tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-57255506141651950402024-02-20T10:40:38.823-08:00Devouring: Food, Drink and the Written Word, 1800-1945An interdisciplinary conference, Saturday 8th March 2014, University of WarwickDevouringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05714129012728644231noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5725550614165195040.post-43118508837885096712014-02-18T03:50:00.001-08:002014-02-18T03:50:34.625-08:00Extended registration deadlineIt's now less than 3 weeks to go until the conference, and we are so excited to welcome you all to Warwick on 8th March for a nourishing day of discussion! We have extended the registration deadline to <strong>Wednesday 26th February</strong> to give you all time to return the registration forms. <br />
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There have been a few changes to our programme over the past few weeks; you can see the most up-to-date one <a href="http://devouring2014.blogspot.co.uk/p/programme.html" target="_blank">here</a>. In addition to a full day of brilliant speakers, we are welcoming AVM Curiosities to Warwick to provide us with artistic edible interventions into food history! You can check out their previous fantastic foodie creations <a href="http://www.avmcuriosities.com/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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You can register by filling in the form on the Warwick website, <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/hrc/confs/food/" target="_blank">found here</a>, and sending it in to us at the address given. The cost is £10 for Warwick staff & students, £15 for students, and £20 full registration.<br />
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If you have any queries please don't hesitate to direct them to us at <a href="mailto:devouring2014@gmail.com">devouring2014@gmail.com</a>. <br />
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Mary, Laura & ChrisDevouringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05714129012728644231noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5725550614165195040.post-85400189031397085972014-02-03T02:16:00.001-08:002014-02-10T03:56:03.629-08:00Programme additions and registration reminderWith little over a month to go until the conference, here's a reminder to register, if you haven't already. We have a really exciting day of papers lined up with many brilliant speakers, and the whole thing costs only £20, or £15 if you're a student, with a further reduction for University of Warwick staff and students. You can view the full programme <a href="http://devouring2014.blogspot.co.uk/p/programme.html" target="_blank">here</a>, and register <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/hrc/confs/food/" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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To draw your attention to some recent changes to the programme; Sam Goodman from Bournemouth University joins panel 1A, with a paper entitled<span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span style="letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 20px;">'"</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px;">Oh for the want of vegetable food!": Experiences of Hunger and Privation in Indian Mutiny Diaries'. Jonathan Buckmaster from Royal Holloway joins panel 2A with his paper '"I'll be content to eat my own head, Sir!": Grimwig, Grimaldi and Excessive Consumption in the Dickens Pantomime'. We're very pleased to welcome both speakers and look forward to hearing their papers on 8th March.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">A final </span></span><span style="line-height: 20px;">exciting</span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 20px;"> announcement is that thanks to the generous support of </span></span><a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/scs/pgr/rssp/" style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 20px;" target="_blank">Warwick RSSP</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 20px;">, we are able to welcome <a href="http://www.avmcuriosities.com/" target="_blank">Animal Vegetable Mineral</a> to the conference. AVM employ food as an artistic medium, creating edible interventions into food history which stimulate the mind and the taste buds. We are thrilled to have AVM's founder, food historian Tasha Marks, joining us at 'Devouring' to talk about her practice and share with us some goodies inspired by nineteenth-century food adulteration scandals.</span></span></span><br />
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See you all on the 8th March!<br />
Mary, Laura and Chris.Devouringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05714129012728644231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5725550614165195040.post-12119200057876872922014-01-19T07:26:00.000-08:002014-01-19T07:36:13.768-08:00Some thoughts on recipe books and collections<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The idea for this conference was first seeded when Laura, Chris and I met over two years ago as we all embarked on our PhDs at Warwick. One of the first things we bonded over was a shared love of cookery books - we all confessed that we read them in bed like novels. Over wine and nibbles (naturally), we talked about our favourite writers, favourite recipes, which books had the best pictures, the ones we actually cooked from, the aspirational ones whose pages never got splashed with oil or tomatoes, the ones we came back to again and again, and the ones our parents had.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My favourite cookbooks encourage leisurely reading. More than just lists of ingredients and instructions, they might include a story about how the recipe came to be, advice on the seasonality of ingredients, or an anecdote about an occasion which made a dish so special, and plenty of beautifully shot photographs of the food. Nigel Slater and Tessa Kiros are cases in point.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As an undated annal, Slater's <a href="http://www.nigelslater.com/books_view.asp?nBook_ID=%7B459792A1-84CB-45F8-831C-515D54B74A0B%7D"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><i>Kitchen Diaries</i></span></a> does more than suggest the importance of eating ‘at a time when it is most appropriate, when the ingredients are at their peak of perfection, when the food, the cook and the time of year are at one with each other’ (although I think Slater does achieve that aim [vii]). It also has an invitation to reread and to remember built into its structure. Its insistence on the importance of seasonality inscribes the book with an invitation to come back to it again and again - it’s more advisory than prescriptive, tempting us to change recipes, modify their ingredients, and invent our own dishes. </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Tessa Kiros' work, and I am thinking particularly of <a href="http://www.tessakiros.com/tessa/my-books.html" style="font-style: italic;" target="_blank">Apples for Jam</a>, as it's the one currently on my shelf, intermingles narrative and reminiscence with recipes, with a particular focus on the inherited habits of her children; ‘they separate the food up into groups on their plates and save, just like I did, the best for last’(280). Its rich illustrations contain photographs not only of food, but of family, too, of well-loved toys and of kitchen equipment, and scattered amongst these are Kiros’ childrens’ crayon drawings. </span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUu7sacV9uWrAF5RpT-zunPnd6IuQsnQbbyLq2DCmtJPy7dn-oyxisgO6bTVlNMHbaoZbGJETQ1Hu-4uy0jW6qPBQuH1OuVR78gJ_3s7UNfOdr5pLE-Z79V1mGzt79RJ9X37fFRd8_DaM/s1600/2014-01-19+14.43.57.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUu7sacV9uWrAF5RpT-zunPnd6IuQsnQbbyLq2DCmtJPy7dn-oyxisgO6bTVlNMHbaoZbGJETQ1Hu-4uy0jW6qPBQuH1OuVR78gJ_3s7UNfOdr5pLE-Z79V1mGzt79RJ9X37fFRd8_DaM/s1600/2014-01-19+14.43.57.jpg" height="400" width="300" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fig. 1. My copy of <i>Apples for Jam</i>, replete with page markers for my favourite recipes.