How We Eat by Leon Rappoport

Author:Leon Rappoport
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: SOC022000, SOC002010
Publisher: ECW Press
Published: 2002-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

From the Raw to the Cooked to the Haute Cuisine

THE CONCLUDING LINE in The Tractatus, Ludwig Wittgenstein’s classic discourse on the philosophy of science, asserts “Of that of which we cannot speak we must be silent.” Scholars have generally taken this oracular statement to mean that some areas of human experience are simply not open to scientific investigation and had best be left alone. It bears directly on the topic at hand because a great eating experience, like great sex or other forms of visceral experience is, apart from saying that it was wonderful, also largely unspeakable. (And unless they are particularly gifted, those who insist on trying to speak of such matters invariably bore their listeners.) There are, of course, some important reasons for this situation, and, when it comes to food and cuisine, few scholars have attempted to go as deeply into them as Claude Lévi-Strauss and Sidney Mintz.

In The Raw and the Cooked, his masterwork on this subject, Lévi-Strauss analyzed the myths and folk traditions of primitive tribal groups, looking for explanations of how certain animal and vegetable substances in the natural environment were recognized as foods that eventually became the elements of cuisine. He found that the origins of the foods in common use could all be traced to mythic stories about the actions of some sort of godlike or quasi-human creature. The transformation of what is raw in nature to a food that can be cooked was, in other words, always attributed to a magical process personified and transmitted by a mythic, godlike figure. And then, of course, cooking itself requires a source of energy. Like other writers on the history of food, Lévi-Strauss suggests that this was initially the sun. Vegetables or animal parts exposed to dry in the sun become transformed from the raw, preserved from the decay that would otherwise quickly set in and prevent consumption. It is relevant that primitive myths invariably abound with sun gods, and it is only one more small step to the mythic origins of fire (with Prometheus as the major Western figure), fire still serving as the preeminent human instrument for transforming the raw to the cooked. It is fire that saves humans from the decay and putrefaction of their food when the sun disappears.

It is probably no mere coincidence that this analysis by Lévi-Strauss has its contemporary parallel in the status attributed to successful chefs and gastronomy authorities. They appear, after all, as Promethean masters of the culinary magic that can transform ordinary foodstuffs into taste delights. And most professional chefs are well aware of the hazards that go with their special status. As long as their magic works well, they are applauded, but if it fails or comes out badly, then like any godlike magician that disappoints, they may be cast aside. Those who deal in mystery and magic can never rest easy on their laurels. This may help explain why professional chefs are notoriously transient, always on the lookout for a new position.

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