National cuisine
The term national cuisine is often used as a name for the cuisine of a country, i.e. as a synonym for national cuisine. However, nutritional sociologists and anthropologists use it to describe a culinary topos that stands for an allegedly specifically national style of cooking and for dishes that are typical of a nation and that differentiate this cuisine from that of other countries. The national cuisine represents the "fine cuisine" of a country and is an important part of the national culture. Particularly highlighted dishes of a country are called national dishes . In common parlance and in cookbooks , national cuisine is often simply a generic term for various regional cuisines in a country.
General
The term national cuisine did not come into use in Europe until the 19th century, as it is related to the idea of the nation state . “National kitchens are usually constructs that are based on the age of the nation states, that is, mostly in the 19th century. These constructs helped to bundle the diverse regional cuisines and to build up a more or less uniform image to the outside world, towards the foreign. "
From a sociological point of view, national kitchens have a double function: on the one hand, they reinforce the feeling of cultural identity of the inhabitants of a country by giving them positive connotations , and on the other hand, they enable a demarcation from other countries and cultures. Other cuisines and their typical dishes are often classified as less tasty and devalued. “National kitchens are [...] idealized self-images that are suitable for promoting feelings of cultural superiority over other nations. In addition, there are disparaging names for foreign, supposedly national cooking styles. "
“They [the national kitchens] in no way represent, as their name suggests, all the kitchens existing in a state or an equal mix of a large number of kitchens. On the contrary, there is much evidence that the social class, which essentially drives the state-building process, succeeds in asserting its cooking style as a national one: for example the [...] Parisian nobility in France, the gentry in England, the British immigrants in North America national kitchens of some countries enjoy a good reputation abroad and have a predominantly positive image , so that they influence the cooking style of other countries. In Europe this is particularly true of French cuisine , in Asia of Japanese cuisine .
Creation of national kitchens
France
“In Western societies and also in the upper classes of societies on other continents, French cuisine is considered to be the most culturally developed type of food preparation.” The upscale national cuisine that was established in France at the beginning of the 19th century is known as haute cuisine . It was founded by influential chefs such as Marie-Antoine Carême and Auguste Escoffier as well as the gastrosoph and author Brillat-Savarin with his work La Physiologie du Gout . However, French cuisine was already decisive for the kitchens of aristocratic houses in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, as the French court was considered to be culturally leading at this time. According to the sociologist Eva Barlösius , the introduction of public restaurants and thus the access of the French bourgeoisie to sophisticated culinary art made it possible to popularize this style of cooking and thus to spread and institutionalize it. The restaurant chefs established a certain level of preparation and food quality; this tendency was reinforced by the emergence of gastronomy criticism. The upscale restaurant cuisine was called grand cuisine . In addition, there was a consensus among the French upper classes on eating style, with an emphasis on enjoyment while eating.
The French upscale cuisine was declared a national cuisine in France and a model for the kitchens of other countries, as it was viewed as particularly cultivated. Barlösius speaks of a "cultural hegemony " of French culinary art. Nevertheless, even in France there is no uniform cooking throughout the country, even if the topos of national cuisine suggests this. "Although it has the reputation of being a national cuisine outside of France, in France, as in all other regionally differentiated countries, there are in fact a wide variety of kitchens that are cooked in a locally limited environment." The southern French cuisine has characteristics of the Mediterranean cuisine , while in northern France Cooking is similar to that in Baden cuisine .
Sidney Mintz shares Barlösius' assessment that there are basically only regional kitchens in France: “ French cuisine […] is an artifice based on the various regional foods of people who live inside a political system. It's an artifice that sells cookbooks and brings tourists to France and customers to 'French' restaurants in America, but has little to do with the real social importance of cooking that varies significantly from one part of France to the next. […] Bouillabaisse is not French cusine […] it's the cuisine of Marseille . ”(German:“ The French cuisine […] is an artificial product based on different regional dishes of the people who live in a political system. It is an artificial product that sells cookbooks and brings tourists to France and customers in 'French' restaurants in America, but it has little to do with the real social significance of the culinary art, which differs significantly in different parts of France. [...] Bouillabaisse is not French cuisine [...], but the cuisine of Marseille. ")
Italy
The idea of an Italian national cuisine , which brings together the different regional cuisines of the country, goes back to a single man, namely Pellegrino Artusi , who self- published the first all-Italian cookbook with the title La scienza in cucina e l'arte di mangiar bene in 1891 . Artusi was not a cook, but a silk merchant and gourmet from Florence who for years collected recipes for his book. Although the unified Italian state was founded in 1861, neither a single national language nor a “national culture” had established itself by the end of the 19th century. Most of the dishes were only known and widespread regionally. It was Artusi's stated goal to change that and create Italian cuisine . His book is now regarded as the standard work of national culinary art in Italy and was published in 15 editions until the author's death in 1911.
