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

[Susan Lin]

"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."

 I love the fact that we consider "modern stuff" things that are 200 years
old!!!
shoshanna
On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 2:52 PM, Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius <
adamantius1 at verizon.net> wrote:

>
> 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
>
>
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