Cuisine and Language 7. Loan Words, Loan 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?” The more I think about this term, the more it seems to me to obscure more than it clarifies. Cuisines are complex structures with culinary/social/political/aesthetic/economic/religious/health/even environmental goals, rules for achieving those goals, techniques (overlapping with rules), ingredients, raw materials, etc etc. Very rarely do two cuisines fuse, if by fuse we mean meld all those elements to make a new whole.
Much more often there is borrowing of bits and pieces. Could it not be argued that much of contemporary “fusion” cuisine actually involves only the borrowing of ingredients. Cooks use, say, Asian spices or condiments in dishes that remain 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 at least in the west-east direction), of technique (ditto), and of ingredients, that is stored or preserved or processed raw materials (ditto) and raw materials, that is plants and animals (of which there was a fair bit)? I’ve blogged about this before here and here.
A curiosity of ingredient transfer, I just returned from a quick tour in Tunisia where the prickly pear plant (nopal) is used extensively as fencing and the fruit eaten but never any other part of the plant. The guide claimed that Tunisia has the highest per capita consumption in the world of tomatoes — higher even that Italy, which he claimed was in second place. I have not found verification for this claim but the FAO puts Tunisia as #18 in world tomato production. Compare — the population, at about 11 million, is about half the size of Mexico City.
That seems to be the fate of the prickly pear plant everywhere. Such a waste. Interesting about tomatoes in Tunisia.
my own mediterrasian fusion cuisine doesnt reflect this view at all (the borrowing of ingredients into a primarily western technique) – in fact, it’s often the reverse, mainly because, in the past, it was very difficult to get access to a wide variety of asian ingredients in crete, so i would use (and have stuck to using, for the sake of quality and freshness) mediterranean ingredients, introducing some asian techniques (eg making an asian wonton with a mediterranean filling flavour)
of course, my own fusion cooking doesnt meld all the elements you mentioned to create a new ‘whole’ cuisine, but i dont think the general meaning of ‘fusion cuisine’ as it is generally used in popular literature (that’s where it is mainly used in fact) actually means what you have considered as the meaning of ‘fuse’
Thanks Maria. That’s an interesting point. And I think it is a very modern one. I need to mull this over some more but my suspicion is that until recently and the spread of international cookbooks for most people it was easier to adopt ingredients than techniques. The elite of course simply imported the cooks who knew the techniques.
What do you think is generally understood by fuse? I’d be really curious to know.
I think you are more correct to use the word “borrow”, rather than “fuse”. We do borrow ingredients and cooking techniques from other countries and cultures, a practice especially easier now with internet sharing of recipes.
A little note on nopal pad consumption: I read that Japan imports more nopal pad products from Mexico than any other country in the world, as they value its health properties.
Kathleen
Thanks Kathleen. And if you ever get to the State of Guanajuato there’s a nopal drying facility in Silao that makes powdered nopal mainly for the Japanese market though you can also buy their cans in Mexico. You may have seen them in grocery stores.
fuse – again, it’s not the word that we often hear in food circles: we are more likely to hear the noun rather than the verb
without really looking into the topic, the idea of cuisine fusion is more of a modern one rather than something we would admit was happening in the past (altho that is how the cuisines well known in our own times probably derived from!)
fusion these days seems to involve creative explorations in restaurant cuisine, possibly out of a desire to incorporate a variety of ingredients/techniques into a meal; sometimes it’s successful, sometimes it isn’t
i have actually just finished a post about my own exploratuons into fusion – may i send it to you for perusal??
Yes, the idea of fusion cuisine is a modern one, largely out of restaurants where it’s now becoming a bit dated. It was taken up by food writers who suddenly realized that “all foods are fusion foods.” Well, true that all cuisines owe something to other cuisines. But fusion, not necessarily.
More generally it´s part of the debate about whether the local is swamped by the global and if not how to analyze what is going on.
Would love to see you thoughts.
the local being swamped by the global – well put, it describes what is going on perfectly; sometimes i feel that the restaurants in crete are slowly becoming the bastions of what was once conisdered traditional cretan food – i’d say most people are cooking along more global lines
Well, it´s very tricky. Lots of countries, Mexico is one, want to promote their cuisine overseas while protecting it at home. There´s just a teeny inconsistency here.
this is very much the case in greece too – but i really think it isnt working; what our tourists see in the restuarant menus, especially the nouveau grec ones, which are growing more popular these days, is simply not what people cook at home these days – it’s much much simpler, it generally follows the traditional lines, and is often modified for health reasons (eg the average cook will add less salt, or less olive oil, or will roast/grill/bake instead of fry)
I agree that that last fifty years are very odd in terms of world food history. Many of the old rules are broken.