An Interview with Ken Albala

Donald A. Yerxa:

You note that there are two distinct approaches to the study of past foodways: food history and culinary history. In which camp are you?

Ken Albala:

Unusually, I put myself right in the middle with a foot firmly planted on both sides.

Yerxa:

Why is that unusual?

Albala:

Academic food historians usually don’t cook things, and the people who are very interested in cooking don’t have the time, skills, or the desire to do the kinds of research that academics do. Also, they are not interested in the same kinds of questions. Culinary historians are interested first and foremost in the actual recipes and what the food tastes like. And that’s something that academic historians don’t have any interest in. They are interested in issues of gender, class, or politics. Academic food historians look at cookbooks and other sources for issues of “bigger” historical importance.

I should say, however, that things are beginning to change. Historians are recognizing that what people ate and what they thought about what they ate should be treated like other aesthetic endeavors such as art or music. And if you want to know what people ate in the past, you need to cook from old recipes.

Let me give you an example from a workshop I conducted in Vermont this summer. There is an English recipe from the Good Huswives Treasurie (1588) for smearing a rabbit. The rabbit is cooked in a vessel called a pipkin, a ceramic vessel with three legs that sits on hot coals and is sealed with dough so that none of the moisture escapes. If you analyze this recipe, it makes no sense. There’s very little liquid in it. A whole rabbit is stuffed into a small vessel with onions, raisins, a little drop of verjus, and spices. It doesn’t seem possible that the rabbit would fit in a pipkin, and even if it did, you would think it would burn. In fact, if you were to cook this on a stovetop, it would burn. But I have learned that you have to follow the directions exactly and make no substitutions. This particular recipe required me to make a pipkin myself. (I have a pottery studio in my basement.) I didn’t realize at first that a pipkin is rounded on the bottom, and for good reason: it enables the heat to be distributed around the circumference of the pot and prevents cracking at the base. This explains why medieval cooking vessels often had rounded bottoms. After a few experiments, it came out magnificently. And this smeared rabbit confirmed my impression that you really can’t know what’s going on with a recipe unless you cook it as authentically as you possibly can. Keep in mind that species of animals are different now; vegetables are different. And it is impossible to know in every instance what people in the past were doing with their food. So you need to put in a lot of thought and be willing to experiment.

Dining cars on an American train, 1905. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number, LC-USZ62-29464].

To get back to your original question, I’m trying to do both food and culinary history. I engage in the requisite historical research, but also do the cooking and eating. I have been teaching a course at Boston University this summer that combines these pursuits. A third of the class is devoted to a traditional history lecture; another third is devoted to analyzing historic recipes from an intellectual point of view; and in the final third we actually cook.

Yerxa:

There is so much interest in experiencing the past and exploring the extent to which that is even possible. It strikes me that the culinary approach to past foodways you are talking about is part of the same overall impulse that drives people to play music on period instruments or reenact Civil War battles.

Albala:

Indeed. It has always seemed strange to me that in, say, music it is perfectly legitimate for the Academy of...