Post by Saionji Shonagon on Nov 23, 2011 1:54:31 GMT -5
www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520262270
Are you or do you know the kind of people who hoard stacks of "Bon Appetit" or watch programs on The Food Network but never ever actually cook those dream recipes? Well, according to Eric Rath's fascinating Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Japan, the Japanese were creating "food porn" centuries ago.
Rath's discussion of the history of Japanese cuisine describes as many or more foods that would not actually have been eaten as those that would. For example, elaborate ceremonial performances in which "men of the knife" would dissect and artistically arrange game birds or fish in front of feasting guests - and then not serve the resulting meat subtlety. Other dishes might appear on a banquet tray served in an arrangement that was visually coded to indicate it was for visual appreciation only.
By the Edo period, writers were publishing culinary books that described elaborate banquets that were not only beyond the reach of the average reader by virtue of sumptuary law, but would have been difficult, if not impossible to actually execute in reality because of sheer cost, availability of ingredients out of season, etc. The reader got to enjoy these fictional feasts vicariously by using his imagination, much as some modern viewers haunt the Food Network to watch shows about recipes they'll never actually make for themselves.
If you're hoping for a cookbook around which to design your dream SCA feast, this isn't quite it, though it does give one an idea what types of foods and preparation methods were available in pre-modern Japan, discusses culinary texts that date from the 1400s onward and includes as an appendix, the "Barbarian Cookbook" from the mid 17th century, which lists foods influenced and adapted from Portuguese sources. (Dishes described rarely have amounts of ingredients indicated, so experimentation would be a must if attempting to make most of the items therein.)
That said, I found this book well worth reading and I've got Dr. Rath's Japanese Foodways Past and Present on order.
Are you or do you know the kind of people who hoard stacks of "Bon Appetit" or watch programs on The Food Network but never ever actually cook those dream recipes? Well, according to Eric Rath's fascinating Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Japan, the Japanese were creating "food porn" centuries ago.
Rath's discussion of the history of Japanese cuisine describes as many or more foods that would not actually have been eaten as those that would. For example, elaborate ceremonial performances in which "men of the knife" would dissect and artistically arrange game birds or fish in front of feasting guests - and then not serve the resulting meat subtlety. Other dishes might appear on a banquet tray served in an arrangement that was visually coded to indicate it was for visual appreciation only.
By the Edo period, writers were publishing culinary books that described elaborate banquets that were not only beyond the reach of the average reader by virtue of sumptuary law, but would have been difficult, if not impossible to actually execute in reality because of sheer cost, availability of ingredients out of season, etc. The reader got to enjoy these fictional feasts vicariously by using his imagination, much as some modern viewers haunt the Food Network to watch shows about recipes they'll never actually make for themselves.
If you're hoping for a cookbook around which to design your dream SCA feast, this isn't quite it, though it does give one an idea what types of foods and preparation methods were available in pre-modern Japan, discusses culinary texts that date from the 1400s onward and includes as an appendix, the "Barbarian Cookbook" from the mid 17th century, which lists foods influenced and adapted from Portuguese sources. (Dishes described rarely have amounts of ingredients indicated, so experimentation would be a must if attempting to make most of the items therein.)
That said, I found this book well worth reading and I've got Dr. Rath's Japanese Foodways Past and Present on order.