</td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Kiros evocatively describes her sensory engagement with foods which, when encountered, act as triggers for latent memories and reminiscences. A recipe for mango sorbet is followed by the following memory;</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">We always saved our mango stones. We tore off every scrap with our teeth and then washed and scrubbed them carefully, running our nails first in one direction and then the other until they were clean of all mango. After they were towel-dried, we kept our mango pets and brushed their lovely hair with our old toothbrushes. They still needed a bath and looking after now and then (110)</span></span></blockquote>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Kiros’ works play on the fragmentary nature both of cookery books and memory itself, and their intersections with materiality. </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Reading <i>Apples for Jam</i>, one feels a sense of intimacy that speaks to the importance of inheritance and community to domestic culinary culture, as Kiros describes the role that food has played in her experiences of family life, as both child and adult. Many recipes originate with others: ‘this is Harriet’s - my mum’s friend in Finland - a wonderful, stylish lady and cook’; ‘my friend Annabelle told me about this’; ‘these are from a friend of Giovanni...I made him hound her until she finally gave me the recipe’. The books are like a formalised, published version of the kinds of cookbooks that many of us have at home - the cookbook into which we insert recipes from friends and family, clippings from magazines, transcriptions of recipes from other books, recipes in letters from friends, lovingly transcribed or hastily scribbled - perhaps, now, recipes printed from favourite blogs and websites (however much we might enjoy online scrapbooks like Pinterest, I’m not sure they will ever render homemade cookbooks obsolete). These books are invariably the most-used on the shelf - in its short history, mine has required cardboard reinforcements and strategic superglue on several occasions.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Nicola Humble speaks of such scrap/cookbooks in the introduction to her excellent book<i> Culinary Pleasures: Cookbooks and the Transformation of British Food.</i> Humble talks about her mother's edition of <i>The Constance Spry Cookery Book</i>, which 'has acquired accretions of text', with annotations, modifications, and layer upon layer of insertions. These books, Humble suggests, 'become palimpsests, the original text overlaid with personal meanings and experiences' (3). Like the best collections, these books never stop changing and evolving. Andrea Newlyn, writing about nineteenth-century manuscript cookbooks, suggests that recipes contain a 'narrative structure that enables readers…to recreate the events - ingredients, amounts, results - that produced and formed the originary text', while simultaneously allowing each new reader (or cook) to 'reinscribe' the narrative before passing it on (‘Redefining ‘Rudimentary’ Narrative’, 44). For an example, see fig. 2 below, in which my friend gives me her version of a Nigella Lawson recipe.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj57OWZErGzM_n6nHV7sqzL_KJzO7Ed_PIiYfmw8DvVJOOswYLjKaBiRBOlQSLzabk0Nkhv0KyPY3GI9lbtUWm0NE4j8j6IQ3CBmDRCRWQ9bmA_MILSaloiUzTdLQ8RcfD10FWUYNGI28/s1600/P1150500.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj57OWZErGzM_n6nHV7sqzL_KJzO7Ed_PIiYfmw8DvVJOOswYLjKaBiRBOlQSLzabk0Nkhv0KyPY3GI9lbtUWm0NE4j8j6IQ3CBmDRCRWQ9bmA_MILSaloiUzTdLQ8RcfD10FWUYNGI28/s1600/P1150500.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fig 2. Nigella's Thai Green Curry (additional instructions by Hannah).</td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Newlyn notes in particular recipes wherein relationships are inscribed in the title; ‘Louise’s rock cakes’ or ‘Granny’s apple pie’. This kind of attribution, she suggests ‘is not only an articulation and reflection of community, but, more importantly, a designation that establishes a heritage of tradition and ritual in the form of recipes passed on from mother to daughter or from friend to neighbour' (43). These kinds of cookbooks, as they record cumulative knowledge passed between generations, can reveal much about the relationships and networks in which the women who write and compile them exist(ed). </span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUnYviFLZroPBONCW9ruPkh-Od1q7J_c5-_RDpP4oAhF8kl5xZLfxP8Zee4-BMHy8EPJZNx3U0k1M5LEYIqJ4mRxZ-tV9sySJXpOWE3Olq0sEZUlRMhzipIj8alSk_soKbVHF8yKnHCjw/s1600/DSCF4408.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUnYviFLZroPBONCW9ruPkh-Od1q7J_c5-_RDpP4oAhF8kl5xZLfxP8Zee4-BMHy8EPJZNx3U0k1M5LEYIqJ4mRxZ-tV9sySJXpOWE3Olq0sEZUlRMhzipIj8alSk_soKbVHF8yKnHCjw/s1600/DSCF4408.JPG" height="480" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fig. 3. Pages from my sister's cookbook, including recipes from friends and family</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid7el31T5PX6O-H5KrMbKYq6ZfWVVRI-Gra-N5IonUpfARk6MSvQT2QifYpTO098kyyfwoLO3hJVYL4UJ6RKfSyNyIhU7UYZz-kNc3BEp9WOJ4Ir3bYe2JKx-yFfoj0AmalZyOD8j2Pb4/s1600/P1150501.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid7el31T5PX6O-H5KrMbKYq6ZfWVVRI-Gra-N5IonUpfARk6MSvQT2QifYpTO098kyyfwoLO3hJVYL4UJ6RKfSyNyIhU7UYZz-kNc3BEp9WOJ4Ir3bYe2JKx-yFfoj0AmalZyOD8j2Pb4/s1600/P1150501.JPG" height="300" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fig. 4. A recipe in my cookbook for Sussex Sausage Casserole (from Steve's friend at work)</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fig. 5. My mum's made-up soup recipe, in my cookbook.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIdCcAIQLv7-s0pVwD1evaeppo5LJw6tfp3edMpcLSgTeymErTyo4QYshBgx1btjCisxXDNCzoxstz672ZUwt0b_vvBnsGfCYuYVpbOtrrlkHqg6ZXpkPBaGRb2O5-nQ0273SjeIbTysM/s1600/P1150504.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIdCcAIQLv7-s0pVwD1evaeppo5LJw6tfp3edMpcLSgTeymErTyo4QYshBgx1btjCisxXDNCzoxstz672ZUwt0b_vvBnsGfCYuYVpbOtrrlkHqg6ZXpkPBaGRb2O5-nQ0273SjeIbTysM/s1600/P1150504.JPG" height="400" width="300" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fig. 6. Dhal recipe in my mum's handwriting, on a well-used page from my cookbook.</td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The pictures above are from recipe books belonging to myself and my sister (figs. 3-6). But we’re only the latest in a long line of women to compile manuscript or scrapbook cookbooks. The pictures below are of a cookbook given to my mother by her mother - it contains recipes and remedies noted down by Anne Chamberlain, one of her (and - obviously - my) ancestors (figs. 7-9). Some of the recipes have attributions, some don’t, and what makes the book particularly poignant is that in 1793, Anne records her name as ‘Anne Cross’ - but by 1812, she is ‘Anne Chamblerlain’- and practices writing her new name on the inside cover. Anne took her family’s recipes into her married life, continued to add to them, and passed them down to the next generation (my mother and I haven’t yet cooked from this book - perhaps that’s another blog post).</span></span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fig. 7. 'Anne Cross - Her Book. 1793'</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fig. 8. 