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September 11, 2006 10:26 AM

Is there a food/culinary theory equivalent to literary or film theory?

I know that the language of food critics could almost be confused with music theory sometimes: high notes, harmony, variations on a theme, contrast, etc. Still, I'm looking more for something like the aesthetics (especially via taste and texture, but looks and smells are important, too) of food as a medium for artistic or philosophical or emotional interpretation. However, for this exercise I'm interested in neither the typical culinary culture or history (let's call those food social sciences) nor the chemistry/physics of cooking (hard food sciences). Otherwise, feel free to link me to any academic--or pretentious, if you must--"reading" of something edible you've come across recently.

posted by glibhamdreck to Religion & Philosophy (12 answers total)

This magazine might qualify.
posted by LeisureGuy at 10:31 AM on September 11, 2006

Wine and spirits seems to get this sort of criticism. Wine Spectator, et al. I'm no oneophile, but it seems to be neithe rof the excluded categories you mention (i.e. history or chemistry). It has some of both of those, but then some stuff which seems to be neither.
posted by GuyZero at 10:41 AM on September 11, 2006

It almost sounds like you are taking cultural criticism and applying it to food/eating, which is different than food theory (which for me calls to mind Alice Waters and MFK Fisher). The slow food movement deals a lot with the aesthetic philosophy of food.
posted by mattbucher at 10:52 AM on September 11, 2006

Have you seen Gastronomica ?

I'm interested in neither the typical culinary culture or history
I saw that bit but this isn't what I call typical.
posted by special-k at 10:56 AM on September 11, 2006

I second Gastronomica. Michael Pollan's website (can't find the link) has some links to some smaller journals. I remember one I bought in England that had a ref to the earliest Tibetan cookbook ever found. The author went about making some yak stew type thing and got a lung infection.
posted by parmanparman at 11:01 AM on September 11, 2006

Response by poster: If Slow Food is Marxist, I'm looking for something more Freudian.
posted by glibhamdreck at 11:24 AM on September 11, 2006

You might want to check this link on molecular gastronomy, it takes to different resources. Quite interesting, that molecular gastronomy, some refer to it as "scientific cooking"
posted by micayetoca at 11:29 AM on September 11, 2006

Folklorists and anthropologists call this area 'Foodways'. It covers pretty much anything to do with the social use of food, from analysing the rituals of eating Kit-Kats and Oreos - to 'negotiations of abundance' at Thanksgiving and Christmas. If you have institutional access to jstor and the like I can post a bunch of links to direct research, if not, search out Alan Davidson's Oxford Companion to Food (US -- UK) - an incredible book that takes on the whole of the world's cuisine, fat-tailed sheep and all. Guaranteed to sate your appetite, har har.
posted by einekleine at 11:35 AM on September 11, 2006 [2 favorites]

In general, the answer is no. The aesthetics of food seem to be about multisensory interpretations, the most obvious of which are taste and smell. These do, as you mention, borrow heavily from the lexicons of other disciplines. That said, the theory behind tasting and olfaction tend to be mostly about the food itself. Commentary on other aspects of food rely on approaches that come completely from other fields.

Presentation, for example, often is 'read' as art (or at least artistic), with specific focus on color, arrangement, design. Most criticism that treats presentation uses language and analytical criteria that derive from visual art. Food criticism also often cites nutritional biology, and in doing so pillages the working lexicons of biochemistry and physiology. Food writing is a very transdisciplinary endeavor.
posted by NYCnosh at 11:41 AM on September 11, 2006

what einekleine said. there's an enormous anthropology of food; you're looking here at consumption, at taboos and totems, et cetera. there's a lot on the web. Check out Anthroplogy of food, for example... Is this what you're looking for? If so, yeah, get thee to a library and use JSTOR or ProQuest and you'll have an orgy of shit to digest...
posted by yonation at 12:14 PM on September 11, 2006

Response by poster: I think eaters make unconscious, or even visceral associations to particular tastes, based on their own personal/cultural nostalgia for those tastes, of course. Do cooks consciously play on those associations -- say, by combining the tastes of Thanksgiving, Oreos, and breast milk replacer -- to create a new experience?
posted by glibhamdreck at 1:00 PM on September 11, 2006

Aesthetic theory and cooking smash together rather wonderfully in The Futurist Cookbook. You should check it out.
posted by palmcorder_yajna at 1:18 PM on September 11, 2006