Refined Food or Plain Food?

That’s the (latest) title of a presentation I gave at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery last week. The draft paper and the handout can be found in the Culinary History Articles section of this blog.

In essence what I want to say is that for most of history, people wanted the most refined, the most processed, the most thoroughly cooked food possible. This was regarded as the most simple and natural food because all the dross had been removed by the purifying effects of processing and cooking, particularly fire. Ideal foods were sugar, clarified butter or ghee, white bread, white rice, cooked fruit, wine and so on.

A minority opinion, present from Antiquity, but gaining strength in the eighteenth century and now dominant in the Western world, held the reverse: that the best food was plain food, processed and cooked as little as possible. This was the most simple and natural because the least messed about. Ideal foods were whole wheat bread, fresh fruit, milk from the cow, and water.

I’m still playing around with answers to the questions I received. Oh how wonderful to have a blog and a second chance to answer even if the original questioner never reads it. I’ve also got questions of my own. So more on this later.

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