Nature and Purpose of Cookbooks - Essay Example

30 September 2008 What is the nature and purpose of cookbooks How do we use different cookbooks to accomplish cultural goals Cking and eating are the main prcesses in human life. Eating in and cking are an everyday activity that we ften take fr granted. By analyzing the activities that bth prduce and sustain eating in, this paper aims t shw the cmplex cultural prcesses that are invlved. This invlves a cnsideratin f the ways in which ideas abut the meaning f cking in the dmestic sphere are prduced by public discurses. It als invlves a cnsideratin f the cmplex negtiatins that take place in the private sphere which prduce the fd which is prepared and the ways it is eaten, and identifies the pwer relatins in which these activities take place. Debates abut eating in raise a range f questins that are central in understanding fd cultures. In particular, they raise questins abut the rle f fd practices in prducing, and reprducing the hme, the family, gendered identities and the relatinship between public and private spheres. The purpse f ckbks is t prvide peple with new recipes and help them t verify their diet. At the same time, printed ckbks als help t usher in a prcess f change, allwing imprved r imprvized versins f traditinal recipes t be passed n mre rapidly. Since the early develpment f such bks cincided with the emergence f 'a prfessinal elite f cks in the service f members f the upper class', the pressure t imprve and imprvize is itself increasing. The example f England and France shw that English ckery bks tend t have a dmestic, female target audience. Thus, while French ckbks tend t be aimed primarily at the prfessinal male chef, the nbility and the upper-middle classes, English bks are aimed mre at female husekeepers, and mre ften at lwer scial strata than their French cunterparts. The article "Rmanced by ckbks." Anne L Bwer depicts impact and influence f new cking culture n sciety. The authr underlines that ckery bks can perate as vehicles fr cnstructing an image f the natin, just as they are capable f negtiating certain frms f female dmesticity. Alternatively, ckbks 'invent and cdify new, verarching categries which make sense nly frm a csmplitan perspective' (ibid.). The authr, fr example, inflates a particular culinary traditin 'and makes it serve, metnymusly, fr the whle'. Increasingly, Bks n Indian cuisine als seek t impse a menu-like structure n the recipes they ffer. This helps t cdify and rganize Indian fd in a systematic manner but, in s far as 'Indian meals d nt nrmally have a significant sequential dimensin', it prvides a clear example f the cnstructed nature f 'Indian' cuisine (Swallw 19). Duruz, (1999) and Duruz (2994) state that the purpse f ckbks are t keep ld traditins and recpies. Fd practices need t be understd in relatin t the ways in which they prduce, negtiate and reprduce the nature f the relatinship between public and private spheres. Indeed, in Duruz (2994) study f cking, the authr fund that eating in was a significant act because 'the cked dinner marks the threshld between the public dmains f wrk r schl and the private sphere behind the clsed frnt dr'. 'Hme-cked' meals are seen as imbued with the warmth, intimacy and persnal tuch which are seen as markers f the private sphere and in ppsitin t fds which are the prducts f a public, industrialized and annymus system f fd prductin. It is fr this reasn that cmmercially prduced fds ften seek t add value t their fds by assciating them with 'hme', demnstrated in claims t 'hme-cked' fd in pubs and diners and 'hmestyle' ranges f ready-meals frm supermarkets (Swallw 12). The authrs underline that cking and ckbks can be seen as nstalgia fr better days. Ntins f 'a prper meal' are ften linked t nutritin. These definitins ften draw n a range f scientific discurses in which the 'gdness' f a meal is equated with whether r nt it gives us the 'prper' nutrients. Ideas abut nutritin are ften far frm bjective: what cnstitutes a nutritius meal in ne decade will nt be necessarily the same in the next as ideas abut nutritin are ften prfundly