[Sca-cooks] HELP? What makes a good book on Gastronomy?

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Mar 3, 2009, at 2:40 PM, emilio szabo wrote:

>
>
>> I am working, very very slowly, on a
>> modest monograph about premodern Japanese gastronomy.
>
> What is "premodern" in terms of Japanese culture, society, gastronomy?
>
>
> What makes a good book on gastronomy? Good question.
>
> Hm.
>
> You must know _all_ the sources and mention the relevant ones.

That's going to be difficult, of course. I'd say you'd want to know of  
as many sources as possible, and understand that you'll probably never  
get to all of them. The entire concept of gastronomy (which might be  
described, if a little capriciously, as living to eat rather than  
eating to live -- which is not simple gluttony, but a way of ordering  
your life with a certain degree of attention to how to eat, both for  
health and for the fullest possible appreciation of the world we've  
been given) is dependent on having a sort of non-subsistence level of  
civilization. You can't argue about the merits of one food over  
another if you're spending all your time scrounging for those blades  
of grass in a field that happen to have edible seeds on top.

> I appreciate authors who introduce their sources.
>
> You must show how cooking, food, eating, drinking are related to a  
> way of life.

I think this is key. I think there's a certain, for lack of a better  
term, spiritual component to wanting to understand eating as an art  
form of a sort. Some might argue that saying it is a form of worship  
is extreme; I'd make a case for it.

> You must write in a good and lively manner (I guess Adamantius could  
> write a good book on gastronomy)

I'd enjoy it, but I'd be afraid of turning out something like Kramer's  
Coffee Table Book About Coffee Tables. There'd have to be a little  
coaster built into the binding, to hold your glass of wine or ale...

> Nowadays, you also need pictures.

It would help, but it might be hard to achieve if you're writing about  
pre-modern gastronomy. Flandrin's "Fetes gourmandes" has some lovely  
photographs of reenacted medieval meals; a friend of mine took a look  
at it and said, "Where'd you get the food porn?"

> Combine global visions and sufficient detail.
>
> You are not supposed to make false statements, unless you have good  
> reasons to do so.

Would you settle for distinguishing between empirical fact and opinion?

> Declare to the reader if your book is a scientific book or a more  
> popular book. (Or which sections are written for which kind of  
> interest.)
>
> I fear, these are not points you didn't already know (some of them  
> may be far from the mark)
>
> ARE there good books on gastronmy?

Sure. Some of the writings of Confucius are on gastronomy (material  
presented as a sub-species of philosophy), and there are various food  
philosophy texts in the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans, and  
then there are some medical texts that deal primarily with diet  
(Andrew Boorde's stuff, say) that I'd say qualified. And then you've  
got the modern stuff, people like Brillat-Savarin, whose "Physiology  
of Taste" is still relevant on the subject after 200 years.

Adamantius






"Most men worry about their own bellies, and other people's souls,  
when we all ought to worry about our own souls, and other people's  
bellies."
			-- Rabbi Israel Salanter