Food History

A Feast of the Senses in Europe, 1750 to the Present

Sylvie Vabre, Martin Bruegel, Peter J. Atkins, Sylvie Vabre, Martin Bruegel, Peter J. Atkins

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367515584
• eBook ISBN: 9781000390964
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Eastern European History
• Index: History

This pioneering book elevates the senses to a central role in the study of food history because the traditional focus upon food types, quantities, and nutritional values is incomplete without some recognition of smell, touch, sight, hearing, and taste.

Eating is a sensual experience. Every day and at every meal the senses of smell, touch, sight, hearing, and taste are engaged in the acts of preparation and consumption. And yet these bodily acts are ephemeral; their imprint upon the source material of history is vestigial. Hitherto historians have shown little interest in the senses beyond taste, and this book fills that research gap. Four dimensions are treated:

• Words, Symbols and Uses: Describing the Senses – an investigation of how specific vocabularies for food are developed.

• Industrializing the Senses – an analysis of the fundamental change in the sensory qualities of foods under the pressure of industrialization and economic forces outside the control of the household and the artisan producer.

• Nationhood and the Senses – an exploration of how the combination of the senses and food play into how nations saw themselves, and how food was a signature of how political ideologies played out in practical, everyday terms.

• Food Senses and Globalization – an examination of links between food, the senses, and the idea of international significance. Putting all of the senses on the agenda of food history for the first time, this is the ideal volume for scholars of food history, food studies and food culture, as well as social and cultural historians.

Putting all of the senses on the agenda of food history for the first time, this is the ideal volume for scholars of food history, food studies and food culture, as well as social and cultural historians.

1Introduction

European food history and the senses

Sylvie Vabre, Martin Bruegel and Peter J. Atkins

Eating is a sensual experience. Every day and at every meal the senses of smell, touch, sight, hearing and taste are engaged in the acts of preparation and consumption. And yet these bodily acts are ephemeral; their imprint upon the source material of history is vestigial. Food historians have shown little interest in the senses beyond taste, and this book seeks to fill that research gap.¹ It puts all of the senses on the agenda of food history for the first time.

There is no doubt that historians have followed Lucien Febvre’s 1941 call to explore past sensibilities and emotions. They did so in spite of his caveat that ‘to pretend to reconstruct the emotional life of a given era is both extremely attractive and frighteningly difficult … The task is hard, the instruments rare and difficult to handle’.² Mark Smith’s book Sensing the Past: Seeing, Hearing, Smelling, Tasting and Touching in History and Andrew Rotter’s Empires of the Senses: Bodily Encounters in Imperial India and the Philippines, for example, continue the reflection launched by Alain Corbin on the ways in which human sensory perceptions reinforce, and sometimes complicate, social and cultural hierarchies.³

Our book wishes to elevate the senses to a central role in the study of food history because the traditional focus upon food types, quantities and nutritional values is incomplete without some recognition of smell, touch, sight, hearing and taste. The links between food and senses seem obvious as the vocabulary to capture the sensory properties of wine amply proves.⁴ But what role do colour, shape, crunch, fragrance and taste play in the choices and rankings of foods and dishes? Do these perceptions have a history? How and why do they change over time? What can history contribute to the understanding of our societies when it deals with the symbiosis between the senses and food? These questions are our starting point.

Each sense can be a discrete topic of historical research. However, separating each sense activated by food presents a somewhat impoverished image. In fact, all the senses are at work when we are eating. Thus, we can take them as a whole so as to seize a ‘balance of the senses’,⁵ a rapport among them which can appear in the form of a hierarchy or of a correlation. This ensemble is produced, it grows, it transforms, and then it sometimes disappears. Actually, the enhancement of taste indicates a dynamic, often hierarchical organization. In the same way, a crunch activates our sense of hearing initially, with the other senses staying in the background.⁶ All of this remains to be explored in order to evaluate and historicize the place accorded to the senses vis-à-vis food by 19^th- and 20^th-century society.

Previously, the senses have received little attention by food historians outside of the study of elites, of taste, of fashion, of ‘bon goût’. The theoretical and methodological implications of other perspectives have not been thoroughly explored in a scholarly context. This makes the book a unique venture opening new paths of investigation.

Attention to the senses sheds new light on traditional sources in food history. The new angle also encourages methodological innovation. Thus, in the present volume Maria Kapkan (Chapter 13) has worked on a collection of recipe books carefully copied and kept in Soviet home kitchens to explore the meaning of culinary creativity in the face of official norms. Or, Raluca Parfentie (Chapter 11) who, on the basis of Romanian newspaper advertisements, established a mental map whose coordinates show how gender directed the norms governing the uses of the senses. In addition, the online availability of digitized archival documents beyond the usual sphere of professional historians offers new insights. ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Contributors
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• ICREFH Symposia
• Chapter 1: Introduction: European food history and the senses
• Chapter 2: An equation of the senses?: A puzzle in food historiography
• Part I: Words, symbols and uses: Describing the senses
• Part II: Industrializing the senses
• Part III: Nationhood and the senses
• Part IV: Food senses and globalization
• Index