Literary Food Studies

Culinary historian Laura Schenone recounts how traveling to Italy to research “authentic” recipe versions of her father’s favorite dish—ravioli—in The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken: A Search for Food and Family (2008) helped her forge a stronger personal connection to her mixed Italian-Croatian heritage. Although she has publicly discussed her youthful disavowal of her Italian heritage—in an interview with Publishers Weekly, she said “I never considered myself Italian because of the Italian patriarchy. I had a hard time with Italian machismo growing up,”—Schenone nonetheless pursues her curiosity about two connections to her father’s Italian heritage, a pasta-making tool kept as decoration in her family’s home, and the taste memory of a lost family recipe for ravioli. Through the act of looking for her Italian great-grandmother’s ravioli recipe, Schenone ends up with a new, hybrid ravioli recipe she can incorporate into her future Christmas celebrations. This newly reclaimed food tradition is her connection to an Italian diasporic community.

After the publication of her first book, the James Beard award-winning, A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told Through Food, Recipes and Remembrances (2004), Schenone realizes that she wants the food she prepares for her family to have a deeper connection with her own heritage and upbringing:

[O]ver the years, I had come to see the importance in food, its brightness in human history. Now I was a mother and home all the time. Children had to eat, and I was constantly in the kitchen. Suddenly I wanted to be able to make something wonderful—wonderful not just because it tasted good but because it could span generations and tell a story—a story I was part of, somehow, a story to which I would add. I decided to find an old recipe, a recipe that preceded the big machine of technological food, before test-tube flavors and before megaindustrial products. A recipe I could trace from my family, back into history, further and further back into an ancient past. (Lost Ravioli 13)

This sudden need to establish meaningful connections to the past through culinary traditions the children could one day claim as their own turns out to have been more fraught for Schenone than she thought at the outset, because her emphasis on some pre-industrial “authenticity” blinded her to the way people approach cooking in their domestic setting: through convenient and delicious short-cuts. So, even when she does find the family recipe for the ravioli her father so cherished, Schenone refuses to accept it as “real” enough for her purposes.

Schenone commandeers “an old ravioli press—a handmade grid of small squares—[which] had hung on the kitchen wall above us for decades” (16), from her parent’s house and quizzes aged family members about her great-grandmother’s ravioli recipe, a piece of intellectual property she naively imagines will provide an “authentic” connection to an ethnic past she feels is missing from her life. Unsatisfied when she unearths a version of the recipe which calls for “cream cheese” (20) instead of some more exotic cheese, Schenone decides to travel to Genoa and interview old ravioli makers. Schenone’s stubborn refusal to accept the recipe that emerges from her relentless questioning constitutes her first instance of flawed culinary revisionism within the memoir—what she ends up revising by the memoir’s end is not an old tradition after all, but rather her own misconceptions about the past.

However, after learning the ‘proper’ procedures involved in preparing this beloved dish, Schenone remains self-conscious about her quest and how it might be seen by her extended family members. When she shares the finished product with her sisters and father, she prefaces her ravioli with a narrative that highlights their authenticity as both “Genoese” and simultaneously recognizable as her great-grandmother’s “lost” recipe:

‘Genoese ravioli,’ I say casually and with little to-do. ‘One bag for each family. Like our great-grandmother Adalgiza’s. At least I think they’re like hers.’

I hesitate to add that these are the ravioli I learned to make when I was in Italy the previous summer. I don’t want to draw more attention to the lengths I go through—to that part of me that thinks our Christmas isn’t good enough and has to go and get pretentious authentic recipes directly from Italy, from the real Italians, rather than our inferior and diluted Italian-Americanized stuff. (10-11)

The irony here is that what initially prompts Schenone to travel to Italy is her own internalized sense of inferiority; she disdains the traces of America she sees in the recipe she finally receives from her great-grandmother’s daughter, because it calls for cream cheese. This obsession with getting to the root of the recipe makes Schenone confront her own ambivalence about her mixed ethnic heritage:

Despite the assumptions, I always knew the truth—I was not Italian. My father was Italian, but not me. There was simply not enough left by the time my generation came around. Because of intermarriage and the passing of time, I was born at the twilight of ethnicity, the barely tail end of it. (33)

Finding the ravioli recipe does not resolve this dilemma for Schenone, but it does make her more aware of the specific ways through which her whiteness is coded within mainstream American culture. Based purely on her name and her curly hair, other people automatically treat Schenone as an Italian American woman from New Jersey, with the attendant stereotyping that label involves.

