasions them to be beat against the sides of the boat that contains them, by which they become very lean and battered; so that, in order to eat this animal in the highest perfection; instead of bringing the turtle to the epicure, the epicure ought to be transported to the turtle."<br />
<i> - A new, complete and universal body, or System of natural history, being a grand, accurate and extensive display of animated nature (1785) </i><br />
<br />
Given the fact that 18th century Jamaica was not considered the healthiest climate for the fragile and delicate English constitution, many decided not to take the trip. But this did not slow the public's insatiable craving for luscious green turtle fat. But where did fashionable men get their hands on it? Where <i>was</i> the best turtle house in town? The question is still unresolved, but I've noted a few potential candidates; <br />
<br />
1. Wood's Hotel, Tavern and Coffee House, Covent Garden: The New London Magazine noted "if any preference to it can be given in preparing any particular viands, it is that of turtle and game"<i> </i>(Volume 4, Issue 6, 1788). <br />
<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-C4PS7PPZHyU/T383-PCOIJI/AAAAAAAAA-U/8eiNL7DAaFY/s1600/blogexcerpt_Morningherald_April_24_1793_Issue4400.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="117" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-C4PS7PPZHyU/T383-PCOIJI/AAAAAAAAA-U/8eiNL7DAaFY/s400/blogexcerpt_Morningherald_April_24_1793_Issue4400.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;">An Ad from the <i>Morning Herald</i>, 1793</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
2. The Queens Arms Tavern, St. Paul's Churchyard: A long time hang-out of City politicians, one source observed "great numbers of these animals are dressed at the Queen's-arms-tavern... where we remember to have seen them in two extremes ... three Turtles, two of which together did not weigh three ounces, and the other exceeded nine hundred pounds in weight." (<i>A new, complete and universal body, or System, of natural history</i>, 1787)<br />
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3. The London Tavern, Bishopsgate Street: One of the chicest places in town; on August 24, 1787 <i>The World and Fashionable Advertiser</i> published a bill of fare reputedly from an alderman's dinner that featured no less than 10 dishes of it. Check out the first course below:<br />
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<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rkVT9EfuckY/T39AgxWjS9I/AAAAAAAAA-c/fVutbRsfh-c/s1600/1787_aldermandin_blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-rkVT9EfuckY/T39AgxWjS9I/AAAAAAAAA-c/fVutbRsfh-c/s640/1787_aldermandin_blog.jpg" width="308" /></a></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-10759238042544091542012-03-27T11:00:00.010-07:002012-03-29T08:39:07.900-07:00Spring SoopIn my last post, I mentioned a peculiar breed of 18th century cookery books that catered to primarily to vegetable lovers. Or did they? For I fear, goodly reader, that many of these self-professed Pythagoreans delighted in vegetables more so out of necessity rather than out of hatred of <i>beef-stake pyes</i> and <i>harricos of mutton</i>. Nope, meat didn't come cheap in those days. But what were these cookery books all about? Who read them? What kinds of knowledge did they impart?<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9Zrjfr2dW7A/T3Hk7ZHlRJI/AAAAAAAAA84/JKWvInwFgMo/s1600/Adamsluxury.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9Zrjfr2dW7A/T3Hk7ZHlRJI/AAAAAAAAA84/JKWvInwFgMo/s400/Adamsluxury.jpg" width="220" /></a></div>We know that they were remarkably savvy when it came to marketing themselves to target demographics. <br />
<br />
"This little Treatise of Kitchen-Gardening is chiefly design'd for the Instruction and Benefit of <i>Country</i> People," opens the vegetable friendly <i>Adam's Luxury and Eve's Cookery</i> (1744) "who most of them have a little Garden spot belonging to their House, and at the same time let it lie useless, for want of knowing how properly to manage it..."<br />
<br />
You've guessed it, reader. The cookery book to the left isn't exactly in the same league as the botanical virtuoso Philip Miller's <i>The Gardener's Dictionary</i> –– which I've discussed in <a href="http://homogastronomicus.blogspot.com/2012/02/best-vegetable-of-salad-kind.html" target="_blank">previous posts</a>. No "Aegyptian Lettuces" or fancy cantaloupes discussed in this text. To the contrary, this is much closer to an early modern "Gardening for Dummies." The section on "Melon," for example, pooh poohs the idea of enumerating all sorts of this fruit, as "there being annually new Sorts brought from abroad, a great many of which prove good for little." Hmmmph. Good old utility trumped exotic tastes. <br />
<br />
