Educated Tastes

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Educated Tastes

Food, Drink, and Connoisseur Culture

Edited and with an introduction by Jeremy Strong

At Table Series

320 pages

Paperback

November 2011

978-0-8032-1935-9

$35.00 Add to Cart
eBook (PDF)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

November 2011

978-0-8032-3813-8

$35.00 Add to Cart
about author bio praise table of contents media awards

About the Book

The old adage “you are what you eat” has never seemed more true than in this era, when ethics, politics, and the environment figure so prominently in what we ingest and in what we think about it. Then there are connoisseurs, whose approaches to food address “good taste” and frequently require a language that encompasses cultural and social dimensions as well. From the highs (and lows) of connoisseurship to the frustrations and rewards of a mother encouraging her child to eat, the essays in this volume explore the complex and infinitely varied ways in which food matters to all of us.

Educated Tastes is a collection of new essays that examine how taste is learned, developed, and represented. It spans such diverse topics as teaching wine tasting, food in Don Quixote, Soviet cookbooks, cruel foods, and the lambic beers of the Belgian Payottenland. A set of key themes connect these topics: the relationships between taste and place; how our knowledge of food shapes taste experiences; how gustatory discrimination functions as a marker of social difference; and the place of ethical, environmental, and political concerns in debates around the importance and meaning of taste. With essays that address, variously, the connections between food, drink, and music; the place of food in the development of Italian nationhood; and the role of morality in aesthetic judgment, Educated Tastes offers a fresh look at food in history, society, and culture.

Author Bio

Jeremy Strong is the head of higher education at Writtle College in Essex.

Praise

"For one who wishes to learn about or cultivate food tastes and preferences or who wishes to engage others in the exploration of food tastes, this book is an excellent resource."—Alice Spangler, Journal of Family & Consumer Sciences

Table of Contents

Introduction        

Jeremy Strong

Part One: Learning to Taste

1. Feeding Finn    

Lisa Harper

2. The Book of Tasty and Healthy Food: The Establishment of Soviet Haute Cuisine      

Jukka Gronow and Sergey Zhuravlev

3. The Flavor of the Place: Eating and Drinking in Payottenland             

Tim Waterman

4. National Tastes: Italy and Food Culture   

Matthew Hibberd

5. Teaching Wine Tasting 

John Ducker

Part Two: Theorizing and Contextualizing Taste

6. The (Extensive) Pleasures of Eating           

Lisa Heldke

7. A Short Poetics of Cruel Food     

Jeremy Strong

8. "Los Pajaritos del Aire": Disappearing Menus and After-Dinner Speaking in Don Quixote            

Robert Goodwin

9. Nourishment, Body and Soul: Modern Performers, Diverse Tastes     

Colin Lawson

10. Lionizing Taste: Toward an Ecology of Contemporary Connoisseurship        

Roger Haden

Contributors        

 

 

Also of Interest

The Recipe Reader

Edited by Janet Floyd and Laurel Forster

The World on a Plate

Moveable Feasts

Gregory McNamee

Palmento

Robert V. Camuto