[Sca-cooks] Is cooking like costuming?

[Olwen the Odd]

I pretty much agree with you on this Margaret.  Food is art.  The whole
"pleasing to the eye" concept is a truism.  I have seen the same portions of
the same dishes placed on a platter or a plate and there is a definate
difference in which I would be attracted to eat.

Some of us take it to the next step as an art form.  For me, I suppose it is
a fun vanity that when I am anywhere near a table laiden with food there is
always "the look" from guests.  They pass their eyes over the table trying
to find the faux food.

After a discussion with a friend the other night when I was describing the
method I was going to use to create my next fun packet for one of you, she
said the stangest thing to me.  She said I think in textures.  I think every
cook worth their weight *has* to think in textures.  After all, food is a
texture.  It is also a colour.  I'm sure we have all seen a plate that is
covered in food all the same texture and colour.  It is not very appetizing
in my opinion.  I would be happier to find a variety of complementary
colours and textures.  In new world cullenary the odd shapes and contrast of
colours and the design of sauces is widly used to invite the eye.  In period
it seems that this was done to some extent in at least the richer
households.  Who would go through the exacting process of creating things
like that giant egg?  Or the cockinthrice?  The guilded food or the bird
inside the bird inside the ...?  Food as art.
Olwen

>I've always thought of cooking as the perfect sensual art -- it's the one
>art that intimately involves all five senses of the artists, and in which
>at least four out of the five must be equally well pleased in the audience
>[hearing being the least important for the audience, but, then again, think
>about the sounds of food being served and eaten, and how good food sounds
>make you hungry and bad food sounds put you off]. As far as I know, aside
>from (possibly) brewing, this is the only art that does this. While
>costuming is a sensual art, touch and sight are by far the predominant
>sense, the others are fairly peripherary.  And yet, cooking has a
>remarkably scientific, mathematical, orderly and cerebral side (in this, it
>is much like costume)
>
>toodles, margaret
>--On Sunday, January 20, 2002 6:34 PM -0500 Siegfried Heydrich
><baronsig at peganet.com> wrote:
>
>>   Unlike costuming, cooking is a perfect zen experience. It is
>>transitory;
>>it can never be truly re-created, and exists only for one perfect (or
>>reasonably close thereto) instant. When completed, all that remains are
>>memories, a full feeling and a touch of gas . . . Sic transit gloria
>>munchies.
>


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