While the first portion of the book explains how to cultivate a host of different vegetables and herbs at home, the remainder devotes itself to simple recipes that one could whip up in a minimal amount of time. Flipping through the (electronic) pages yesterday evening, my appetite was piqued by recipe below:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dQlLwbtxcTc/T3E7r5GdpMI/AAAAAAAAA8w/RdDJwEjtMZQ/s1600/asparagus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="348" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dQlLwbtxcTc/T3E7r5GdpMI/AAAAAAAAA8w/RdDJwEjtMZQ/s400/asparagus.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>Asparagus, you say? Once considered a socially exclusive treat, the Enlightenment actually witnessed great strides in the democratization of this particular vegetable. In 1727, Stephen Switzer, one of the most well-known horticulturists of the era, gushed over the considerable improvements made in the art of <i>Salleting</i>, pointing out that "the raising of the asparagus and artichoke, especially the first, has been the most advanced of any one vegetable the garden produces." He reveled in the fact that Britons could now enjoy them as late as Christmas, and that they were "near as green and as good as that which comes by nature."<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YV0z4PmnpFc/T3JZL2dLHSI/AAAAAAAAA9I/z6Hw3vrutII/s1600/asparagus.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="341" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-YV0z4PmnpFc/T3JZL2dLHSI/AAAAAAAAA9I/z6Hw3vrutII/s400/asparagus.gif" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It often comes up in cookery books as "Sparrow-Grass" too</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Switzer's enthusiasm was infectious. By the time I had finished the preface of his <i>The Practical Kitchen Gardener,</i> he was proclaiming visions of "asparagus piercing the ground in a thousand places," exclaiming:<br />
<br />
<i>"these! these! are the innocent and natural dainties, where they present themselves and grow for the nourishment and the delicious entertainment of mankind." </i><br />
<br />
Time to start that asparagus soup. I'll be the first to admit, however, that I didn't follow the above recipe to the letter. I liked the idea of cooking a bunch of different green vegetables together (this is common in many 18th century soups) but I didn't include the beets, for I feared they would muddy the bright green color of the soup. I also skipped the flour, since I wasn't really worried about the thickness. I also threw in some leeks and shallots, and topped it off with creme fraiche and toasted pine-nuts.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-38w_5EAx664/T3J90k3g-1I/AAAAAAAAA9Q/jsO1NeUoQ8I/s1600/IMG_0242.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-38w_5EAx664/T3J90k3g-1I/AAAAAAAAA9Q/jsO1NeUoQ8I/s400/IMG_0242.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It was good with a beer, too</td></tr>
</tbody></table>My noble Readers should be informed that I greatly enjoyed this modest meal, and found it relatively healthful as well as pleasing to the palate. Who says that the flavors of 18th century Britain can't occasionally be inspired by a 21st century San Francisco sensibility?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-1511125070054777882012-03-19T19:52:00.001-07:002012-12-19T10:04:42.083-08:00Virtue and the Vegetable circa 1741<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KH31VQLLPe0/T2fmzgITx9I/AAAAAAAAA8E/NftnW70XK28/s1600/Adamsluxury.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="640" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-KH31VQLLPe0/T2fmzgITx9I/AAAAAAAAA8E/NftnW70XK28/s640/Adamsluxury.jpg" width="352" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Vegetable diets were primarily pursued for economical purposes<br />
Note in this title the words "cheap" and "palatable"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Amidst the pidgeon pies, the shoulders of mutton, and the hindquarters of beef, I have noticed, dear Readers, that I have neglected the "Pythagoreans" –– very small minority of 18th century Britons who chose to abstain from meat. <br />
<br />
Like I said, this was a very small minority. The majority of so-called "vegetarian" cookery books advertised vegetables as substitutes for those who could not afford meat. If you came into a few extra shillings, throw in, by all means, the veal cutlets/beef bones/tongues and udders, <i>etcetera.</i><br />
<br />
At the Huntington Library today, I ran across two rather strange references from the famous 18th century socialite and taste-maker, Elizabeth Montagu. (Read my previous post about her eating habits <a href="http://homogastronomicus.blogspot.com/2011/12/resolutions-for-blue-stockings.html" target="_blank">here</a>.) <br />
<br />
On May 5, 1741, at the age of 23, she remarked that she hoped an acquaintance <i>"may not get the cholick with his vegetable diet, as it turns to vanity and wind he will be too much puff'd up with it." </i><br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