'Anne Chamberlain. Her Book. 1812'</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fig. 9. A recipe for plain cake (interrupted by instructions for making syrup)</td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">These compilation cookbooks are collections, of course. They share a strong relationship to material memory </span></span>with physical collections of objects<span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">. Like collections of stamps or coins, they're a personal legacy and often passed through family lines. But discussions about collecting behaviours tend to exclude them from their analysis. There’s clearly a gender dimension to this omission - historically, domestic cookbooks tend to be written and compiled by women, who, as Susan Pearce recognises, are less frequently identified as collectors. In part this is due to their absence from typical collecting records such as museum registers, but also because the history of women’s collecting is ‘largely domestic...in which collected material mixes...with other kinds of goods, and the whole forms a unity to which no dividing self or specifying self-consciousness is attached’ (</span><i style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">On Collecting</i><span style="font-family: inherit; letter-spacing: 0px;">, 207).</span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">This view of female collecting is particularly interesting in relation to cookbooks. Whilst the books clearly document women’s lives, they’re not merely self-referential. They record friendships, relationships, milestone events, communities and family ties. Baudrillard’s understanding of the collector as the constructer of an alternative discourse’ in which ‘the ultimate signified’ is ‘none other than himself’ seems redundant here. Instead, female compilers of scrapbook cookbooks are constructing a material archive that documents the relationships and networks in which the collector is implicated. If we read lives from cookbooks, the selves that we find are malleable, fallible, subject to change and revision, and, crucially, constructed through community.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Mary Addyman</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><u>Works cited</u></span></span><br />
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Jean Baudrillard, 'The System of Collecting', in <i>The Cultures of Collecting</i>, ed. John Elsner and Roger Cardinal (London: Reaktion Books, 1994), pp. 7-24<br />
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Nicola Humble, <i>Culinary Pleasures: Cookbooks and the Transformation of British Food</i> (London: Faber and Faber, 2005)<br />
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Tessa Kiros, <i>Apples for Jam</i> (New South Wales: Murdoch Books, 2006)<br />
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<span style="orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; widows: 2;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Andrea K. Newlyn, 'Redefining 'Rudimentary' Narrative: Women's Nineteenth-Century Manuscript Cookbooks', in <i>The Recipe Reader: Narratives, Contexts, Traditions, </i>ed. Janet Floyd and Laurel Forster (Lincolna and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), pp. 31-51</span></span><br />
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Susan Pearce, <i>On Collecting: </i><span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 14px; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0mm; widows: 2;"><i>An investigation into collecting in the European tradition</i> (London: Routledge, 1995)</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 14px; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0mm; widows: 2;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Calibri; line-height: 14px; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0mm; widows: 2;">Nigel Slater, <i>The Kitchen Diaries </i>(London: Fourth Estate, 2005)</span><br />
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Devouringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05714129012728644231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5725550614165195040.post-62817336302042388682013-12-11T04:12:00.001-08:002014-01-26T05:02:17.386-08:00Programme and registrationWe are pleased to announce the programme for 'Devouring: Food, Drink and the Written Word, 1800-1945'. A pdf version is available <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/hrc/confs/food/devouring_programme_final.pdf" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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We hope that many of you will be able to join us for what promises to be a very stimulating day - the booking form, directions to the campus and other information can be found <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/hrc/confs/food" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
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Conference fees are £20 full, £15 for students, and £10 for University of Warwick staff and students.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGkmQlRV646rEPbosTEaBh0NgmOoDUIGLjcsdQnQoCI3vkPoTXwXLNxx0c43-sUUiVkHeRLjMVJwqWDBDpuJVI2Qe6PQ3dtFU_F7lvXzdA69rZ3A5KyYzsTgFb7s_IXynZ-xfwvKFh1Lk/s1600/devouring%2520logo-2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGkmQlRV646rEPbosTEaBh0NgmOoDUIGLjcsdQnQoCI3vkPoTXwXLNxx0c43-sUUiVkHeRLjMVJwqWDBDpuJVI2Qe6PQ3dtFU_F7lvXzdA69rZ3A5KyYzsTgFb7s_IXynZ-xfwvKFh1Lk/s200/devouring%2520logo-2.jpg" height="155" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Devouring: Food, Drink and the Written Word, 1800-1945</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Saturday 8th March 2014</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Humanities Building, University of Warwick, Coventry, CV4 7AL, UK</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Programme</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">09.30 – 10.00am: Registration, tea and coffee (Ground floor corridor)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">10.00 – 10.15am: Welcome and Introduction (H052)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Mary Addyman, Laura Wood and Christopher Yiannitsaros (University of Warwick)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">10.15 – 11.15am: Keynote Address I (H052)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Dr. Margaret Beetham (University of Salford): Title TBC</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">11.15 - 11.30am: Tea and coffee break (Ground floor corridor)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">11.30am - 12.50pm Session 1</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Panel 1A – Regional, National and Culinary Identities</b> (H058)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Lucy Dow (History, University College London), ‘Imagining the Nation in Early Nineteenth Century Printed Cookery Books’</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Joanne Ella Parsons (English, Bath Spa University), ‘Surtees’ ‘Great Guzzling’ Gourmand: Eating, Hunting, and Making Merry in Handley Cross and Jorrocks’ Jaunts and Jollities’</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Dr. Sam Goodman (English, Bournemouth University), '"</span>Oh for the want of vegetable food!": Experiences of Hunger and Privation in Indian Mutiny Diaries'</div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Panel 1B - Aspirational Consumption</b> (H060)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Lesley Steinitz (History, University of Cambridge), ‘The Tales They Told: The Creation of the Healthy Ideal Through Branded Food Advertising, 1890-1918’</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Graham Harding (English, University of Cambridge), ‘“A change comes over the spirit of your vision”: Champagne in England, 1860-1944’</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Dr. Corinna Peniston-Bird (History, University of Lancaster), ‘“Yes, We had no Bananas”: Sharing Memories of the Second World War’</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">12.50 – 1.50pm: Lunch (Ground floor corridor)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">1.50 - 3.10pm: Session 2</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Panel 2A – Interrogating Excess</b> (H058)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Abigail Dennis (English, University of Toronto), ‘Reading About Good Dinners: The Ambivalent Gourmand in Thackeray’s Gustative