Schenone’s gastronomic quest led her to reconceive her assumptions about her great-grandmother’s experience as a Genoese immigrant. Although she uncovers a type of Genoese cheese that resembles cream cheese, Schenone cannot find any precedent for the use of raw meat in the ravioli recipe. As she mentions in an interview, she now chooses to believe (or imagine) that Adalgiza must have embraced assimilation into mainstream American society as a liberating process, one which freed her from the constraints of observing strict culinary traditions passed down from generations, and made her eager to incorporate what she had learned from other new immigrants:

So perhaps my great-grandmother, who lived above a Chinese delivery place in Hoboken, saw this was how they cooked their dumplings. Maybe she could, too? After all, it saves a step. Again, I think she felt that she lived here and that she could be like an American. (Rotella 46)

By imagining her great-grandmother as a pioneering multiculturalist, Schenone once again projects her own current values backwards to the past, but this time in a self-aware way that validates the spirit of her ancestor’s ingenuity rather than disdaining it.  In reclaiming her own ethnic heritage to pass down to her children, Schenone herself performs her own twenty-first century American identity, one which deconstructs the privilege of whiteness in order to establish affective ties with earlier diasporas.

Whereas this fantasy scenario casts the deterritorialization of immigration in a cheerful light, the trauma of being uprooted can be passed down through the generations. Schenone sees her own impulse to find a nutritional identity within a diasporic tradition as resulting in a gift she can bestow upon her own children and their descendants. Her eleven year old son confirms that her sacrifice is worth it when he declares: “‘We need to have tradition. We need to have history. I’ll make the ravioli some day and pass them on to my kids too!’” (257). Lucky for him, his mother has left him more than a hand-written recipe with which to reclaim his heritage. He has a 300 page memoir with recipes and photo illustrations to guide him and his future spouse in their culinary endeavors, yet another nod at how artificially constructed this family tradition has become.

Works Cited:

Rotella, Mark. “Ravioli Lost, Adventure Found.” Publishers Weekly 254.39 (2007): 46.

Schenone, Laura. A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told Through Food, Recipes and Remembrances. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2004.

——. The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken: A Search for Food and Family. New York: WW Norton & Company, 2008.

The recently released animated children’s film, The Boxtrolls (2014), is an unlikely meditation upon the real obstacles that living with a food allergy present to those afflicted. The film makes the villain’s dairy allergy a central plot point, demonstrating the depths of his moral corruption by illustrating to what degree he is willing to sacrifice his physical well being (ignoring the painful and grotesque effects of his allergy) in order to fulfill his ambition: earning the right to wear one of the coveted White Hats.

In an effort to practice “fitting in” with the White Hat elites of Cheesebridge, whose ranks he hopes to one day join by exterminating all the Boxtrolls as if they were vermin, Archibald Snatcher, the erstwhile exterminator, forces himself to taste cheese. The allergic reaction is immediate and undeniable–making his skin break out, and his facial features swell up beyond recognition. Mr. Snatcher downplays the severity of his symptoms when confronted by his worried henchmen, insisting that not only was he fine, but he was enjoying the experience. This is the scene which most humanizes this villain–for how often, in truth, have those of us whose bodies betray us in reaction to the slightest ingestion of an allergenic substance tried to downplay the situation when the physical manifestation of our bodies’ reactions become the focus of public gaze, no matter how sympathetic?

By continuing to partake of the cheese platter with reckless abandon, Snatcher forces his henchmen to intervene–in this case, by applying the leeches they always keep nearby for such occasions. This precaution dramatizes the central dilemma associated with severe food allergies: they profoundly interfere with interpersonal interactions, imposing the moral duty and real obligation to intervene on our behalf on complete strangers, mere acquaintances, or loved ones if we become severely incapacitated through unexpected contact with a hidden irritant. Acknowledging the extent to which people with food allergies depend on the common weal for their basic well being is humbling, but also potentially enriching. For, if people who know they may be at risk for illness or injury remember to regard others as potential saviors during times of crisis, then these pesky conditions can indeed be the basic for more humane, and considerate, interpersonal relations. This can, in turn, affirm our trust in each other, and in humanity.

Snatcher was not such a broadminded character; the scope of his ambition blinded him to his own weakness and reliance on others. This arrogance led him to act with no regard for his own limitations, which led to his eventual downfall. (no plot spoilers here). The point, though, is that the villain’s food allergies made clear for the film’s target audience that no one, not even a bad guy, can act independently of others if s/he is ever to succeed. And, by demonstrating their concern for their inconsiderate boss, the henchmen began to redeem themselves and find better outlets for their empathy.