Like most people acquainted with the pleasures of a good steak, young Elizabeth seemed pretty skeptical about the virtues of vegetarianism. I mean, this is coming from someone who grumbled having her dinner hosts dump an additional side of spinach on her plate after she helped herself to a second slice of lamb. Indeed, this is coming from someone who enjoyed "2 dishes of chocolate" (recommended by her physician) for breakfast. But only a week or so later, she seems to have a change of heart. In a letter penned to her BFF, Margaret Cavendish, she explains:<br />
<br />
<i>"Must I leave your Grace for such a trivial consideration as my Supper. They have sent me some chicken, but alas! Can one eat one's acquaintance? These inoffensive companions of my retirement can I devour them? How often I have lately admired the provident care and the maternal affection of a hen, and shall I eat her hopeful son or fair daughter!" </i><br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jsQfVHuaIdA/T2ft1ote24I/AAAAAAAAA8M/VKV3xWm1BuM/s1600/chickens.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="262" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-jsQfVHuaIdA/T2ft1ote24I/AAAAAAAAA8M/VKV3xWm1BuM/s320/chickens.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tending chickens was a symbol of domesticity<br />
made popular by authors like Samuel Richardson</td></tr>
</tbody></table>She goes on ...<br />
<br />
<i>"Sure I should then be an unworthy member of the chicken society, I find myself reduced to a vegetable diet not as a Pythagorean, for fear of removing the soul of a friend, but to avoid destroying the body of an acquaintance. There is not a sheep, a calf, a lamb, a goose, a hen, or a turkey in the neighborhood, with which I am not intimately acquainted ... I can never describe how nor tell why, but they look a little awfull, and pish and phoo with a dignity age will never give me, really it is droll..." </i><br />
<br />
Should we see this as surprising? After all, I don't know any girl who <i>didn't</i> flirt with vegetarianism at some point during her 20s (including the Authoress of this Blog). But who knew that such sentiments extended so far back in history? And what accounts for this change of heart? Did young Elizabeth remain wedded to Pythagorean virtues?Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-88233538587423093022012-03-07T15:01:00.002-08:002012-07-02T13:49:37.469-07:00How to Talk to an EpicureThe eponymous "Foodie" is a controversial figure in the 21st century. In some respects, it is a mark of cultivation, cosmopolitanism and social wherewithal. The foodie is lauded and respected for his ability to detect a host of subtle nuances within a dish on shows like <i>Top Chef </i>and <i>No Reservations</i>. Foodie-friendly events dealing with everything from beer to truffles to cheese are burgeoning around the globe. Likewise, existence of scholarly organizations such as the <a href="http://www.oxfordsymposium.org.uk/" target="_blank">Oxford Symposium on Cookery</a> –– whereby panelists sometimes offer audience-members 'free samples' while presenting their papers –– testify to a rapprochement between the food studies as a dispassionate academic field and the sensuous cultivation of the palate.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D3LeYpJgfaE/T1fUqMjwN5I/AAAAAAAAA60/6-uy8y4AAgo/s1600/oxfordsympfoodies.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-D3LeYpJgfaE/T1fUqMjwN5I/AAAAAAAAA60/6-uy8y4AAgo/s400/oxfordsympfoodies.jpg" width="400" /></a>,</td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Dinners at the Oxford Symposium, in the Authoress's humble opinion<br />
exceed all Conference Fare in both Flavour and Company</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
On the other hand, spoofs of foodies –– their unpalatable elitism, their solipsistic world-weariness, their terribly self-indulgent blogging habits –– are constantly portrayed in the media as subjects of satire, spoofed on everything from <i>Portlandia </i>to<i> The Simpsons.</i><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
What did people think about the "foodie" of 18th century England, if such a type even existed? I'm only just beginning to research this topic, but it appears as if he was hardly any less controversial than today. Scholars of 18th century Britain will know that contemporaries cast an equivocal eye upon connoisseurs of all sorts: "virtuosos" "collectors" and "dilettantes." The "epicure" –– I use it here to mean indicate a connoisseur of food –– was anything but exempt.</div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oxHSXVNBNYg/T1fB1jmi9VI/AAAAAAAAA6s/N-3vFB52SnM/s1600/connoisseurcover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-oxHSXVNBNYg/T1fB1jmi9VI/AAAAAAAAA6s/N-3vFB52SnM/s400/connoisseurcover.jpg" width="266" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The periodical ran through 1754-1756<br />
It was published on a weekly basis</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Check out this issue of this 18th century periodical to the right. This paper wasn't exactly serious business; but was widely circulated in London and was acknowledged to have <i>"just views of the surface of life, and in a very sprightly manner."</i> You know the type of thing. Beach reading. <br />
