MAR 21

16. MAR 21

Assigned Work (Heavy Reading Day)

• Rachel Lauden, Cuisine and Empire Introduction and Chapter 6, "Christian Cuisine"
• Watch Mother Noella segment from Pollan's "Cooked" series (video file in Shared folder)

In-Class

• Minor point from Grocery store discussion -- Following the "logic of the grocery store", what do you think the next big change in food retail is?
• What is your culinary cosmos? (Notes from C1 of Lauden.) [1]
• Context for Christian cuisine: Biblical vegetarianism. The three plates of the Judaic food convenant. [2]
• Rachel Lauden, Cuisine and Empire Introduction and Chapter 1, "Mastering Grain Cookery, 20,000 to 300 bce", p. 1-55 (54)[3]

Mother Noella Cheese Segment from "Cooked"

• Story Mother Noella and the appreciation of creation through cheese. The bacteria come from the earth, from death, and hold the promise of nourishing life! A good example of culinary cosmos thinking.
• Story of the wooden cheese vat. Background on dangers of pre-industrial milk and cheese processing. She switches to steel barrel and gets ecoli bacteria. Experiment. Lactobacillus in the wood digest lactose in milk, turns to lactic acid which kills the ecoli bacteria. Health inspectors relent.
• Loss with "blank slate" processing. Less diversity of bacteria, less diversity of flavor.
• [US limits importation of soft cheeses, like soft Percorino.]
• US approach - lowest quality milk goes into industrial cheese making.
• Handling of cheese during fermentation determines flavor profiles and texture. "Feet of God"
• Mother Noella at 17:30. Death and the promise of life. Resurrection.
• Connection between cheese ecology and other ecologies like fields to forests.
• War and peace on the cheese rind!

Rachel Lauden, Cuisine and Empire Introduction and Chapter 6, "Christian Cuisine"

• 100-400 c.e. --

• Early Christian "communions" were simple communal meals, often in homes. Not unique to small sects. Separation of food rituals from Romans - don't eat meat sacrificed to Rome.
• Bread as metaphor for Christian community (read p. 168).
• Separation from Judaic food rituals - blood not prohibited, pork ok. Focus on humble low meat cuisines. Meat as luxury. Avoid alcohol and sweets. Fasts on Wednesday and Friday. Ascetic communities tried raw food diets. Cooking thought to be connected to passions. Early Christian take on some elements of Stoic thought, also about food.
• Garum, a fish sauce prized in Roman times, prohibited as it was thought to change cold and wet humors of fish to hot and dry, stimulating passions.

• 350-1450 c.e. --

• Constantine's toleration of Christianity in 313. Shift to Constantinople and Byzantine Church as Western Empire falls apart. Christianity becomes official religion of Eastern empire. Byzantine court cuisine closer to Hellenistic cuisine of Eastern empire.
• Laws ending sacrifice.
• No meat or dairy on half the days of the year. Influence of Galen's "Humoral eating theory"
• Expansion of Christianity into slavic lands. Interesting note on apparent "summit" in Kiev

• 1100-1500 c.e. --

• Increase in wealth in Europe led to pan-European Catholic high cuisine. Nobility of Europe increasing an intermarried network. Nobles travelled with cooks and cookbooks. Catholic monastic orders like Cistercians operated across Europe, maintained food and culinary traditions of Catholic cuisine.
• Theory of Christian culinary cosmos developed as reconquest of Arab domination of Europe led to recovery of Galen and theory of humoral eating. Also, Islamic cuisine influences: sugar, marzipan, almonds, eggplant (caponata), oranges "syrup," "sherbert," "candy" have arabic derivations. Disgression on the famous "La Pasticceria Maria Grammatico, Erice, Sicily" [4]
• Odd feature of high Catholic cuisine - use of disguise and fantasy. Sieves molds to shape foods into other shapes Read at 179. Development of sauces using blood distinguished Catholic cuisine from islamic and jewish. Meanwhile, humble cuisines varied by region and available grains, meats from small animals and birds more than cows and pigs.
• Technology - Promoted also by monasteries, mills became more prevalent. Big change in household food labor equation: An hour on the "rotary quern" a day for a family of five. Salted and dried fish (cod) come in from the north. (Still common in European food stores, not so much American.) Rotary Quern images

• 1450-1650 c.e. -- Global Expansion of Catholic Cuisine, esp of Iberian Peninsula.

• [Side note on Alfred Crosby, The Columbian Exchange [5]
• Spanish and Portuguese exploration and conquest: Cuba, Mexico, Aztecs, Phillipines. Jesuits to the East: Goa, China, Japan.
• Early global food industries run by Jesuits and order of nuns. Jesuits: sugar, cacao, and mate' from Americas. Nuns operated plantations in Peru, Mexico, Manilla, Macao, Guatemala, ...
• Jesuits operated major cacao plantations in Guatemala and the Amazon, shipping to their operations in Spain, Italy, and S.E. Asia. Played a major role in the technology transfer of chocolate making to Europe.
• European encounter with first peoples and religions of Americas sharpened differences of culinary cosmos. Some human sacrifice, unfamiliar foods: insects, bats, spikers, worms...

Catholics in Asia - Jesuits in Goa, India. More exchange, intermarriage, curries and sauces,

Importance of technology: Story of Maize processing. Mesoamericans understood how to treat maize with alkali (nixtamalization). Brings out vitamins like B3. Lack of this technology in southern Italy and the American south led to pellagra outbreaks (lack of B3).

• 1650 and beyond

• Emergence of Modern cuisines as European nobility decline, Protestantism changes view of culinary cosmos.