From Eve's apple to Proust's madeleine to today's culinary tourism, food looms large in culture. Sociologists and anthropologists study cooking and eating practices across the globe. 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 flavours 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. A cornucopia of historical, cross-cultural and theoretical views is offered, drawing from anthropology, sociology, history, philosophy, science - and more. This book will interest anyone seeking to understand more fully the importance of food and flavor in human experience.

About the author

Carolyn Korsmeyer is Professor of Philosophy at the University of New York at Buffalo.

Contents

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