The Taste Culture Reader

From Eve's apple to Proust's madeleine to today's culinary tourism, food looms large in culture. Debates about health and nutrition are common in news reports. Yet despite its fundamental relationship to food, taste is mysteriously absent from most of these discussions. The flavors of foods permeate social relations, religious and other occasions. Charged with memory, emotion, desire and aversion, taste is arguably the most evocative of the senses. "The Taste Culture Reader" explores the sensuous dimensions of eating and drinking, from the physiology of the tongue to the embodiment of social identities and enactment of ceremonial meanings. This book will interest anyone seeking to understand more fully the importance of food and flavor in human experience.

Explores the sensuous dimensions of eating and drinking, from the physiology of the tongue to the embodiment of social identities and enactment of ceremonial meanings. This book is suitable for those seeking to understand the importance of food and flavor in human experience.

Acknowledgments Introduction: 'Perspectives on Taste' Carolyn Korsmeyer Part I: Taste: Physiology and Circumstance Preface 1. 'On Taste' Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin 2. 'Chemical Senses: Taste and Smell' Linda M. Bartoshuk and Valerie B. Duffy 3. 'Culinary Themes and Variations' Elizabeth Rozin and Paul Rozin 3a. 'Flavor principles: some applications' Elisabeth Rozin Part II: Taste Cultures: Gustation in History Preface 4. 'Retrieving Tastes: Two Sources of Cuisine' Jean-Franois Revel 5. 'The High and the Low: Culinary Culture in Asia and Europe' Jack Goody 6. 'Taste of Luxury, Taste of Necessity' Pierre Bourdieu 7. 'Colonial Creoles: The Formation of Tastes in Early America' Donna R. Gabaccia 7a. Hoppin' John 8. 'Tasty Meals and Bitter Gifts' M.J. Weismantel, Part III. Eloquent Flavours Preface 9. 'Salt: the Edible Rock' Margaret Visser 10. 'Sweetness and Meaning' Sidney Mintz 11. 'Spices: Tastes of Paradise' Wolfgang Schivelbusch 12. 'Thick Sauce: Remarks on the Social Relations of the Songhay' Paul Stoller and Cheryl Olkes, Part IV: Body and Soul Preface 13. 'Food as Divine Medicine' T. Sarah Peterson 14. 'Food with Saints' R.S, Khare 15. 'Zen and the Art of Tea' D.T. Suzuki 16. 'Living Ramadan: Fasting and Feasting in Morocco' Marjo Buitelaar 17. Bitter Herbs and Unleavened Bread (from the Passover Haggadah) 18. 'Feasting with Dead Souls' Elizabeth Carmichael and Chloe Sayer Part V: Taste and Aesthetic Discrimination Preface 19. 'Of the Standard of Taste' David Hume 20. 'Objective and Subjective Senses: The sense of taste' Immanual Kant 21. 'Rasa: Delight of the Reason' B. N. Goswamy 22. 'Pleasures of the Proximate Senses: Eating, Taste, and Culture' Yi-Fu Tuan Part VI: Fine discernments and the Cultivation of Taste Preface 23. 'Of Gastronomes and Guides' Stephen Mennell 24. 'Champagne and Caviar: Soviet Kitsch' Jukka Gronow 25. 'Place Matters' Amy B. Trubek 26. 'Tasting Problems and Errors of Perception' Emile Peynaud 27. 'On the Zeedijk' Richard Watson Part VII: Taste, Emotion, and Memory Preface 28. 'The Madeleine' Marcel Proust 29. 'The Breast of Aphrodite' C. Nadia Seremetakis 30. 'Synaesthesia, Memory, and the Taste of Home' David E. Sutton 31. 'Food and Emotion' Deborah Lupton 32. 'The Pale Yellow Glove' M.F.K. Fisher 32a. Christmas Cake 32b. Sunshine Cake Part VIII: Artifice and Authenticity Preface 33. 'Artificial Flavours' Constance Classen, David Howes, and Anthony Synnott 33a. Rainbow Delight Cake 34. 'Taste in an Age of Convenience: From Frozen Foods to Meals in 'the Matrix" Roger Haden 35. 'The Play's the Thing: Dining out in the New Russia' Darra Goldstein 36. 'Identity and the Global Stew' Allison James 37. 'But Is It Authentic? Culinary travel and the search for the "genuine article"' Lisa Heldke Succulent Selection: A Select Bibliography of 50 Further Readings Juneko Robinson Permissions Index