Tag Archives: Anil Paralkar

Recipes in Cultural Flow

By Anil Paralkar

Attr. Rin Shihei, "Dutch people at the meal," Japan, ca. 1790-1810, color woodcut on paper, NG-1978-110, Rijksmuseum.
Attr. Rin Shihei, “Nederlanders aan de maaltijd,” Japan, ca. 1790-1810, color woodcut on paper, NG-1978-110, Rijksmuseum. In the image, two enslaved people from the Indonesian archipelago serve food and drink to five white Dutch men; they are probably intended to symbolise VOC personnel on Deshima/Dejima.

Understanding global exchanges has played a central role in food history research in recent decades. Recipes, as a type of source, present both challenges and opportunities when it comes to investigating cultural flows. Culinary Texts in Context, 1500-1800 offers a series of case studies on topics such as English-Iberian and Finnish-Swedish culinary interactions, as well as the introduction of ingredients from the Americas to the Iberian Peninsula. Beyond offering a number of case studies, the volume reminds us that recipe collections are “material and textual manifestations of familial, friendship, and professional networks” and that they “contain traces of the places that people, ingredients, and recipes travel.” (Kernan, Müllneritsch, 25) The various contributions to the volume follow such traces and highlight how recipes showcase regional and global cultural flows.

As expected for the early modern period, many of the recipe collections under discussion show the influx of non-European ingredients. These ingredients serve not only as expressions of a new economic globalization, but also as evidence of how ingredients were adapted and adopted in new foodscapes. Yet Culinary Texts in Context provides its most valuable insights into cultural interaction not merely through analyses of ingredients, but by exploring how the transmission of recipes contributed to the creation of particular culinary texts. We learn how Philipp Hainhofer, agent to August of Saxony, assembled the ducal book collection with its culinary texts in Germany, Austria, and Italy (Denicolò, 71-74); which donors informed Sir Martin Westcombe’s Iberian recipes (Valent, 103-108); how familial connections between Swedish and Finnish upper social strata facilitated recipe exchanges in the 18th and 19th centuries (Jonasson, Norrback, 125-130, 150-151); how Maria Clara Dückher assembled her recipe collection with the help of family networks; or how Mary Leadbeater’s culinary collecting in 18th/19th century Ireland was nurtured through correspondences (Ridolfo, 265-270).

Tracing these paths of transmission offers a deeper understanding of the processes of inclusion and hybridization of foods and dishes. It tells the story of why certain collectors included unfamiliar recipes in their culinary texts, or how they even acquired such recipes in the first place. Analyzing signs of use—such as stains or marginalia—can also provide insight into whether such transmissions concerned mere textual knowledge or were part of culinary practices. By combining sources on the genesis of culinary texts, such as correspondence and diaries, with internal evidence from the culinary texts themselves, we gain an understanding of the “microhistories” (Valent, 101) of culinary cultural flows. At this intersection, we can begin to determine whether a recipe in a collection was the result of culinary transculturation—shaped by influences from all involved spheres of culinary culture—or whether it was an outcome of a superficial cross-cultural impetus that unleashed little cultural transformation. As Isabel Braga notes, there is an important distinction between “a recipe from a certain place” and one “in the style of.” (Braga, 197) Recipes “in the style of” are often found in early modern culinary texts, indicating a region of origin, such as Indian pickles. These recipes typically draw on ingredients or preparation methods characteristic of a specific region but were not collected in that region. Instead, they were recorded in the recipe author’s home region, often with modifications that reflect the culinary culture of the author or projected ideas of culinary otherness onto an imagined region of origin. In contrast, recipes like those of Francisco Broges Henrique from Brazil (Braga, 196-198), Martin Westcombe’s from Spain (Valent, 101-108), or, on a local scale, the recipes transferred by traveling confectioners between Barcelona and Northeastern Catalonia (Manzanares Mileo, 173-177), speak of an actual engagement with ingredients and methods from one region and how they were adapted and integrated into new foodscapes. The distinction made by Braga, is key to understanding how the cross- and transculturation of recipes operated within systems of global communicative and power imbalances.

As Marlene Ernst observes, while it may be possible to trace the transfer of specific recipes, these were often “adapted to local languages and dialects.” (Ernst, 230) In many cases, it may not be possible to locate additional sources, such as correspondence or diaries, that detail the transfer of culinary texts. However, by tracing similar recipes across different collections, we can examine the changes between them and investigate the linguistic shifts Ernst mentions. Culinary Texts in Context demonstrates how the history of culinary text transmission through individual actors and their networks, the use of ingredients, and forms of describing a ‘culinary other’ in recipes offer rich opportunities for understanding how culinary cultural flows operated in the early modern period.

Anil Paralkar currently writes his PhD on early modern European ideas about Indian food and foodways at Heidelberg University. He is also a lecturer at Witten/Herdecke University, where he explores the history of Renaissance and early modern knowledge with his students. In his research, he investigates how Renaissance and early modern European writers projected a culinary ‘other’ onto India and how the European presence on the subcontinent altered these projections. In this endeavor, he also published on the earliest English recipes for South Asian food. His interests include postcolonial and transcultural theory, global food history, and a good meal.