Global Migration of Dishes and Recipes IV
Here I’m continuing to muse on Richard Fletcher’s thought-provoking list of questions for an informal agenda for understanding conversion in The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity. I find his questions are a very useful way of thinking about changing tastes and changing cuisines. The fourth question in his agenda is what did potential converts expect of a religion (or in this case) a cuisine?
So what did/do people expect a cuisine to deliver? Health immediately jumps to mind. But there were and are lots of other expectations, such as social status, satiation, changes in the body, showing you belong to a particular family, nation, or religion, and so on.
To think about religion for a moment, many people in the United States and Europe today eat a largely secular cuisine. They don’t expect cuisine to have much to do with their religious beliefs. Even the Catholic Church has reduced the former rules about fasting to almost nothing (an interesting topic in itself).
But this is pretty unusual in world history. Indeed it’s still the exception today. Most people have expected cuisine to be connected with religion. Think of Mormons and Seventh Day Adventists, Hindus, Muslims and many others.
To jump back into the past, then, how did the great universalizing religions, Buddhism, Islam and Christianity among the more prominent, manage to connect to cuisine when they expanded rapidly from 200 BC to say 1600 AD?
Previously most people saw their ceremonial meal as a deal-making process. Around the globe, the ceremonial meal was the meal that followed the sacrifice. That is, you offered food (your most valuable food, meat, alcohol or other intoxicants, the best grains, the first fruits) to the gods who in return you hoped would deliver good harvests, victory in battle, many sons, a safe journey or what have you. Once the gods were satisfied, you ate the remains in a great feast. The sacrificial feast, then, was a very practical matter that linked foods, humans and spirits.
How were potential converts persuaded to abandon this satisfying event and the foods that went with it. What did they offer in return?
This may sound abstract and far off. But in essence it’s not that different from the problems nutritionists, governments, and virtuous food campaigners face today. They think the benefits of their proposed changes in cuisine are obvious. But their potential converts have their own, often different, expectations. Or so it seems to me.