Writing’</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: Verdana, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 20px;">Dr. Jonathan Buckmaster (English, Royal Holloway, University of London), '''I’ll be content to eat my own head, Sir!": Grimwig, Grimaldi and Excessive Consumption in the Dickens Pantomime'</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Dr. Charlotte Boyce (English, University of Portsmouth), ‘Onions and Honey, Roast Spiders and Chutney: Unusual Appetites and Idiosyncratic Eating Habits in Edward Lear’s Nonsense Verse’</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Panel 2B – (Un)Satisfied Appetites</b> (H060)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Dr. Angelica Michelis (English, Manchester Metropolitan University), ‘Feeding the Vampire: The Ravenous Hunger of the fin de siècle’</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Dr. Lesa Scholl (English, University of Queensland), ‘The Rhetoric of Taste: Reform, Hunger and Consumption in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton’</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Dr. Paul Vlitos (English, University of Surrey), ‘Supplying the Mob with the Food it Likes’: Taste, Appetite and the Literary Marketplace in George Gissing’s New Grub Street and Will Warburton’</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">3.10 - 3.25pm: Tea and Coffee Break (Ground floor corridor)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">3.25 – 4.25pm: Session 3</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Panel 3A – Digesting Social Reform</b> (H058)</span></div>
<div style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande'; font-size: 12px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: 36px;">
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Dr. Annemarie McAllister (History, University of Central Lancashire), ‘Temperance Tropes: Sensation, Sentiment and Narrative Legacies’ </span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Dr. Lucinda Matthews-Jones (History, Liverpool John Moores University), ‘Eating and Dining at Toynbee Hall, 1885-1914’</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><b>Panel 3B – Disrupting Domestic Femininities</b> (H060)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Dr. Emanuela Ettorre (English, University of Chieti-Pescara), ‘Rewriting Women: Thomas Hardy, Food and the Menace of the Impure’</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Janine Catalano (Independent Food and Art Historian), ‘An Unrefined Palette: Food, Class and Gender in the Work of Leonora Carrington’</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">_____________________________________________________________________________________</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">4.25 - 4.40 Comfort break</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">4.40 - 5.40 Keynote Address II (H052)</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">Professor Nicola Humble (Roehampton University): Title TBC</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">5.40 – 5.50pm: Closing Remarks (H052)</span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">5.50 - 6.30pm Drinks Reception (Graduate Space, 4</span><span style="font-size: 8px; letter-spacing: 0px;"><sup>th</sup></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> floor)</span></div>
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Devouringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05714129012728644231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5725550614165195040.post-39845476602156747432013-11-14T10:27:00.003-08:002014-11-24T15:10:48.028-08:00Mapp and Lucia and Lobsters<div style="text-align: justify;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">Recently, I’ve I’ve been lucky enough to find the time to delve in the zany, slightly psychotic world of E.F. Benson’s ‘Mapp and Lucia’ series of novels, which begins with <i>Queen Lucia</i> in 1920 and culminates with <i>Trouble for Lucia</i> in 1939.</span><span style="color: #b92d5d; letter-spacing: 0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">This reading has served duel purposes. In the first instance, it has been my bedtime reading, and laugh-out-loud bedtime reading at that. In the second, as I suspected from reading <i>about </i>Benson’s novels, some of the content has been very useful in terms of one of the chapters of my thesis which I have just finished re-drafting, and so I have been able to make reference to both <i>Mapp and Lucia</i> (1935) and <i>Lucia’s Progress</i> (also 1935) as part of establishing a ‘middlebrow’ literary context for the themes I later go onto discuss in Agatha Christie’s fiction.</span></span></div>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGm48THQt_2-4s6x3Zhg6hRRtBmKvwdTuGVL8DXAH4E9lnIZbR5Q3is3OSWalj4oNsmX8stZWi56qK_ru2I0VmSnIm1d_75iFIzs4EcFAaC57LTHc5z90d69myYrsETiZsf2t7IwLOgss/s1600/Mapp+and+Lucia.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGm48THQt_2-4s6x3Zhg6hRRtBmKvwdTuGVL8DXAH4E9lnIZbR5Q3is3OSWalj4oNsmX8stZWi56qK_ru2I0VmSnIm1d_75iFIzs4EcFAaC57LTHc5z90d69myYrsETiZsf2t7IwLOgss/s400/Mapp+and+Lucia.jpg" height="400" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">Now, I’m not on the pay roll or anything, but... given the choice, <br />why would you ever buy anything </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;">other</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; text-align: justify;"> than the Vintage Classics <br />edition?! No, seriously, why?</span></span></td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For anyone unfamiliar with the overarching premise of the series, ‘Mapp and Lucia’ depicts the vicious social one-upmanship between the odious Miss Elizabeth Mapp and the detestable Mrs. Emmeline Lucas (Lucia). Elizabeth Mapp <i>was</i> the unchallenged social queen of the small, seaside town of Tilling. However, upon her arrival in the town, Lucia, aided by her gay best-friend, Georgie (who, incidentally, she ends up married to at the close of <i>Lucia’s Progress</i>. Are you serious, Benson?!), adroitly sets to work ending Mapp’s reign of terror, so that she may begin her own. Basically, its <i>Mean Girls</i>, but in 1930s England, and, for the record, we are definitely Team Mapp: Lucia is an abominable bitch (and not in the likable way)!</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">One of <i>Mapp and Lucia</i>’s most pivotal battles is over a recipe: Lobster <i>à la Riseholme</i>. Upon serving this dish to her friends (and Mapp, purely out of social obligation) at a luncheon party, the enigmatic gastronomical sensation, which derives its name from the Cotswold-eqsue village in which Lucia and Georgie used to live, becomes the talk of Tilling for the reason that ‘no one could conjecture how it was made’ (191). Flying in the face of social convention, Lucia simply refuses to disclose the recipe to anyone. Unsurprisingly, therefore, the dish soon becomes the pointiest of the many thorns in Mapp’s side: The dish...</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">... had long been an agonizing problem to Elizabeth. She had made an attempt at it herself, but the result was not encouraging. She has told Diva and the Padre that she felt sure she had ‘guessed it’, and, when bidden to come to lunch and partake of it, they had both anticipated a great treat. But [...]