<br />
Anyway, in 1756, an entire article was devoted to the travails of the bon-vivant. <i>"There are a sort of men,"</i> remarks the author, <i>"whose chief pride is a good taste (as they call it) and a great stomach: and the whole business of their lives is included in their breakfast, dinner and supper." </i><br />
<div style="text-align: -webkit-auto;">
<br /></div>
But that's not all. He goes on to describe<i> </i>a gentleman (aptly named "Mr Cramwell") who boasts of chairing a dining club. The sole criterion of membership? All it took was the happenstance to work for a trade that allowed each member to procure the most elite and utterly delectable edible treats for the table. A country squire supplied the game, a captain of a ship trading to the West Indies was contracted to bring a "sufficient cargo of turtle every voyage," and a <i>Flanderkin Bird-Merchant</i> enabled the club to feast on "Ortolans as plenty as pidgeons." <br />
<br />
But what sort of qualities did this 18th century "epicure" possess? <i>The Connoisseur</i> brings up three points:<br />
<br />
1) The 18th century epicure always seems to be male; in my research thus far, I have yet to run across a woman revealed to profess proclivities for fine food. And while women gathered in salons (Elizabeth Montagu's coterie of <i>Blue-Stockings</i> being one of the most famous) the fare described was usually limited to tea and an assortment of light "dainties" hardly akin to the exquisite dinners enjoyed in all-male dining clubs convening in bustling London taverns.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-y6qxrTHiZxE/T1e42KXKa6I/AAAAAAAAA6c/x5AXvpcNhj0/s1600/glutton.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="283" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-y6qxrTHiZxE/T1e42KXKa6I/AAAAAAAAA6c/x5AXvpcNhj0/s400/glutton.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="font-size: 13px; padding-top: 4px; text-align: center;">Thomas Rowlandson, "The Glutton"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
2) I had supposed that the epicure would be associated with the enterprising and urbane bourgeois rather than the titled nobility. After all, cultivating "taste" was a rather radical thing in those days, a means for the socially astute self-made man to contest the court's rigid and sterile monopoly on culture But not in the case of the epicure, it seems. Indeed, the article suggests that foodie-ism was hardly an affliction of the well-to-do, but could be detected in men <i>"of whatever rank and denomination, whether they regale themselves with turtle, or devour shoulders of mutton and peck-loaves for wagers, whether a Duke at White's, or a chairman at Blue-Posts..."</i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6tSDYf3mPNQ/T1gcMelLJVI/AAAAAAAAA68/YCVhUOM-1RA/s1600/artofcookery.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6tSDYf3mPNQ/T1gcMelLJVI/AAAAAAAAA68/YCVhUOM-1RA/s400/artofcookery.jpg" width="295" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Glasse's chef d'oeuvre:<br />
Look like food porn to you?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
3) Finally, while labeling oneself an "epicure" attempts to depart from the morally debased associations with gluttony, the author makes clear that the former was just a fashionable gloss for the latter. <i>"As the politeness of the French language has distinguished every glutton by the title of Bon Vivant,"</i> the author states, <i>"and the courtesy of our own has honoured their beastly gluttony by the name of Good Living, the epicure thinks to eat and drink himself into your good opinion, and recommend himself to your esteem by an exquisite bill of fare."</i> Yet in many respects, the epicure was more sinful than the glutton, for he fetishized the biologically necessary act of eating. By the end of the article, Mr Cramwell loses his appetite and lies in bed frantically perusing Hannah Glasse's popular cookery manual –– <i>The Art of Cookery made Plain and Easy</i> –– as a gastro-pornographic text, scanning recipes in hopes of reviving his limp and withered appetite.<br />
<br />