cultural. A 'prper' meal becmes attached nt nly t ideas abut traditin, but als t ur emtinal and spiritual health. Furthermre, this is nt simply abut what ne eats but hw we eat: the prper meal is at a table, shared and prmtes sciality and talk. The prper meal is als hme-cked. Here, the prper meal cnfrms clsely t the hme-cked traditinal family Sunday lunch. These ideas abut the prper meal are nt unique: they are reprduced institutinally, acrss a range f texts and in peple's everyday practices (Straw, 1). Ckbks can help mdern families t accmplish cultural gals prviding them with traditins and peculiarities f natinal cuisine. Cnstructins f natins and natinal identities have attracted a great deal f critical attentin within the humanities and scial sciences ver the last tw decades. This emphasis n natin frms part f a brader interest in identity, belnging and difference that have been central t the frmatin f cultural studies. While questins f identity are addressed at regular intervals, here we cncern urselves with the relatinship between fd and lcal, reginal and natinal identities (Stepte et al 82). Invited t cntribute t a recipe bk designed t hnr British fd, the Prince ffered basil and pine nut laf and gncchi with pest, recipes f Italian rigin. The recipes and the article qutes their justificatin: 'British fd is nw s eclectic that we include sme Italian recipes.' What may at first glance appear t be prblematic is in fact hardly remarkable, as the natin itself is far frm bvius. What may at first sight appear taken-fr-granted - the dminant r traditinal natinal meanings clustering arund such 'timeless' icns as the mnarchy, Pmp and Circumstance and Natinal Trust prperties - is called int questin very fundamentally by definitins f Britishness flwing frm cmpeting class, gendered r 'racial' psitins (Zen, 43). The meanings attaching t these icns will indeed vary cnsiderably amngst members f a multicultural natin at the cmmencement f the twenty-first century. The impact f freign influences n fd is lng-standing and has increased in recent decades. Its crllary, and arguably its explanatin, is a perceptin f native fd as at best medicre. Whilst the impact f freign influences n natinal fd is inescapable, we shuld nt assume that such influences are absrbed unmdified. Frm the utset Asian fd was adapted t suit natinal palates, and it is widely nted that the fd served in mst curry huses bears little relatin t anything btainable in the sub-cntinent (Steingarten, 17). This is nt f curse t anticipate the remval f Asian fd frm ther natinal tables: any shift frm restaurant t hme cnsumptin is itself an indicatr f a deeper level f absrptin int natinal fd culture. This absrptin has marked class characteristics. Ck et al. nte that the prducers f, amngst thers, 'authentic' Indian fds, target nly a small prprtin f middle-class cnsumers. With this penetratin f the middle-class market in mind, it is significant that the same Natinal Trust caf which prhibited lasagne n the grunds f its freignness ffered curry t its custmers because, in the wrds f the restaurant manager, 'seemingly curry is English' (Steingarten, 17). Cking is clearly instrumental in the identificatin f 'ther' natins. The distancing f self frm thse thers wh eat curry r spaghetti specifically, r in general frm cnsumers f 'freign muck', has cntributed significantly t the definitin f natinal self. The imagined natin which results, with its imputatin f a culinary purity wrthy f being prtected, is a far cry frm ur earlier discussin f perceptins f fd as a culinary desert, vulnerable t incursins frm abrad. Critics underline that peple shuld nt subscribe t enthusiastically t any versin which presents fd as unifrmly in the prcess f becming a csmplitan cuisine. ld prejudices die hard, and it wuld be inapprpriate t underestimate the cntinuing rle f xenphbic attitudes in expressins f natinal feeling (Warde and Martens, 1998). Critics bserved earlier the racist strand in the behavir f sme custmers in Indian restaurants. A further example is the 'freigner jke', very much alive in natinal ppular culture, and frequently fcusing n