7. Loan dishes, loan ingredients.
This post is part of a series of questions (the earlier ones you can find here, here, and here) about what food historians could learn from historians of language at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery this last September.
Quoting from my paper.
7. Investigate the Role of Loan Dishes and Ingredients
Linguists use the term loan words for terms borrowed from another language. Would this help clarify the discussion of what are popularly called “fusion cuisines?”
Could it not be argued that much of what is often called “fusion” cuisine actually involves the incorporation of loan ingredients, using Asian spices, for example, in dishes that are basically Western in their basic structure.
And going back in history, would it not clarify discussions of events such as the Columbian exchange to distinguish exchange of cuisine (of which there was very little), of technique (of which there was also very little), and of ingredients (of which there was a fair bit)?
This is an issue about which I feel very strongly indeed. Accepting a foreign ingredient is not, absolutely not, making a fusion cuisine.
It may be my lack of exposure to the term ‘loan’ being used in this way, but when I think of a ‘loan’ I think of whatever it is composed of being eventually returned to the source.
Is this a part of what you are talking about, Rachel? Is there a bit of leaving a thing then taking it away back to wherever it came from (leaving the environment it entered slightly altered due to the effects of what was ‘loaned’?)
And can you more closely define the difference of a loaner and a fusion cuisine?
Karen, worthy of a long reply which will come, I assure you.
I’ve been thinking Chinese influences in Korea: cultural, linguistic, philosophical and of course, culinary. One gap that has always struck me is that Koreans don’t stir fry, not in a wok or a shallow pan. Frying in any form at home was not common at all in a traditional kitchen with a charcoal burning stove. And when it was done, pan frying usually involved battered things (jun), not moving things about rapidly.
So much to figure out about Korean food. Following the wonderful contributions by Donald Wagner some months ago, it seems to me likely that woks as a common tool for everyday use were a late introduction to the Chinese. Perhaps that accounts for their not making it to Korea.
An example of a traditional Korean stove, the kind we had when I was a little girl in Seoul, but we only had one burner.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/63/219925264_1ccc42bf5d.jpg?v=1168867143
It’s heated by large cylinders of charcoal and we had round bottomed pans made of iron, like the ones shown in the photo. I’m not sure about this, thinking a bit out loud, I wonder if the lack of stir-frying has something to do with the kind of temperatures achievable and sustainable with that kind of stove and also the real need before industrialized food chains to preserve seasonally available vegetables.
A great photo. We have to do more on this. And I think temperatures are also important. Even if you can cook the veg quickly, the rice (or lesser starch) cannot be hurried.