How Can We Trace the Global Migration of Recipes and Dishes?
This is something I’ve been thinking quite a bit about, particularly after Adam Balic’s comments on my post on Mexican salsas and North African harisa. You’d think these methods would be well established. But since most histories of food, following most political histories, focus on national history, it’s actually still wide open territory.
Here are some preliminary thoughts to get a discussion started. I expect to update this post regularly and eventually turn it into a page so come back to the comments and the post if this is something that interests you.
The preliminary thoughts fall into two categories. First, ways of tracing recipes and dishes. Second, general thoughts about the migration of recipes and dishes. I’ll post on the latter later.
1. How to trace recipes and dishes
Here I’m assuming that we may go way back in the past before cookbooks or (perhaps) even before written records.
Names of dishes
Perhaps no one has done more to trace dishes by their names than Charles Perry who has written extensively on the diffusion of dishes and recipes in the Islamic world. Ray Sokolov, in his ground breaking book, Why We Eat What We Eat, on the other hand is a bit of a skeptic about this arguing that in the Philippines, for example, lots of dishes have Spanish names but have nothing to do with Spanish techniques.
Recipes
Well, if you can actually trace written recipes from one place to another, that is terrific. Sometimes it seems to be possible with medieval Islamic cooking. In general, though, this only works after about 1500 AD. And until about 1900, the links are often pretty scanty.
Techniques
It’s incredibly hard to invent a new culinary technique. Just consider the idea that sauces, as in the West, should be based on emulsions. You’d think this was pretty elementary. In fact, almost all emulsion-type sauces have their origin in north west Europe. The same applies for many other basic techniques such as preserving meat in fat, making pilau-style rice, etc. So when you find a familiar technique, it’s worth at least considering that here is a case of transmission, not of independent invention. Karen Hess‘s interesing book titled the Carolina Rice Kitchen relies heavily on tracing techniques.
Historical Context
Dishes and recipes are part of culture. One very powerful way of tracing the history of culinary diffusion is to make use of what we already know about other kinds of cultural diffusion. I found this really useful when I was working on the Islamic influences on the Mexican kitchen. Since, for example, it was already established that many architectural techniques from al-Andalus as the Spanish part of the Islamic world was called, had been utilized in Mexico, it seemed highly likely that kitchen techniques would have been accepted as well.
I have no idea how you professionals cope with this, it is such a difficult thing to achieve. By training and profession I am a scientist, one thing that I have noticed in writing about food history in general or of a specific recipe, is a tendency for a very linear approach to be adopted, whereas to me a lot of the history of individual recipes and dishes looks more like a network.
Recipe A & B might have a common ancestor, but they may also be related through a whole bunch of other influences and they may have influenced each other over time as well. Only the quality of the data will allow the whole picture to become clear.
Another issue in looking at food history is the researchers themselves. These individuals are very much of there time and place. As we are discussing food and personal tastes in food are very subjective, then this influences the research and writing. To the Victorians it was the thought of rotten meat that was a bit of an obsession, I have noticed at the present time that some food historians are very aware of the amount of sugar in “savoury” dishes of the early modern period. Their slight revulsion comes across in their writing.
Another issue is the nature of the profession which is heavily weighted towards the artistic and technical standard of the writing itself, rather then the data. I am a great amateur researcher, but a mediocre writer. I have seen shameful examples of excellent technical writing with very poor data. One example would be of a professional food writer that insisted that Roman food was all disgusting and gave the example of how the Romans ate hummingbirds brains. Pointing out that in fact we know very little about Roman food, the few extant recipes that exist look edible enough and that as Hummingbirds are a New World species the Romans couldn’t have eaten them made no difference. Everybody knows that the Romans were disgusting and decadent, so therefore so was their food it seems.
I personally feel that what is required is more of a disciplined, objective and rational approach, rather then the ability to spin a good yarn and the requirement for a “end to the story”. In most cases the the story doesn’t have an end.
Hi Adam,
Thats for the deeply felt comments. There’s much room for discussion here. Perhaps another post. But some preliminary comments.
I’m not sure who you mean by “you professionals.” So far as I know there are no professional historians of food (if that’s what you mean as opposed to food writers). I am a geologist turned historian and philosopher of science who now, by a series of lucky events, can spend time writing and thinking about food history. So perhaps I am a professional.
About the genealogy of recipes or dishes. I think you’ve hit the nail right on the head. It’s bad enough that we cannot precisely define dishes. In fact we should be thinking of them more in terms of populations as biologists think of species. The trouble is that as you quite rightly point out species, however variable, do not generally re-cross-breed if you can use that term. Dishes do all the time. So I could not agree with you more.
About revulsion. Again I think you are right. I’d like to make it even more general. I would say when we write about history of food we should leave out all judgments about how it tastes. Taste is an incredibly subjective criterion and is of little help in understanding why dishes were or weren’t popular.
About poor quality food history. A ton of it out there. Not written by professionals because there are none. But cited by all kinds of professionals in uncritical ways.
So I’m cheering you on in your comments. And I think this change is happening quite rapidly actually.
One last point. I’ve always thought your writing clear, forceful and interesting. What more could one want?
In terms of what a “professional” means in this case, I guess it is rather a tricky question. I have been told that typically food writers in general make approximately 30% of their income from food writing and one exceptional food writer I know told me that she earns about the same as her post-man. On the other hand food scholars and writers do exist ( or at least I thought I met some at the Oxford Symposium) and many of these are involved in the history of foodstuffs. So in this case I think that a professional is somebody that calls themselves a professional.
Getting back to the original question I think that another angle is to look at the technology as well as the technique. I love looking at old pots (or bits of them) and you can work a lot of information about a dish from the vessel it was cooked in for simply the name of the cooking vessel/device. One example might me the use of the “Frankish” oven (European bread oven) in some Medieval Arabic recipes, rather then the usual tannur oven.
Another issue is that to do this propery I think that individual concerned has to be a generalist, flexible but able to reseach in specific areas in great detail also. For instance, I think that linguistics is hugely important in the right context, but so is an ability to interperate scientific data (such as some of the very interesting information being published on the genetics of domesticated plants and animals). Ideally the two types of research should be able to act in synergy.
Also another think to consider is the point that you once made that the average recipe had a lifespan of about 20 years (correct me if I am wrong). Maybe looking at individual recipes is the wrong thing to be doing. Except in the case of X recipe being “invented” by Y chef (largely 19th century onwards) what we are often really looking at is a family of related recipes/techniques that produce a recognisable type of dish. I make Spag. Bol. at leat once a month, it has changed a lot in terms of technique and ingredients over the last 5 years, bears little resemblence to my mothers which was my archetype and has little to do with a traditional ragù bolognese, yet they are all related and of a recognisable “family”.. I think that linking dishes as “families” might me more useful initially rather then trying to define the exact relationship. For instance does Harissa fit into the “emulsion sauce” family? If so does this indicate a North-Western European link, possibly via those Medieval Arabic “Sals” recipes I mentioned previously? Or is there are better family grouping it fits?