fd. Irish jkes are especially prminent, as in the definitin f 'Mick's grill' as biled ptates, saut ptates and chips. The chip-eating Belgians are cnstructed as the inferir ther against which the infinitely mre sphisticated fd tastes f the French are defined and endrsed. The bjects f these 'jkes' are frequently the nnmetrplitan and recently arrived inhabitants f the peripheries f dminant cultures. Analysis f 'heritage culture' shuld beware, hwever, f simplistic readings in which cultural frms are n mre than the 'reflectin' f a dminant plitical gruping (Steingarten, 47). At any given time a snap-sht f what seems mst characteristic f a natin will be teeming with cntradictins whse departures frm 'authenticity' wuld appear t undermine the very ntin f a natinal fd. Nne f this shuld surprise if ne mves beynd thinking abut the natin as static, as a gegraphical r plitical entity enclsed and fixed by thse physical bundaries recgnized in internatinal law. The natin is a fluid cultural cnstruct and fd is ne amng many agencies which participate in its cnstructin and the cntinuing prcesses f its redefinitin (Willetts 65; Wood 48). It is clear that cking and natinal cuisine is tday intimately bund up with this state f affairs; that ur activities as cnsumers f Kenyan green beans, r bananas frm the Windward Isles, are, t ne degree r anther, affected by, fr example, cnditins in the Kenyan labur market, r internatinal tariffs cncerning the exprt f bananas. The fd peple ate was nce determined by the cnstraints f time and place: it. was seasnal and lcally prduced. Nw, hwever, a wide range f fdstuffs is available all year and imprted frm the fur crners f the wrld. Critics register the pwer f a glbalize fd industry in terms f generating an increasingly hmgenized diet. Hwever, we als need t acknwledge that such prcesses d nt g uncntested, and they ften have t wrk hard t gain cnsent. At the same time, as we have argued abve, the lgic f glbalizatin nt nly prduces hmgeneity, but als diversity. It is t the issue f gastrnmic diversity that we nw turn. The ckery writer Claudia Rden claimed that "ur cking has becme a true melting pt - the jint heritage f ur multicultural sciety" (cited Wd 95). Subsequent articles went n t explre the range f ethnic fd suppliers available t cnsumers and extic twists n traditinal recipes. Eating glbally, it wuld seem, has never been s easy. We are all nw able t be csmplitan, smene wh feels at hme anywhere. (Willetts 97). Fllwing Thephan (2002), mdern cking prcess can be cmpared with the 'melting pt' apprach t gastrnmic diversity. This apprach is an ptimistic perspective which views changes t the diet as a psitive frm f (multi)cultural hybridity. There have been fur principal waves f freign culinary influence: 'in rugh chrnlgical rder, the Italians, the Chinese, the Indians, and the Greeks and Turks' (Warde and Martens:329). Alng with American fast fd, they have all prved successful in cnslidating their impact n the natinal diet. They have thus cntributed t the prvisin f 'increasing varieties' fr the cnsumer (Warde and Martens 327). Warde and Martens argue that this is ne f the hallmarks f cntemprary fd culture, and that it has been accmpanied by diminishing scial cntrasts in the diets f the ppulatin as a whle. It is nt necessarily the case that these tw features g hand in hand, hwever. In this sense, the cnsumptin f extic r ethnic fds arguably belngs t a mre widespread trend within cntemprary sciety twards the 'aestheticizatin f everyday life', fuelled by the cnsumer's 'desire (Willetts 97, 00). The prcess f glbalizatin increases tempral and spatial intercnnectins between peple in disparate parts f the wrld, and ur cnsumptin f culinary diversity is thus implicated in the wrking and living cnditins f Third Wrld prducers f this diversity. Webster (2000) traces the trajectry f the mang frm the Jamaican farms where it is grwn, thrugh t its pint f sale in a natinal supermarket. Alng the way, he describes patterns f farm wnership, Jamaica's farming plicies and exprt prcedures, the rle f supermarket buyers, and the marketing f extic fruit in the