Newe Bokes of Cookerie

isn't always all that bad, FredericJameson once wrote;ifnothingelse, "thefoodis better." In America, at least,peoplewhosedietwas oncerestricted tomeatand potatoes ,meatand eggs,meatand sandwichbuns, and iceberglettuce nowfindtheirculinarychoicesmultiplied beyondimagining ,and they've embracedgourmandism as a nationalpastime. Freshoffa flight arriving in Birmingham or Salt Lake City,the hungrytravelersets offin search ofthe nearestsushi bar or Thai barbecuejoint - ifshe hasn'talreadysettledonheadingtoJEMCS 1.1(Spring/ Summer 2001) Review Essay: Newe Bokes ofCookerie RobertAppelbaum Jean-LouisFlandrinand Massimo Montanari,eds. Food:A Culinary History from Antiquity tothePresent.NewYork:Columbia UP, 1999. 624 pp. $39.95. Johnand Karen Hess, TheTasteof America, secondedition. Urbana:U ofIllinoisP, 2000. 390 pp. $18.95 p/b. Stephen Mennell,AllMannersofFood:Eatingand TasteinEnglandand Francefrom theMiddleAgestothePresent, secondedition.Urbana:U ofIllinoisP, 1996. 408 pp.$18.95 p/b. Michael Symons,AHistory ofCooksand Cooking.Urbana:U of IllinoisP, 2000. David Bell and GillValentine, Consuming Geographies :WeAreWhere WeEat London:Routledge, 1997. 256 pp. $25.99 p/b. Alan Beardsworthand Teresa Keil, Sociology ontheMenu:AnInvitation totheStudyofFood and Society.London : Routledge,1997. 288 pp. $25.00 p/b. Alison Sim, Food and Feast in TudorEngland.NewYork:St. Martin's,1997. 224 pp. $31.95. BruceThomas Boehrer,TheFuryofMen'sGullets: BenJonsonand theDigestiveCanal. Philadelphia:U ofPennsylvania P, 1997. 248 pp. $38.50. Michael C. Schoenfeldt,Bodies and Selves inEarlyModern England.Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. 220 pp. $22.95 p/b. Appelbaum 129 ward some versionofItalian, Chinese, Mexican,Vietnamese, French,Cajun, Spanish, or perhapsthe so-called"NewAmerican " cuisine. Ata typicalgrocery storein sociallyinsular Ohio, onefindsoneselfconfronted withthechoiceofoverfifty kindsof beersfrom macro-and microbreweries from aroundtheworld dark beers, lightbeers,hopped-upales, wheat-brewed lagers, oatmealand "chocolate"stouts,raspberry infusedporters - and inthevegetablesectiononefindstheiceberglettucebindwarfed byloads ofBibb,Romaine, red-and green-leaf lettuce,and openbin "spring mixes"witharugulaand radicchiothrown in- notto mention therowsofpackagedmixedsalad greensin severaldifferent blends,and theten-by-ten-foot salad bar located on the otherside ofthestore,across from a deliwhichmayitselfhave overfifty different kindsoffoodstuffs on display,from chowfun toBlack Forestham. Postmodernism has also had its destructive and dislocating effects, tobe sure:thereligiously observed family mealis all buta memory now,andAmericans areeatingmore junkfood, morefatand -sugar-loadedsnacks, moregreasyfast-food dinners,more highly sweetened vitamin-leeching beverages, andmoreartificially flavored and chemically alteredfoodstuffs thaneverbefore.Obesity ,especiallyamongchildrenand theless well-off, is nowbecominga majorhealthconcern.(TheNew YorkTimesrecently devoteda wholeweekofarticlesto this subject.)Moreover, the long-term environmental effects ofpostmodern agricultural practices - pesticides, growth hormones, genetic engineering, soil-and water-depleting irrigation techniques - are stillsomething to be feared, as are thedeclineofthefamily farm and themonopolizationoftheretailtradebya handfulofgiantchains. Moreover, mostrestaurants intheUnitedStatesarestillpretty bad- outlets ofa foodindustry thatdistributes mealsthesamewaythefashionindustry distributes raincoatsand sweaters.Butfoodis now a partofourculturein a wayithas neverbeenbefore.Atleast one foodchannelis availableon cableinevery majormediamarket .In manylocal newspapers, restaurant reviewsare nearlyas popularas thesportsscores,whilefoodmagazinesas wellas food columnsingeneral-interest periodicals continue toproliferate. And inacademiathereis something happeningas well:a newfieldof interdisciplinary inquiry, generally knownas "foodstudies."1 Mostoftheworkin foodstudieshas itsoriginsin an earlier generationofscholarship - thestructural anthropology ofLeviStrauss ,thehistory ofeveryday lifepromoted bytheAnnalistes, theethnology ofMaryDouglas,thehistorical sociology ofNorbert Elias. Butthepostmodernization offoodhas boostedinterest in 130 TheJournal forEarlyModern Cultural Studies thesubject,and a numberofotherdisciplineswithdifferent originshave come intoplay. Nutrition studies and researchinto thepsycho-physiology offoodhave beenwithus a longtime(as have their dark cousins, the manipulative sciences of food technology and consumerresearch),butnowenvironmental historians ,socialpsychologists, and evenliterary critics are getting intotheact. In a postmodern world,foodis notonlya text,like everything else; itis also an unavoidabletext,a textthatis constantlyin our faces, as it were,a textdense- yes, rich - with meaning. Ethnicity, nationaland regionalidentity, class and genderdifferences, economicand geopolitical displacement - all ofthese bynow standardtopicsin the human sciences finda particularly legiblecrystallization (toborrow Susan Bordo'sterm) inthefoodpeopleeat,and thestory ofhowand whyweeat it.So foodstudiesis hotand getting hotter. Academicpresses,italmostgoeswithoutsaying,have been hurrying to take advantageofthetrend,evenat thecost ofallowingmoretraditional kindsofstudytobe pushedaside. Several ofthe major and not-so-major houses, whichonce might havebeen reliedupontosupportthepublicationofmonographs in medievalpoetryand Renaissance politicalthought, are now puttingout series ofworksin the studyoffoodpracticesinstead . Theirmotives, ofcourse,aren'tentirely pure. Hungry for revenue,the presses are lookingforbooks thatwillserveas a kindofliaisonbetweentheirtraditional scholarly readership and a moregeneralpublic;textson foodstudies,thepressesseemto hope,willbe a crossoverphenomenon, apt to satisfyscholarly and populartastesat once. Butleavingaside thealreadyvexing problem oftheabandonmentofthemonograph - a problem that is notgoingaway,and thatthemajoracademicpresses aggravate , to theirshame- the results so far,it must be said, are somewhatmixed.We have someverygoodbooks on thetable, but we have some strangely unpalatablevolumesbeforeus as well. Probablythe mostimportant singletextin foodstudiesfor studentsofearlymoderncultureinrecentyears - butalso, alas, for American readersan especiallysorecase ofthecompromised conditionof academic publishingtoday - is...