The birth of gastronomy

Another significant revolution concerns food practices, which were transformed at the beginning of the 18^th century. No more super-spicy grub (spices being the sign of wealth in the Middle Ages). Sweet and sour dishes were cast aside. From then on, “modern cuisine”, as it was then called, distinguished sweet from salty flavours, used aromatic herbs, favoured fruit and vegetables, and invented kitchen stocks. Thickened with butter or flour. The most important being that the result was refined! Food became an art that was affected by fashion; it was necessary to keep up in order to remain ahead of the game. Anyone who missed the boat would be perceived as belonging to an inferior social rank. Cooks decided to defend the “vray goust” (real taste) and preserve the flavour of every foodstuff. The number of recipe books celebrating this “new cuisine” grew, increasingly prefaced by contemporary writers and no longer by the cooks alone or their publisher. Cookery became a literary genre worthy of interest. The premises of the celebrated French gastronomy were born...

Taste gradually gained credibility. “As soon as it became a worthy subject, every author began writing about it! Montesquieu, Voltaire, Diderot, etc.” An evolution which, according to Viktoria von Hoffmann, would be symptomatic of an ever-increasing individualisation of society. “Was it benefiting from – or was it part of – the development of the consumer society [...], where the search for personal happiness became a social value?” she wonders. The lack of distance of this sense of contact, its intimacy once so disparaged, would become its new strong point. While the traditional culture of the 17^th century favoured community, the new era that was ushered in at the beginning of the next century reinforced the singularity of the subject. “Taste was therefore celebrated for the very same reasons that previously led to its dismissal”, the author sums up in her conclusion. 

Since the beginning of the 1990’s, food studies have widely contributed to this movement. The history of food, for a long time focused exclusively on culinary practices, is currently moving more and more towards a more global history of food cultures, endeavouring to cross the study of practices and the underlying cultural representations. However, the researcher observes the massive trend of food studies to limit the study of taste to the single culinary register. And yet, “just like the history of sight isn't limited to the study of painting, the history of smell to that of perfumes or the history of touch to that of sexuality, the history of taste is far broader than that of cookery, food practices and gastronomy.”

“Nowadays we witness a phenomenon of celebration of taste and cuisine, in an increasingly hedonistic society. But we tend to forget that this hasn’t always been the case”, she adds. “It has now become positive to talk about eating well. However, the negative view never really disappeared, as proven by the few studies that are truly dedicated not to cooking but to the sense of taste.”

In her book, Viktoria von Hoffmann therefore intends to make a new contribution. Continuing her investigation into the lower senses, she is currently working on the history of touch, another equally unpopular figure in the hierarchy of the five senses. After having tasted the world, it is now time to try to touch it...