</span><span style="color: #e63b7a; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;">lobster</span><span style="color: #e63b7a; letter-spacing: 0.0px;"> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><i>à la Riseholme à la Mapp</i> had been found to consist of something resembling lumps of india-rubber (so tough that the teeth positively bounced away from them on contact) swimming in a dubious pink gruel, and both of them left a great deal on their plates, concealed as far as possible under their knives and forks[.] (191)</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">After failing to charm the recipe out of Lucia’s cook (which was an act in vain anyway - it is Lucia <i>herself</i> who always finishes the dish), towards the climax of the novel Mapp sinks to a new low. Having gone out for a walk towards the river on a stormy Boxing Day afternoon, Mapp passes Lucia’s servants who are all on their merry way elsewhere for the afternoon. Thus realising that the kitchen at Grebe is, on this rare occasion, unattended, in a brilliant culinary metaphor on Benson’s part, the thought of sneaking into Lucia’s home and stealing the recipe ‘fructified into apples of Desire’ for Mapp (255). Having entered the kitchen via the back door, the recipe is not at all hard for Mapp to find: ‘There was a prayer book [...] bound in American cloth. [...] Rapidly she turned the leaves, and there manifest at last was the pearl of great price, lobster <i>à la Riseholme</i>. It began with the luscious words, “Take two hen lobsters.” (257) But, uh oh, this being the utterly dippy world of ‘Mapp and Lucia’ - a world in which, as Nicola Humble suggests, ‘the day-to-day minutiae of domestic detail [...] tip over into surrealism’ (60) - what do you think happens next?</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">[S]he heard with a sudden stoppage of her heart-beat, a step on the crisp path outside, and the handle of the kitchen-door turned. Elizabeth took one step sideways behind the gaudy [Christmas] tree and, peering through its branches, saw Lucia standing at the entrance. Lucia came straight towards her, not yet perceiving that there was a Boxing Day burglar in her own kitchen, and stood admiring her tree. Then with a startled exclamation she called out “Who’s that?” and Elizabeth knew that she was discovered. Further dodging behind the decorated fir would be both undignified and ineffectual, however skillful her foot-work.</span></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“It’s me, dear Lucia,” she said. “I came to thank you for that delicious <i>pâté</i> and to ask if-”</span></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">From somewhere close outside there came a terrific roar and rush as of great water-floods released. Reunited for the moment by a startled curiosity, they ran together to the open door, and saw, already leaping across the road and over the hornbeam hedge, a solid wall of water.</span></span> </blockquote>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">“The bank has given way,” cried Lucia. (258)</span></span></blockquote>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Yes! The frenemies are carried off to sea aboard the makeshift raft that is Lucia’s overturned kitchen table. <i>Bon voyage</i>, ladies.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Unfortunately, despite the genuinely mouthwatering descriptions of lobster <i>à la Riseholme </i>that we as the reader get within the novel, we, like the luckless Mapp, are never given an actual recipe. However, TimBris83 - a contributor to the online fan forum on <a href="http://nigella.com/">Nigella.com</a> - has taken it upon himself to recreate Lucia’s signature dish, much in the style our troubled but beloved domestic goddess, who has herself has displayed a penchant for creating recipes inspired by literary works. For instance, her ‘Mint Julip Peaches’ in <i>Forever Summer </i>(2002), are reported to have been inspired by her reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s <i>The Great Gatsby </i>(1925). As TimBris83’s recipe seemed both easy and delicious (if pricey), I decided to give it a go, and document the results. The ingredients list is as follows:</span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLpo7y2psLKWQSsn6mj-XFpcs3PTQgbzGaSDGsf2-o6A05A7XOEFrZCYTMQTrvPycnWvTckmwwV5PCYJt7lM5M1tzgZao5lmW758N3bbhztbldhA3wphnXl6pjX2XrKZjeOY_j7xWnd8k/s1600/ingredients.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLpo7y2psLKWQSsn6mj-XFpcs3PTQgbzGaSDGsf2-o6A05A7XOEFrZCYTMQTrvPycnWvTckmwwV5PCYJt7lM5M1tzgZao5lmW758N3bbhztbldhA3wphnXl6pjX2XrKZjeOY_j7xWnd8k/s320/ingredients.jpg" height="237" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Lobster (pref a hen)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">4 shallots (very finely chopped)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">3 tablespoons brandy</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">2 tablespoons marsala</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">150 ml double cream</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">2 teaspoons paprika</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">3 pinches of cayenne pepper</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">3 handfuls gruyere cheese (grated)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">3 tablespoons tomato passata</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1 pinch of salt</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">1 pinch of pepper</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">oil or butter (for frying)</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Obviously, this recipe calls for a live lobster, but in deference to the my-one-true-love Lawson (not to mention general wussiness) I decided to take the <i>express</i> route to deliciousness and get it pre-cooked and frozen at the supermarket. The crustacean still had to be prepared (i.e. - meat extracted from shell). On this front, I was expecting it to be worse to be honest, but thanks to this <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-jVjp4fFa0" target="_blank">informative youtube tutorial</a>, it was relatively easy (though outrageously messy). Seriously, I found it more of an ordeal to finely chop four shallots, which says <i>a lot</i> about my chopping </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">competency.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0PIJIOFEhfOTd6yAsvX0Y6Y0UwDRPSTSNMePWwgkc0bP3t_QnjU_Zh_9uQPCySSRcDJUlX9aV0OoIv1-xnGYlw55yla7WUbictwejvLr1cbYbhfxkdk7sIJd4MgZJSLa0xlw9jTGdN50/s1600/20131114_135556.jpg" imageanchor="1"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0PIJIOFEhfOTd6yAsvX0Y6Y0UwDRPSTSNMePWwgkc0bP3t_QnjU_Zh_9uQPCySSRcDJUlX9aV0OoIv1-xnGYlw55yla7WUbictwejvLr1cbYbhfxkdk7sIJd4MgZJSLa0xlw9jTGdN50/s320/20131114_135556.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Once all of the extracting, grating, chopping, and measuring had been done, the process was really very easy indeed. All I had to do was sauté the shallots over medium heat for about 10 minutes until they were soft and translucent. Then I heated the brandy in another small pan, set it alight with a long cooking match, let the flames die down and then poured the brandy over the softened shallots. I then added the marsala - an ingredient I has certainly heard of, and vaguely knew was some sort of fortified wine, but had never used before - and let the mixture come to the boil.</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Turning the flame onto low, the next step was to bung in the cream, paprika, cayenne, and pasata (not convinced of the authenticity of this, TimBris83, I’m sure Lucia would have had to skin and crush her own tomatoes - but thank God we don’t have to) and heated the mixture for a bit. Then time for the cheese: I added two handfuls of the gruyere I had grated earlier and whisked until smooth. Tasting at this point, I found the mixture a bit bland I have to say, so I threw in some pepper, along with a sprinkling of dried oregano and dried thyme, because, let’s be honest, what exactly isn’t improved with dried oregano and dried thyme. Tasting better now, the lobster meat was added in and warmed through.</span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6p_JDbLJvAL-CNhgdsQXbEC8-fpwS3mFS5JQ2OirLxAWyfC2jxhIWAb5HxOUNh_frw93OpFlcAqVTEPCE51UIisOee0eTbv4JSWM3cCbotp0h2-fVoEz72fTN2HL3gZsb0DQ5236hTUY/s1600/20131114_141913.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6p_JDbLJvAL-CNhgdsQXbEC8-fpwS3mFS5JQ2OirLxAWyfC2jxhIWAb5HxOUNh_frw93OpFlcAqVTEPCE51UIisOee0eTbv4JSWM3cCbotp0h2-fVoEz72fTN2HL3gZsb0DQ5236hTUY/s320/20131114_141913.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Any recipe that suggests the measuring of cheese <br />
