Senses and Sensibilities, Pride and Prejudices of a Culinary Persuasion.Â
Jacqui has taken our sensibilities into account and split her paper so that readers can choose to view the accompanying slides or not. Read the abstract to determine what's likely there and make your choice.
Join us in the comments for chat, we offer this question to consider with the Session 2 papers:
How do we make aesthetic judgements about food that disgusts?
Can there be pleasure and enjoyment in knowing our food sources intimately?
Abstract:
Dinner with Jane Austen or any one of her romantic heroes could well have brought you face to face with a calf’s head, eye to eye with a pig’s face, and slipping a few slices of ox tongue down your throat. 18th and 19th century cookbooks remind us that these were once prestigious dishes which delighted gustatory senses, appealed to culinary sensibilities and were displayed with pride in all their glory on the table, adding to the dining aesthetic.Â
These foods would scarcely be tolerated on most Australian tables today – particularly those of Anglo-Celtic persuasion – and are likely to elicit responses of horror and disgust from diners. And as cooks, can we imagine ourselves preparing them, or other dishes derived from these cuts of meat in our domestic kitchens – dismembering a pig’s head for brawn or a calf’s head for mock turtle soup, peeling tongues, rendering down calves’ feet to make jelly. These processes were a sensorial reality for generations of domestic cooks and created an intimacy between cooks and beasts that extended well beyond the palate. Â
What does the absence of these products as food in our current culinary repertoire tell us about modern senses and sensibilities? What part does sensory intimacy play in defining a sense of good taste, on the palate, aesthetically, and in a socio-moral sense? Is there pleasure and enjoyment in knowing our food sources so intimately?
This paper presentation is intended to provoke thought and open discussion about sensory reality and knowledge denial – physiological and emotional – and how they intersect with and influence moral and ethical sensibilities, prejudices and taste.
Jacqui Newling has a Le Cordon Bleu masters' degree in gastronomy and specialises in early Australian foodways. As Sydney Living Museums' resident gastronomer, Jacqui investigates the range of foods that have been served throughout Australian history. She co-curated the Eat Your History: A Shared Table exhibition at the Museum of Sydney and co-writes The Cook and the Curator blog for Sydney Living Museums.
PS from the Committee :
Jacqui's pre covid postscript note to her abstract:
" (*It could have a hands-on sensorial component if I can work out interstate logistics)"
Post Covid: If only interstate logistics were the only issue.
Excellent paper Jacqui. I am not a squeamish cook and have over the years cooked some of these dishes. However, I did find the slides of the raw and the cooked meats rather confronting to look at...so unappealing!
Interestingly, when I was Gastronomer in Residence at Carrick Hill in Adelaide and tested recipes for the book, 'Carrick Hill: Heydays of the Haywards 1940 - 1970' (published in 2010), I met with a lot of resistance for including the recipe for Pressed Ox Tongue. Even into the 1970s the butcher still delivered two ox tongues once a month and the cook would press the tongues together. The pressed ox tongue was a favourite addition to a 'cold collation' or a celebration cold buffet alongside cold roast joints of meat, legs of ham, corned silverside and pickled pork.