supermarket. He als cnducts interviews with peple invlved in the trajectry, recrding the grievances f the prly paid farm labrers and the feelings f guilt f the supermarket buyers as they return hme (Willetts 62). The exchange value f a cmmdity, its market price, is prperly a scial relatin, an expressin f the cst f the labur deplyed in prducing, distributing and retailing the cmmdity. A mang in UK supermarket Sainsbury's, fr example, currently csts 1.49, and this sum is an expressin f the varius ecnmic intercnnectins which Ck identifies in his analysis. The prcess f cmmdity-fetishism, hwever, encurages us t understand the price f the mang as a prperty f the mang itself. As a relatively expensive fruit, its price cnntes exticism and luxuriusness (Wilmtt and Yung 72). These cnntatins are, we might imagine, derived frm the texture and flavr f the mang itself, rather than frm the cmplex scial relatins f its trajectry frm Jamaica t the supermarket shelves. "This cnclusin is aided and abetted by the manner in which fd cmmdities are marketed, a prcess which in many cases tends t limit cnsumers' knwledge abut the cnditins f their prductin "Wd10). This is a regular feature f fd advertising, where it is ften used t distance the prduct itself frm the unsavury cnntatins f mass prductin. A magazine advert fr Baxters sup, fr example, pictures a pt f sup next t the raw materials ut f which it is made (vegetables and pasta), a chpping bard and a kitchen knife. Next t these items is a ntebk with the captin, 'Baxters make sup the same way yu d. It's just that ur pt is a little bigger (Webster, 2000). The prvisin f increasing culinary diversity, in ther wrds, allws cnsumers t advertise their cultural capital by demnstrating their knwledge abut the rigins f particular fdstuffs. This pssibility is perhaps mst clearly seen in relatin t wine, where the ability t 'lcate' the grape and regin frm which a wine is prduced enables smene t display their credentials as a wine expert. But it is als apparent elsewhere. Supermarket's in-huse mnthly, The Magazine, fr example, includes a regular feature entitled 'anatmy f an ingredient', which seeks t prvide cnsumers with in-depth infrmatin abut the rigins f particular fdstuffs. Glbalizatin threatens a sense f traditin by undermining the imprtance f time and place in terms f the fd we eat. The search fr rigins, f which Authentic Mexican is an example, arguably seeks t retrieve sme sense f authenticity in the face f this challenge. Marx's thery f cmmdity-fetishism, then, refers t a disregard fr a cmmdity's relatins f prductin, and we have argued that this remains a feature f glbalize fd culture (Wd, 10). The impact f glbalizatin n fd culture has been bth t augment hmgeneity and t increase diversity. What these trends bth share is the ability t disembed a culture frm its lcale, frging cnnectins with disparate peples and places, and substituting seasnal, lcallygrwn fd fr items prduced much further afield. As critics underline, the prcess f glbalizatin has nt gne unchallenged r unchecked. Bv's campaign against McDnald's in France garnered supprt frm acrss the plitical spectrum and he was celebrated as a natinal her, defending French culinary traditin frm the ravages f American fast fd (Straw, 1, Halligan 1). Ckbks tend t cntain nt nly extensive anntated bibligraphies abut their respective subjects, but are als peppered with a diverse range f literary and histrical references. It is perhaps nt surprising given the expectatins that accmpany the prper meal that many f the wmen interviewed in these studies felt frustrated and depressed by their inability t always match their practice with this ideal. Ideas abut what cnstitutes a prper meal are als cnstructed thrugh mre public cmmentaries. This wuld serve as a vehicle t discuss a whle range f issues abut the significance f the family meal. Sme f the cmmentatrs respnding t cking 'crisis' made it clear that prper meals are family meals, that mealtimes are fundamental t the prductin f families and that, in this way, the prper meal is crucial t the natin's physical, mental, scial and cultural health. Fr