in 'handfuls' is OK in my book.</td></tr>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Now, even for something conceived of as a nod to the almost bamboozling campery of ‘Mapp and Lucia’, I do feel that serving this in washed-out lobster shells is, dare I say, I tad <i>too</i> shi shi. As such, my vessel of choice for the final stage of the recipe - the grilling - was two small white gratin dishes. I divided the warm mixture between the two dishes, topped with the remaining handful of cheese, and placed under the preheated grill for a few minutes until the cheese was golden and crusty. Oh, and, although uncalled for by the recipe, I sprinkled the top with chopped parsley, because parsley is delicious and makes everything better (whereas coriander, on the other hand, is a plant that was placed on earth by Satan himself)!</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;">The result: well, it looks lovely, doesn’t it, and it tasted perfectly fine. But that’s all I’m afraid. It’s very rich, very cheesy, but even with my additions, its certainly not packing a punch on the flavour side of things, which, for a recipe whose ingredients costs me - I sob to think - the same as what I get paid for a week’s worth of undergraduate teaching, I was expecting something really special. Probably, its a case of it being just too old fashioned, and not appealing to more modern taste-buds (TimBris83 does indeed admit that his take of Lucia’s dish loosely based on an </span><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auguste_Escoffier" style="letter-spacing: 0px;" target="_blank">Escoffier</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> recipe). If I ever had some lobsters knocking about again, I would </span>definitely<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"> go for something lighter, fresher, more zingy, more vibrant: something which enhances, rather than over-powers that special lobster flavour. All in all, a nice idea, but a lobster dish which has not stood the test of time quite as well as the quirky interwar novel in which it plays such a pivotal role.</span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Chris</span></span></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0.0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Page references for <i>Mapp and Lucia</i> are to the current (2011) Vintage Classics edition of the novel.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">The page reference for Nicola Humble’s comment on the novel is to </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">The Feminine Middlebrow Novel, 1920s to 1950s: Class, Domesticity and Bohemianism</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;"> (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">TimBris83’s original recipe for Lobster </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">à la Riseholme </i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; letter-spacing: 0px;">can be found <a href="http://www.nigella.com/recipes/view/lobster-a-la-riseholme-2388" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></div>
Devouringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05714129012728644231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5725550614165195040.post-56622248369570848452013-11-01T14:14:00.000-07:002013-11-01T14:15:52.900-07:00CFP No more!That's it folks. The call for papers has now passed. The three of us will be hard at work over the next few weeks, deliberating, and most probably bickering, as we try to sort through all of the fantastic abstracts we have received. We hope to be in touch with everyone who submitted an abstract in the very near future to let them know of our decisions.<br />
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Thank you once again to everyone who took the time to submit something to us. We are thrilled that our conference has resonated with the work of so many researchers across a number of different disciplines, and across the globe!<br />
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Mary, Laura and Chris Devouringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05714129012728644231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5725550614165195040.post-90443778340439716592013-10-24T00:45:00.000-07:002013-10-24T00:45:21.990-07:00Abstracts: One Week to Go<br />
<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">A big ‘Thank You’ to everyone who has already submitted an abstract, and for all the other messages of support we have received so far. There is one more week to get your abstract in, folks. The deadline is Thursday 31st October 2013 (by 11:59pm, of course). </span></span><br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">More blog posts coming soon (Promise!).</span></span><br />
Devouringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05714129012728644231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5725550614165195040.post-6312244107754497432013-07-12T09:26:00.001-07:002013-07-12T09:28:18.742-07:00Ingesting the collectionToday's post is about food and my particular research interest - collections. Sometimes inspiration comes from the strangest of places, and who'd have thought that an animated film about a band of misfit pirates would get me thinking about different ways we practice and experience collecting? But that's just what <i>The Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists</i> did when I saw it at the cinema last year. The film, made by <a href="http://www.aardman.com/" target="_blank">Aardman</a> and based on the book by the very funny <a href="https://twitter.com/gideondefoe" target="_blank">Gideon Defoe</a>, tells the tale of a group of Pirates who meet a young Charles Darwin and - well. It's very convoluted, but essentially, they end up attempting to rescue the very last dodo on earth from the clutches of a maniacally evil Queen Victoria, who wants to serve it up for dinner in her fine dining club which specialises in consuming the rarest beasties in existence.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEEdcIQUr5zwPUMJalTtxIBvBjkoervT2RM1x4dEpM_hsfsbVPSn6g5Al1_wKC5E7v3rE-GUlUA39OG_pAN3BVhFvEkCFwRnf2E27q4a7NcVP4m5O9wToGFiy4XQm7AwLNdC5LVh0GiYQ/s1600/The-Pirates-In-An-Adventure-with-Scientists-14-791x600.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="242" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhEEdcIQUr5zwPUMJalTtxIBvBjkoervT2RM1x4dEpM_hsfsbVPSn6g5Al1_wKC5E7v3rE-GUlUA39OG_pAN3BVhFvEkCFwRnf2E27q4a7NcVP4m5O9wToGFiy4XQm7AwLNdC5LVh0GiYQ/s320/The-Pirates-In-An-Adventure-with-Scientists-14-791x600.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I wish I could give you the context for this scene, which involves Queen Victoria hiding in a dumb waiter and Charles Darwin covered in feathers, but....you're going to have to watch the film. <i><a href="http://www.aardman.com/features/released-features/the-pirates-in-an-adventure-with-scientists/" target="_blank">Image source</a>.</i></td></tr>
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Queen V's evil dining club doesn't have any basis in royal reality, sadly, but it does seem that Darwin was a part of something called the 'Glutton Club' whilst at Cambridge which he reminisces about rather fondly;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
My feelings overpower me when I think of the simple, the elegant, Glutton club & that day of victory and triumph & inward-glorying, which some call sublime, but the wise know it to be the full round feeling from a contented dinner (<i><a href="http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-148" target="_blank">source</a></i>)</blockquote>
Charlie, I know how you feel.<br />
<br />
