Forging Communities: Food and Representation in Medieval and Early Modern Southwestern Europe ed. by Montserrat Piera (review)

Forging Communities contains thirteen chapters by multiple authors, including an introduction and postscript by the editor, Montserrat Piera. The work is divided into three distinct sections: “Part I: Connections and Transitions in Muslim, Hebrew, and Christian Communities” (chapters 1–4), “Part II: Food Choices: Ideals and Practices in Monastic and Lay Communities” (chapters 5–9), and “Part III: Food as Fetish: Gendering Sexual Desire through Food” (chapters 10–13).

In chapter 1, “From Kitāb al-tabīj to the Llibre de Sent Soví: Continuities and Shifts in the Earliest Iberian Cooking Manuals,” Carolyn A. Nadeau compares the anonymous fourteenth-century Catalan cookbook, Llibre de Sent Soví, with two Arabic-language culinary treatises written during the thirteenth-century’s Almohad Dynasty. Specifically, the author examines the Sent Soví’s connections with the anonymous Kitāb al-ṭabīkh fī al-Maghrib wa al-Andalus fī ʻaṣr al-Mawahḥidīn [The Book of Cooking in Maghreb and Andalus in the Era of Almohads] and Muḥammad Ibn Razīn al-Tujībī’s Fuḍālat al-ḫuwān fī ṭaiyibāt aṭ-ṭaʻām wa’l-alwān [The Delicacies of the Table and the Finest of Foods and Dishes]. Nadeau’s argument is twofold. She first highlights a common thread linking all three texts by identifying what she labels as “narrative bridges” or stylistic commonalities, such as “passion,” “authority,” and “awareness of the reader” (21–28). The author then moves on to a discussion of the continuation and cessation of the use of certain foods, herbs, and spices to elucidate a “culinary contact zone” which existed between Christians and Muslims in medieval Iberia (29).

Chapter 2, “Food and Death: Foodways and Communities in the Danza general de la muerte,” considers the inclusion of food as social commentary within the anonymous Danza general de la muerte. Michelle M. Hamilton and María Morrás provide an in-depth analysis of the work’s characters and their association with multiple food items. This includes an examination of the archbishop, the physician, the priest, the laborer, and the alfaquí, and whether they properly obtained or utilized the food which was at their disposal. The authors convincingly demonstrate that food is not only deployed in the Danza general to indicate status, class, and profession, but also to make certain moral arguments as well. The authors view “the imagery of food and consumption as symbolic equivalences of the moral-philosophical dilemma that is at the crux of the work, namely the conception of life and death and the way people choose to navigate each” (36).

In chapter 3, “‘Los que comedes mi pan:’ Food References in the Romancero,” Hilary Pomeroy examines the appearance of food in multiple Iberian ballads, reminding us that certain food acts “communicated an encoded message readily understood by ballad singer and audience alike” (56). Pomeroy asserts that the intentional inclusion of food in certain ballads could immediately evoke information about status, concerns about sieges, and even hint at upcoming plot developments. Furthermore, the examples provided demonstrate that this semiotic value of food can be found in ballads depicting people of multiple faiths.

Chapter 4, “Magical Morsels: Food in Morisco Aljamiado Incantations,” examines the role of food in the spells and incantations of two anonymous manuscripts written in Aljamiado between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries on the Iberian Peninsula. Veronica Menaldi shows that spells, primarily used by women, had multiple purposes ranging from improved memory to finding love, but also helped to disguise and preserve certain Islamic traditions under the guise of quotidian food practices. These magical...