For thousands of years, the communal meal has been conceived of as a fundamentally "sociable" activity. Yet it appears that the entry of the <i>foodie</i> into metropolitan life turned ideas about "polite sociability" –– a traditional hallmark of 18th century culture –– upside down.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4953804881823729983.post-31310314862189280042012-02-24T15:19:00.001-08:002012-02-24T15:23:54.040-08:00The Best Vegetable of the Salad KindWhen it comes to history of the early modern salad, F.R.S. John Evelyn usually gets most of the attention. Famous for his vegetable friendly cookery book, <i>Acetaria: A Discourse of Sallets</i> (1699) he helped define the salad as "certain <i>Esculent </i>Plants and Herbs, improv'd by Culture, Industry, and Art of the <i>Gard'ner ..</i>. to be eaten <i>Raw</i> or <i>Green</i>, <i>Blanch'd</i> or <i>Candied..."</i><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/JohnEvelyn1687.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c3/JohnEvelyn1687.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John Evelyn, author of <i>Acetaria, </i>1699</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Don't get me wrong; <i>Acetaria </i>is a fine piece of work. He even teaches you how to make salad dressing: "the Yolks of fresh and new-laid <i>Eggs</i>, boil'd moderately hard, to be mingl'd and mash'd with the <i>Mustard, Oyl</i>, and <i>Vinegar</i>." Little different, Reader, from the dressings I throw together today. And in case you are unsure just how to plate the salad at your next dinner party, Evelyn has you covered. "That the <i>Saladiere,</i> (Sallet-Dishes) be of <i>Porcelane</i>, or of the <i>Holland-Delft-Ware</i>; neither too deep nor shallow..." <br />
<br />
But Evelyn was hardly the only intellectual to pay attention to the vegetable kingdom. <br />
<br />
I noticed a gentleman by the name of Philip Miller who began to attend dinners of the Thursday's Club in the Spring of 1752. He dined with the club frequently, attending two to three dinners a month on average. But he was always noted down as a "visitor." Of whom? I wondered. Where did he come from?<br />
<br />
Apparently, Miller was anxious to please. For three consecutive weeks during the summer of 1753, Mr. Miller entertained the club with <i>Aegyptian lettuces.</i> What did this mean? <br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ztkZjS2jZ68/T0gVCTv_e3I/AAAAAAAAA6M/CF1GrlrTbsw/s1600/gardenerdic.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ztkZjS2jZ68/T0gVCTv_e3I/AAAAAAAAA6M/CF1GrlrTbsw/s400/gardenerdic.jpg" width="236" /></a></div>Apparently Miller had some serious botanical connections. He had been appointed chief gardener to the Chelsea Physic Garden since 1722. This garden, founded in 1673, was designed for the purpose of growing new medicinal herbs and plants. In fact, written into the garden's lease was the requirement that the garden provide 50 seedling samples to the Royal Society each year, until the total of 1000 had been provided. Miller excelled at this task.<br />
<br />
Philip Miller also authored the widely-read <i>The Gardener's Dictionary</i>, which classified 14 different kinds of lettuce, ranging from the "common garden" varieties to progressively more exotic and esteemed "Silesia" "Aleppo" and "Black Cos." Lettuces were valued in those days for their delicate qualities; coarser varieties, Miller attested, were only appropriate for <i>"stewing rather than salleting."</i> <br />
<br />
I enjoyed flipping through this manual, as it provides a nice glimpse into the tastes of contemporary Londoners as set apart from the rest of the kingdom. <i>"The most valuable of all the Sorts of Lettuces in England are the Versailles, the Silesia, and Cos,"</i> Miller claims, <i>"tho' some People are very fond of the Royal and Imperial Lettuces; but they seldom sell so well in the London Markets as the other, nor are so generally esteem'd.</i><br />
<br />
Guess Miller's expertise worked in his favor; he was elected a full-time member in July of 1753. The minute book noted, however, that Miller hadn't exactly been a stranger all this time:<br />
<br />
<i>"Mr Phillip Miller having been an Antient Member of this Society but being out of Town when the regulation of the Society was made in 1749 and having Applyed as a Candidate ever since June 1752 it was unanimously Agreed that the present Vacancy should be supplyed." </i><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ztv5_-hSOx4/T0gZ1WYcITI/AAAAAAAAA6U/jt1Z4uiWuZk/s1600/millerballot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ztv5_-hSOx4/T0gZ1WYcITI/AAAAAAAAA6U/jt1Z4uiWuZk/s400/millerballot.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Oh the suspense! Miller is voted in, and another guy is kicked out. </td></tr>
</tbody></table>I don't know about you, Reader, but for me, there's a touch of melancholy to this story. Once content to go out and share a meal with his friends and colleagues, Miller must have been slightly taken aback to return from "out of town, " only to be coldly greeted as a "visitor," and then be pushed to the margins of the coterie for an entire year. Sounds pretty harsh. <br />
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What provoked the need for these men to institutionalize their weekly meals, to demarcate for them a specific time and place? And how did the formation of clubs affect friendships, acquaintance networks, the unspoken protocols of social life? For Philip Miller was not unlike an English Rip van Winkle. Time passes in his absence, and he eventually wakes up groggy and slightly baffled, forced to face the consequences of falling too long asleep.Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09605825295013146558noreply@blogger.com0