Families of techniques or families of cuisines?
A quick response to Diana Buja and Adam Balic.
Diana, Glad to have your support for the idea that there are probably more mutually unintelligible cuisines than there are unintelligible languages. And as to divisions by rank, absolutely agreed. Indeed I suspect that almost all traditional grain-based “cuisines” were in fact a suite of cuisines–one for the rich, one for the urban poor, one for the rural poor–that drew on the same resources but were cooked and structured to reflect those differences. More on this (which will play a big role in my book on world food history) later.
Agreed too about the major differences between cuisines based on grains and those on roots–roots are such a pest to move around that city-based societies are almost all root-based societies.
Adam, thanks for your comments on techniques and resultant products. I could agree more that using various criteria to trace their history–name, yeast dough, spiral pastry–is really crucial. Some of the more interesting papers at Oxford this year addressed the question of names and dishes, most of them forcefully pointing out that the two are often only loosely connected, different names being attached to the same technique or the same dish, the same name often being attached to different techniques or dishes.
And I need to look up warka and popiah pastry! those are ones I have missed.
But I do not want to equate cuisine with technique, though techniques are an important part of cuisine. My cuisines here are really big, big units. Western Cuisine would include as subcuisines French, Dutch, British, American, Canadian, Australian (though here I am using national names as a shorthand. I don’t in general like equating cuisines with nations except in very special circumstances. Maybe there’s a Bantu family of cuisines in Africa. There is certainly an Austronesian family in the Pacific. I’d be curious to ask Ammini whether she thinks the cuisines of South India constitute a different family from those of the North of the country, perhaps with more in common with other Indian Ocean cuisines.
In any case, I would see your emulsion sauces as part of Western Cuisine with precursors in pre-Western (pre-1650) cuisines of Europe and the Mediterranean. Sorry if this sounds like double dutch but I’m drawing her on the structure of my book which I hope gradually to discuss with you to get your reactions.
To finish on the emulsion sauce thing, Pliny the Elder describes the production of one of these garlic/oil emulsion sauces. He was procurator in Tarragona, so the sauce might have been produced in this region for at least 2000 years and pre-dates Western Europe?
O.K I am with the big units, but in to use the language analogy to be part of the language family, a word or concept has to be recognisable as part of that family. I convinced that within Australia that most food eaten within Australia would not be recognised as “Australian”. In this sense a Australian cuisine doesn’t exist. I suspect that there are very few national cuisines in reality. And if there are cusines that follow national boundries precisely then I should fine that quite a concern.
So if something can’t recognised, I’m not sure how you define it, except by breaking it down into smaller units? Or is this years of reductionist training showing through.
Does the cuisines of South India constitute a different family from those of the North of the country, perhaps with more in common with other Indian Ocean cuisines?
I think it will depend largely on the definition of “family”. Because of geographic and climatic conditions, historically the cuisines of southern and northern halves of India may have developed separately. In ancient times traveling across the hills and forests at the center of the country was very difficult.
Major difference between north and south Indian cuisines is the staple grain that is the center of a meal. In Northern cuisine it is wheat and in the south it is rice. Invasions from central Asia and the establishment of Muslim kingdoms profoundly influenced northern Indian cuisine. Similarly maritime trade with Indian Ocean countries brought new cooking techniques and ingredients to south Indian cuisine. In spite of these differences, extensive use of spices remains the one unmistakable unifying feature of Indian cuisines.
For centuries both religions and foreign invasions also played an important role in the development of various Indian cuisines. Some of the distinctive features of Indian cuisine are derived from the use of ingredients (chili pepper, tomato, potato and tea, to name a few) brought by foreign traders.
From these ingredients to the present day fare of the fast food chains springing up in every major city in India, the Indian palate has welcomed them all; but only under its own conditions. With a sprinkling of spices, or mixing of ghee or yogurt, or with garnish of herbs or nuts, Indians have changed the foods of the Arabs, Persians, Chinese, Southeast Asians, Portuguese, British, Italians and Americans alike to its liking.
I am still thinking about all of this! Very interesting. Rachel, see note to you in FB.
I haven’t thought very much about classification of Cuisines. I wrote a book, “Penang Heritage Food” which is about cooking traditional dishes and heritage related to food. I have chapters on various influences on Penang heritage food – Malay, Hokkien (Fujian), South Indian, Thai and Hainanese (another Chinese dialect group).
The book was from my Nonya/Baba or Peranakan perspective, one sub-family?
I have a FB group – PenangHeritageFood if you are interested.
Found your site through Adam Balic
Thanks for writing. I will be following you FB page with great interest.