such cmmentatrs, the family meal is a practice thrugh which we prduce and reprduce human culture and thrugh which we recgnize urselves as belnging t a culture (Wood 40). Hwever, these reprts als rely n a narrative f cultural decline in which there is a nstalgia fr a 'glden age' f family meals that there is little evidence t suggest ever existed. Cking is seen primarily as a leisure activity in which they prduce a 'special', rather than an everyday, meal, reprducing the idea that the hme is experienced as a place f leisure, rather than wrk, fr men. Hwever, in the three husehlds where men made a significant cntributin twards cking, they felt little f the anxiety and guilt that wmen assciated with feeding the family. The cnsumptin practices discussed here are clsely cnnected with ther aspects f the circuit f culture, raising questins abut changes in fd prductin, plicy and regulatin, representatin and identity (Wuters, 2). In sum, cking cannt simply be understd as smething impsed n wmen as a result f patriarchal idelgy nr can it be understd as the basis fr an 'authentic' wmen's culture. Instead it is necessary t start by examining what cking has been made t mean, explring hw these representatins are lived and analyzing hw the relatinships between gender and cking are a site f struggle and transfrmatin in specific histrical lcatins and pwer relatins. The privatized dmestic sphere itself stands in a relatin t the public sphere in which eating gains a whle range f different meanings. It is t these issues that we nw turn. Pleasure is neither universally nr evenly assciated with the experience f eating ut, and we shall therefre prceed t cnsider sme f the tensins and anxieties experienced when eating ut is nt an unmitigated surce f pleasure. Cookbooks help people to keep old traditions and verify their duet. Cooking traditions are often seen as a part of cultural heritage and unique diet of an ethnic group or a race. Works Cited Bower, Anne L. Romanced by cookbooks. Gastronomica: the Journal of Food and Culture 4(2), (2004): 35-42. Duruz, Jean. Food as nostalgia: eating the fifties and sixties. Australian Historical Studies 113 (29-30), (1999): 231-250. Duruz, Jean. Haunted kitchens: cooking and remembering. Gastronomica: the Journal of Food and Culture 4(1), (2004): 57-68. Halligan, Marion. For cooking or looking 2002. The Age, January 8. Swallow, K. (ed.) Cooking Class Mexican Cookbook, London: Merehurst, 1994 Straw, J. 'Globalization is good for us', The Guardian, 10 September, 2001 Steptoe, A., Wardle, J., Lipsey, Z., Oliver, G., Pollard, T.M. and Davies, G.J. 'The Effects of Life Stress on Food Choice', in A. Murcott (ed.) The Nation's Diet: the social science of food choice, Harlow: Longman, 1998 Steingarten, J. The Man Who Ate Everything: and other gastronomic feats, disputes and pleasurable pursuits, New York: Vintage, 1997 Theophano, J. Eat My Words: reading women's lives through the cookbooks they wrote, New York: Palgrave, 2002 Warde, A. and Martens, L. 'A Sociological Approach to Food Choice: the case of eating out', in A. Murcott (ed.) The Nation's Diet: the social science of food choice, Harlow: Longman, 1998 Warde, A. and Martens, L. 'Eating out and the Commercialization of Mental Life', British Food Journal, 100 (1998), 3. Webster, S. 'A-Z of World Food', The Observer, 12 November, Life magazine Supplement, 2000 Willetts, A. '"Bacon Sandwiches Got the Better of Me": meat-eating and vegetarianism in South-East London', in P. Caplan (ed.) Food, Health and Identity, London: Routledge, 1997. Wilmott, P. and Young, M. Family and Kinship in East London, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1957. Wood, R. C. 'Dining out on Sociological Neglect', British Food Journal, 96 (19940. Wood, R. C. The Sociology of the Meal, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995 Wouters, C. 'Formalization and Informalization: changing tension balances in civilizing processes', Theory, Culture and Society, 3 (1996), 2. Zen, Z. A Cookbook for a Man Who Probably Only Owns One Saucepan: idiot-proof recipes, Boston: Lagoon, 2000. Read More