Deborah McKinlay’s That Part Was True is a meta-fictive meditation upon the particularities of gendered genre fiction: this is, after all, a chick lit novel about a male protagonist who specializes in writing what characters repeatedly characterize as masculine fiction or “guy lit” in my terms. The American protagonist, Jackson Cooper, carries on an increasingly intimate correspondence with Eve Petworth, a wealthy British single mother in her forties.  Though this epistolary exchange begins with Eve’s fan letter to Jack, what she praises about Jack’s fiction is his attention to verisimilitude, as demonstrated in a particularly evocative passage about a ripe, juicy peach. Gradually, Jack and Eve discover they share a love of cooking, and an appetite for refined comfort food, such as lavender scones and home-made marmalade. The evenness of their culinary skill makes it difficult to determine which of these characters is the object of desire, and which is the admirer—these subject positions vary and change throughout the length of the short novel. McKinlay succeeds in walking the line between chick and guy lit by virtue of presenting two evenly-matched protagonists whose friendship develops slowly and through a medium that is consciously antiquated, letter writing, which does not ignore more immediate communications, such as the telephone and e-mail, but persists in spite of them. The anticipation associated with awaiting the next letter, and its acknowledgement of what was said before gives each character something to look forward to in this increasingly chaotic world of instant communication.

The more sustained pleasure of reading this novel, thus, comes from reading the interspersed letters themselves as examples of what I am calling “narrative food porn”. Like erotic pornography, food pornography is meant to excite the senses, and ignite the passions of its intended audience. Both types of porn thrive in visual and narrative realms of expression, since each medium gives fodder to fantasy, a necessary element of the true pleasure of the porn consumer. Whereas the visual element of food porn has proliferated—what with the rise of professional food stylists and the viral nature of Instagram, Yelp, and Urban Spoon, all of which facilitate the easy uploading and distribution of digital photographs of incredibly appetizing food offerings—real gastronomes have long known the joy of curling up in bed with a good book, and calling upon James Beard’s “taste memory” (Delights and Prejudices 1) to make vivid descriptions of featured dishes come alive to one’s senses.

Eve and Jack’s first missive begins, rather biblically, with the woman offering up an especially juicy morsel: her explanation of why the peach-eating passage in his novel was so enticing to her as an embodied reader.

 The scene where Harry Gordon eats the peach (‘leaning over and holding back his green silk tie with one arm while the juice christened the shirt cuff of the other’) introduced a moment of summer into a watery English day. And it reminded me, as well, of the almost decadent pleasure that comes with eating fully matured fruit—sadly, a rarity. (That Part Was True 1)

This marks a moment of intimate self-disclosure for Eve: not only is she revealing to a successful author what it is about his testosterone-fueled action adventure tales that caught her attention—the seemingly unguarded moment when the rugged protagonist gives himself over to the temptation of gustatory pleasure—but she is also revealing something about her own desire for raw, unmediated flavors. By noting how hard these moments of unadulterated sensual pleasure are to come by nowadays, Eve also sets the stage for a consciously retro epistolary exchange.

Jack responds in kind. Not only does he answer this piece of fan mail, but he finds himself shifting the focus of the conversation away from his fiction—the popularity of which gave rise to this particular interaction—and more towards finding out about Eve’s life, especially once he finds out they both enjoy spending time in the kitchen. Seeking to dispel Eve’s preconceptions of him as indistinguishable from his public persona, Jack presents himself to his correspondent as a better cook than he is a writer:

I am better at cooking than I am at most anything else. At writing I can cross the finish line well enough, but not in any particular style. And with people, I have a tendency to trip at the first hurdle. (That Part Was True 56)

Thus framed, their correspondence begins in earnest.  For, as talented as Jack and Eve appear to be in the kitchen, none of their close friends or relatives fully shares their enthusiasm for good food. In fact, their interlocutors often misinterpret the significance of their culinary endeavors, assuming they merely substitute for real engagement with others, or serve as a convenient way to pass the time while others engage in “real” work.

The novel adds an extra layer of faux-reality when it includes actual recipes at the end of the book for two of the dishes the protagonists recall most fondly, and which they share with one another during their correspondence: from Jack, “Granny Cooper’s Peanut Cookies” (That Part Was True 226) and “Grandmother’s Christmas Cake” (That Part Was True 227) from Eve. As in most fiction, grandmothers in this novel are almost magically imbued with culinary wisdom and lore. Ironically, by the novel’s ending, it is clear that Eve’s on her way to becoming a grandmother herself, thereby prompting the reader to go back through the correspondence and attempt to reconstruct the recipes she only half-hints at throughout.

