A Taste of Home. Brussels 2012
Belgian Frites
Here they are. The glorious Belgian frites along with good beer and kidneys in mustard sauce. Beef fat is the answer, said Peter Scholliers, Director of FOST (Social and Cultural Food Studies) at the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels. He used to make them with olive oil. No comparison.
The taste of home, though, not frites was the subject of the conference sponsored by FOST. In the nineteenth and twentieth century, the time period the conference addressed, the taste of home continues to conjure up dreams of domesticity, childhood, and the family home, blotting out the experience of migrants, of war, of dramatic changes in kitchen design and ways of eating that different participants described. Since the organizers intend to publish these discussions, I won’t poach on that territory here.
As with any conference, insights peripheral to the major themes are another huge benefit. I shall not forget
- the East Germans protesting that they were not monkeys to the West Germans who tossed them bananas over the Berlin Wall. The problems of benevolence intersecting with criteria for being human. (Lynn Peemoeller)
- a clip of the gyrating belly dancer advertizing an early French couscous brand. Using the exotic to introduce new foods, something that others also addressed. (Sylvie Durmelat)
- a clip of an early refrigerator ad with women shrieking in delight at a walk-in closet stuffed with shoes and with men converging on a walk-in fridge laden with Heineken’s. (Willem Scheire)
- how modern food porn movies (Babbette’s Feast to Julia and Julia) use cinematic techniques developed for regular porn to create mouth-watering food scenes.(Fabio Parasecoli)
- cookbooks as a cue to how the French bourgeoisie incorporated the values of high French cuisine, (Nathalie Parys)
- how ambiguous Irish housewives found the modern kitchens introduced in the 1950s, often keeping their open peat-fuelled hearth alongside the electric stove. (Rhona Richman Kenneally)
- a photograph of Turkish Sephardic emigrants in Israel standing at attention in front of a monument to Attaturk. (Aylin Tan)
- the rush of cookbooks intended to help British housewives in early World War II betraying upper class assumptions of little practical use. (Gene Tempest)
- a survey about the taste of home in contemporary Britain in which the respondents picked up the anticipated cues, always talking about Mum and Dad, never my mother and father. (Julie Parsons)
- how the Americans expected spontaneous outbursts of gratitude from Belgians and other Europeans for food aid in World War I and how this made them think of Europe as a place needing help not a model.(Benevolence again). (Helen Zoe Veit).
Thanks to everyone. The commentaries by Panikos Panayi, Nelleke Teughels, Jonathan Morris and Peter Atkins were as substantive as one would expect from these scholars. The lady at Faro where the meetings were held did all the behind the scenes running about to made sure that we had projection, coffee and all the other necessities of a good meeting.
Above all, Anneke Geysen and Olivier de Maret made sure everything ran on time, read or arranged Skype presentations for those who could not attend, provided a helpful booklet with an abstract of each paper, a brief bio of the author, and emails for everyone, and found time to write and present incisive introductory and concluding remarks that reminded us what we were up to.