The Glutton Club, according to popular belief, seems to have been a place where the members could enjoy feasting on rare species, particularly birds (no mention of dodos, which were extinct by this point), although I haven't found any reliable sources to verify this yet. Perhaps we want to believe this of Darwin because it seems like a disgracefully arrogant hobby, deliciously at odds with his fascination with the natural world and our image of him as a benevolent and gentle man of science.<br />
<br />
Another nineteenth-century figure associated with the quest to eat the rarest things on earth is William Buckland, a flamboyant geologist whose popular lectures at Oxford were attended by Thomas Arnold, John Ruskin, and Charles Lyell. Buckland is reported to have eaten mice on toast regularly, as well as puppies, hedgehogs, and, most outrageously, a human heart. The <i>Oxford Dictionary of National Biography</i> records that Buckland was on a mission to taste every animal species, and charitably suggests that this was part of a British mission to improve the diet and tastes of its poorly nourished nation. Stephen Jay Gould, in his book <i>Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle</i> also suggests that there were practical uses of this 'systematic gustatory survey', but nothing on the subject is recorded in Buckland's biography, <i><a href="http://archive.org/details/lifecorresponden00gordrich" target="_blank">The Life and Correspondence of William Buckland</a></i>, written by his daughter Elizabeth. Perhaps the relish with which Buckland carried out his task rendered the subject unsuitable for inclusion in his biography. Either way, the tale of Buckland's gastronomic zeal, like that of Darwin's Glutton Club, has proved rather compelling, and is gloriously recounted all over the web. Why are we so fascinated by these stories?<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6jUlr1BJNosFIF5BtdOEotY4uHOmAbReUCRTlAaZ5vDu78dajoP0ZLC6TUGOw5MdQjOT-sHnxGykErisDjbx3cfGMlsOhoJqO6eDg5p8HQj2wgFAo-UfCQTS93E2_eIsFHhbxFsnuefQ/s1600/505px-William_Buckland_(Claudet).JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6jUlr1BJNosFIF5BtdOEotY4uHOmAbReUCRTlAaZ5vDu78dajoP0ZLC6TUGOw5MdQjOT-sHnxGykErisDjbx3cfGMlsOhoJqO6eDg5p8HQj2wgFAo-UfCQTS93E2_eIsFHhbxFsnuefQ/s320/505px-William_Buckland_(Claudet).JPG" width="269" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">William Buckland looking surprisingly svelte (<i><a href="http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:William_Buckland_(Claudet).JPG" target="_blank">source</a></i>)</td></tr>
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<br />
Buckland had various interests in the way of food - he is recorded as taking a special interest in the diet of the boys whilst head of Westminster School, spearheading the reform of the school menu (a sort of Victorian Jamie Oliver?), and one of his research interests was in corprolites (fossilized faeces) and what they could tell us about the diet and digestion of now extinct creatures, which actually led him to some significant paleontological insights. One of his pupils recounted his memories of Buckland for <i>The Life and Correspondence</i>, including this brilliant but possibly terrifying episode from an undergraduate lecture;<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
He had in his hand a huge hyena's skull. He suddenly dashed down the steps, rushed, skull in hand, at the first undergraduate on the front bench and shouted, "What rules the world?" The youth, terrified, threw himself against the next back seat, and answered not a word. He rushed then on me, pointing the hyena full in my face; "What rules the world?" "I haven't an idea", I said. "The stomach, sir" he cried (again mounting his rostrum), "rules the world. The great ones eat the less, and the less the lesser still."</blockquote>
I think Buckland's onto something here - eating as an act of power. There's a reason we use the analogy of the food chain to talk about hierarchies and power relationships. In fact, if Buckland's bizarre eating habits were merely a way of carrying out the exploratory culinary aims of the Zoological Society which he helped to found, wasn't he doing so with the aim of creating a strong, imperial nation, one with healthy and robust citizens capable of commanding the empire? Wouldn't his acts of eating then be constructed as potential acts of dominance, not only over the poor creatures on his plate, but also the people of the British colonies?<br />
<br />
In many ways, the purported pursuits of Buckland and the Glutton Club are a kind of collecting strategy, only they're not arranging their collections beautifully in cabinets, they're ingesting them. Just as some theories of collecting behaviour see such activity as a material strategy for asserting personal, institutional, or even national dominance, we can read this kind of eating/collecting as another such strategy. The desire to incorporate, which eating as collecting seems to suggest, confirms the theory that all collections lead ultimately back to the collector, which might be an individual or an entity as large as the state. <i>Pirates! In An Adventure with Scientists</i> suggests this directly, through the figure of Victoria, the Empress.<br />
<br />
To sign off, two things.<br />
<br />
Firstly, for a fantastic post on this kind of encyclopaedic eating, (and a picture of Queen Victoria's game larder in 1857 - perhaps she was part of a scoffer's club after all?!) check out Ivan Day's blog <a href="http://foodhistorjottings.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/eat-entire-creation-if-you-will.html" target="_blank">Food History Jottings</a>.<br />
<br />
Secondly, a marvellous quote from famous collector, Catherine the Great, which I found in Werner Muensterberger's book <i>Collecting: An Unruly Passion</i>. Quizzed on her motivation for collecting, Catherine says<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
It is not for love of art; it is voraciousness. I am not an amateur. I am a gourmandizer.</blockquote>
<br />
<br />
Mary Addyman<br />
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Devouringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05714129012728644231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5725550614165195040.post-67321830596507151982013-06-11T06:09:00.000-07:002013-06-11T09:07:53.797-07:00Scandal, Horseburgers, and Food adulteration in the Nineteenth Century<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><a href="http://punch.photoshelter.com/image/I0000RhREUQ_DxWc" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgiN8AqMNfxttoUGnATyRkO0vpvtoYdfnTqy8Ba9OB18wKXdaw92Wyb5N9PoKdPiiguLckKWU23Qr1hIxZuWHQtJILOgme4ofeNlDq-bK_nvryioNYBd-tmcI9exYzsIgyGKKxYASuNnc4/s400/John-Leech-Cartoons-Punch-1858-11-20-207.jpg" width="307"></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://punch.photoshelter.com/image/I0000RhREUQ_DxWc" target="_blank">John Leech, Punch Magazine, 1858. </a></td></tr>
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We may think of food adulteration as a problem of our own time. After all, in recent weeks we have been bombarded with stories about horsemeat scandals hitting everything from frozen beefburgers to our beloved <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/feb/25/horsemeat-scandal-ikea-meatballs-uk" target="_blank">Ikea meatballs</a> (say it isn’t so!). As the <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2013/may/03/waitrose-sales-avoiding-horsemeat-scandal" target="_blank">British public turn to Waitrose</a> in desperation it is worth reflecting on the fact that for the average citizen of the nineteenth century a little horsemeat in their cottage pie was the least of their worries. In fact, food adulteration in the nineteenth century was rife, and was particularly disquieting as it was frequently revealed that staple foodstuffs such as bread, milk, tea and butter had been compromised as distributors tried to improve the appearance of their goods by adding chalk, alum, copper- or an incredible array of other unsavoury and downright dangerous items- during production.<br>
<br>