There’s an implied double entendre embedded within Jack’s recipe—his movie star best friend wants to learn how to do to women what Jack does to get the roasted peanuts to taste so good.  American readers who want to follow Eve’s recipe, however, will come face to face with a dilemma that she spares Jack from suffering, as she sends him not only the recipe but also a bottle of one of the key ingredients, golden syrup or light treacle, that gives the dish its signature flavor.  She warns,

I have just noticed that the recipe calls for Golden Syrup. I may have to send you some, substitutes are either messy (combine caramelized sugar, vinegar, corn syrup) or inadequate (honey).  (That Part Was True 139)

However, since this recipe is basically for fruit cake—one of the confections Americans find most puzzling—chances are no one will try their hand at making this particular cake. Good thing, too, since this book is probably best enjoyed beach- or pool-side, while food cooks out on the grill.  It is sure to make readers hungry.

Works Cited:

McKinlay, Deborah. That Part Was True. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2014.

Beard, James.  Delights and Prejudices. 1964. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: The Running Press, 2001.

Rohan Candappa’s entertaining food memoir with recipes, Picklehead: From Ceylon to Suburbia; a Memoir of Food, Family and Finding Yourself, is an engaging way to learn about the experience of growing up as the child of immigrants in 1960s and 70s London. My oldest daughter, in her wisdom, has coined a term to express her own similar experience: “half-immigrant,” and it is that concept that gives the title to today’s blog post.

The memoir is split into two distinct narrative modes: the primary one is a retrospective look at how Candappa finds himself buying a can of korma sauce at the supermarket so he can feed his hungry children quickly when he grew up eating delicious homemade Indian food at home. The second part, which I find to be the most fun to teach, is made up of a series of half-chapters chronicling “A Brief History of Curry in England.” This section is divided into five distinct parts, interspersed throughout the autobiographical narrative. When I assign this book in class, I tend to assign those chapters to be read together as a unit first, because I have found that otherwise undergraduates really feel thrown off by the sudden intrusion of a different discourse in a book they thought they’d figured out already.

Although this structure might seem direct enough, if a bit quirky, the tale that unfolds from between the book’s covers is layered very thickly: readers get three life stories–Candappa’s own, his mother’s and his late father’s–all rolled into one account of a middle aged man coming to terms with his ethnic/racial heritage and the culinary choices he faces as he decides how best to convey this patrimony to his own offspring. The introduction sets up the themes that organize the rest of the text that follows:

If you’re the child of immigrant parents, the food you eat at home is more than just the food you eat at home. It is a link to the world your parents came from. It has echoes of past places, past peoples, and past events. It is a conduit of both family history and history in a far wider sense. (10)

So part of Candappa’s purpose in writing is to bear witness to this condition of what Marianne Hirsch calls, “post-memory,” or the memory that people at a remove from trauma, in this case the child of immigrant parents, have of the original traumatic event as it has been conveyed to them by the generation that experienced it. In Candappa’s text, that full-blown experience of the trauma of his parents’ individual stories of displacement and the violence they witnessed as young people growing up in the waning days of the British Empire, still unsettles the British-born writer. The cycle stops with his children, however, much in the same way that the culinary tradition stopped with Candappa himself. As he confesses, in choosing the time savings and convenience of canned korma sauce over the more labor intensive home-made curry in the style that his own parents prepared, Candappa knows he’s foregoing an opportunity to communicate a sense of his own culinary patrimony to his own children, who are no longer defined by the grandparents’ experience of immigration in the same way Candappa and his brother were by their parents’:

Twenty-four minutes versus two hours when you live in a cash-rich but time-poor world really is a bit of a no-brainer. But as I chopped the chicken breast fillets into pieces, fried them in a pan and poured the sauce over them, I knew that, on some intangibly unsettling level, it was a no-culturer too. (10)

Picklehead is a unique meditation on a particular aspect of the life experience of what’s come to be known as the “sandwich generation,” those adults who care for their aging parents as the same time as they are still raising their dependent children. While Candappa’s mother appears to be very independent and carrying out an active and enriching life filled with meaningful work at the time when Candappa published his account, his father had already died. By calling attention to his circumstance of being the adult “child of immigrant parents” and also the parent of thoroughly British children, Candappa suggests that he is caught in the middle as the caretaker of one type of memory–the collective family memory of a colonial life that preceeded their arrival on British shores, and the main architect of his children’s absolutely modern life, unmarked in many ways by outward expressions of racial or ethnic consciousness or prejudice thanks to his own success as a provider, and to the flattening effect of the hectic pace of contemporary life, which demands quick and easy access to uniformly processed food, whatever its origins. After all, as Candappa took stock of how estranged he had become from his heritage, he realizes that his country has become enthralled by the very food that once marked him as a racial outcast in the school cafeteria of his youth: curry. The rich and rewarding (and side-splittingly funny) memoir he produces, then, is a successful attempt to come to terms with the fundamental question: “what, if any, was the link between what I had lost and what the country had gained?” (11).