The first official census, taken in 1801, revealed that England and Wales contained a total population of 8,900,000 people- barely more than one third the total of France- however within the next decade this figure increased by nearly another 1.5 million, and by 1851 the population reached eighteen million. Such a population explosion led to an inevitable distancing between producer and consumer. Rather than buying your milk from the farmer up the road who would be sure to lose custom if he sold a below par product, anonymity began to creep in, and it was harder to hold producers to a certain standard. Not only this, but urbanization meant that city dwellers working in factories or other industrial trades had not got the means, access to land, or time to grow and produce their own food.<br>
<br>
Although complaints against bakers, millers, and grocers had been raised by the public during the eighteenth century, little notice was taken of reports which were considered exaggerated or biased. However, in 1820 Friedrich Accum published his Treatise on Adulterations of Food and Culinary Poisons, and the subject was finally treated methodically, in a scientific manner, and by a highly rated analytical chemist. With the terrifying subtitle of “Exhibiting the fraudulent sophistications of bread, beer, wine, spirituous liquors, tea, coffee, cream, confectionery, vinegar, mustard, pepper, cheese, olive oil, pickles, and other articles employed in domestic economy, and methods of detecting them”, Accum left his readers in little doubt that adulteration was wide spread. In his introduction he writes that this “unprincipled and nefarious practice, increasing in degree as it has been found difficult of detection, is now applied to almost every commodity which can be classed among either the necessaries or the luxuries of life, and is carried on to a most alarming extent in every part of the United Kingdom.” (see Accum, 14) His book not only explains relatively simple experiments that can be done at home to discover the level of adulteration in the food you are about to place on the table, but lists extensively druggists, grocers, brewers, and publicans prosecuted and convicted of the adulteration of beer.<br>
Accum’s book was a great success at the time of publication, the first edition sold out in less than a month, and within two years, it would go into its fourth reprint. However, In 1821 Accum’s career in England came to an abrupt end when he was involved in a scandal, accused of mutilating books in the Royal Institute’s library. Accum’s work fell out of favour and he left the country in disgrace. (I think this sounds like the makings of a James Bond film, and would love to find out more about this shady accusation of book mutilation, which came complete with search warrants and torn book pages.)<br>
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The imposition of food adulteration into the domestic sphere through the family dining table adds an extra element of the unsettling to the issue, and this added edge provided the press of the time with a hard-hitting image that they could sell to the public. The idea that the mother nurturing her child through the provision of such wholesome cornerstones of nutrition as bread and butter could, in fact, be delivering little short of poison into their mouths was alarming enough to permeate the public consciousness, and food adulteration was widely discussed and feared.<br>
<br>
Following Accum’s withdrawal from the country the furor surrounding food adulteration died down, but the issue remained in the public consciousness, and it was inevitable that it would evolve into a legislative concern at some point. The year 1850 marks a significant development in the history of food adulteration when Dr Arthur Hassall, physician and lecturer on medicine at the Royal Free Hospital lead an inquiry for the Lancet journal. Between 1851 and 1854 the journal printed weekly reports covering 2,400 analyses of major articles of food and drink. Hassall was the first investigator to make significant use of the microscope when searching for adulteration. The editor of the journal, Thomas Wakley, also published the names and addresses of those manufacturers whose wares were found to be adulterated. Only one accusation of adulteration was ever challenged and this was by a retailer whose goods had been adulterated without his knowledge. Hassall’s report meant that the public were now very much awake to the issue of adulteration, and in 1855 Tennyson makes cutting reference to the scandal in his poem ‘Maud’ as he decries the state of man’s “lust of gain”, asking “who but a fool would have faith in a tradesman’s ware or his word?” and citing not only the adulteration of wine and drugs, but that “chalk and alum and plaster are sold to the poor for bread,/And the spirit of murder works in the very means of life” However, it would be another five years before any legislation would be passed . In 1860 the first Adulteration of Foods Act was passed, and in this same year, Dr Edward Lankester demonstrated that the use of poisonous colouring matters in food were still common, citing recent cases in which three people had died after a public banquet at which they had eaten green blancmange containing arsenite of copper, and of yellow Bath buns which owed their colour to sulphide of arsenic. The reason for the bill’s failure was that the onus was placed on the individual, who had to pay for the privilege of information regarding the purity of the food and drink they were buying. The Bill as it stood could never work effectively, and in 1868 a series of aggressive amendments were proposed to parliament and modified versions of these were eventually passed into law in 1872 as the Adulteration of Food, Drink, and Drugs Act. After numerous complaints about the weaknesses that remained present in the amended Act, the government appointed a new Select Committee in 1874, the result of which was the passing of the Sale of Food and Drugs act in 1875 which – with many amendments- forms the basis of the legislation we are clinging to today.<br>
<br>
Laura<br>
<br>
If you are looking for further reading, and a lot more information on this fascinating topic I would definitely recommend looking at the following:<br>
<br>
Friedrich Accum, A Treatise on Adulterations of Food, (London: Longman, 1822)<br>
P. J. Atkins, ‘Sophistication Detected: Or, the Adulteration of the Milk Supply, 1850-1914’, Social History Vol. 16, No. 3 (Taylor & Francis, Ltd., Oct., 1991), pp. 317-339<br>
John Burnett, Plenty and Want: A social history of food in England from 1815 to the present day, (London: Routledge, 1989)<br>
<br>Devouringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05714129012728644231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5725550614165195040.post-25063921713394576422013-06-03T07:11:00.000-07:002013-06-03T07:11:05.317-07:00Welcome to Our Conference Blog<div class="MsoNormal">
This is the
blog to accompany our forthcoming conference, <i>Devouring: Food, Drink and the
Written Word, 1800-1945</i>. As well as a means of providing you with all the
official details as they come in, it is very much our hope that this blog will
provide a much more informal space to open up a dialogue that engages with the themes of
our conference. As such, over the coming months, we hope to bring you posts on items such as exhibitions we have been to, books we have read, period cooking that
we have done, as well as general musings on food: basically, anything that is
conference related and worthy of being seen by the reading public! We also
warmly invite our readers to get involved in the discussion as much as
possible, so if you have an idea for a post or other contribution, get in
contact with us and we’ll have a chat about it.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">So stay
tuned for all the food, drink, and written culture-related goodness to come.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Mary, Laura
and Chris<o:p></o:p></span></div>
Devouringhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05714129012728644231noreply@blogger.com0