Artusi included around 800 recipes from different regions in his book, but left out the extreme south of the country below Naples - the southern Italian cuisine was then considered to be poorly cultivated and backward. At the same time, the work introduced its own Italian kitchen language , because until then, French technical terms were common throughout Europe. Artusi no longer wanted to accept this dominance. "In order to make themselves important, some cooks use the technical language of our neighbors who are not very sympathetic to us [...]". He consciously gave the dishes Italian names, but he also took on some foreign dishes, for example "il sauerkraut ", "il Kugelhupf " or "il roast-beef ".
Germany
In the scientific literature, the prevailing opinion is that there is no national German cuisine , only regional cuisine . "For the past [...] there is no discernible attempt to develop a style-forming one for the entire German cuisine from the extraordinarily differentiated regional cuisine."
The cuisine of the German nobility in Germany was based on French cuisine until World War I. Representatives of the bourgeoisie have distanced themselves from the supposedly “artificial” French culinary art and the “corruption” of German cuisine since the 18th century, but they did not influence upscale cooking practice. In his book Der Geist der Kochkunst (Der Geist der Kochkunst) , published in 1822, Karl Friedrich von Rumohr criticized the “loss of a diet appropriate to the German temperament.” His recommendations emphasized the value of so-called home-style cooking and regional dishes. It was only after the establishment of the German Empire in 1871 that popular cookbook literature began to make efforts to present a middle-class German national cuisine.
The well-known cookbook author Henriette Davidis took into account recipes from different regions in her practical cookbook for ordinary and fine cuisine (first edition 1844), but it was only in a later edition of 1894 that attempts to create a “German kitchen” became apparent. Some recipe names are now Germanized, such as omelette soufflèe in "egg casserole". There are also recipes for a “German soup” and “German waffles”. For the preparation of the figaro pudding it is said that one should omit the green color of the original recipe, because "you then get the German colors and call the pudding national pudding".
To this day, German cuisine can be divided into two regions, in which cooking habits differ significantly from each other. Barlösius speaks of "North German meat and vegetables" and "South German milk and pastries".
Japan
For centuries, rice has been a highly prestigious and symbolic food . Rice has only been part of the everyday diet of the broader population since the middle of the 20th century and it was only at this time that what is now considered Japanese national cuisine, namely a meal scheme with rice as the main ingredient, supplemented by soup, pickled vegetables and other side dishes. These meals have been a privilege of wealthy samurai and monks since the 13th century CE . In the following centuries they spread to wider sections of the population, but not to the simple rural population, i.e. the majority of the population. Until the Second World War she mainly ate soups; Millet , buckwheat and barley were the basis of their diet.
In the 1950s, the big gap between town and country in the Japanese diet disappeared and the diets of different regions became more similar, so that a relatively uniform national cuisine emerged. A major factor was the increasing urbanization , but also the influence of Japanese abroad and the opening up to Western food. At that time, rice became affordable for the general public. The same applies to soy sauce , which is now a typical basic ingredient in Japanese cuisine. However, this has only been the case in rural areas since the 1980s. Before that, the most important spice was miso , a soy paste.
Discussion of the term
Well-known nutritional sociologists refer to the term national cuisine as a culinary stereotype , Eva Barlösius speaks of “fictional construction”, Hans-Jürgen Teuteberg of “constructed myth”. This means that the alleged national kitchens do not represent the real eating and cooking habits of the inhabitants of a country and rather have a symbolic function. In fact, only regional kitchens exist. The traditionally preferred foods in a kitchen are strongly dependent on the climatic conditions and the local offer, and these factors are much more decisive than political national borders.
Every country kitchen is also influenced and changed through contact with other cultures and peoples. The European kitchens, for example, have been greatly changed in modern times by new agricultural products from the so-called New World such as potatoes and tomatoes . But it also applies to Japanese cuisine, which not only adopted Chinese and Korean elements (and vice versa), but also Japaneseized Western recipes and dishes, such as Portuguese baked goods or Indian curry .
The marketing of national dishes and national kitchens for tourism plays an important role ; some scientists even see this as an essential reason for their construction. “ This fiction of a national cuisine is to a large extend the product of modern mobility and mass tourism. It is no more typical of country and people than the holiday brochure image of beaches, hotels and tourist restaurants […] ”(German:“ The fiction of national cuisine is largely the product of modern mobility and mass tourism. It is not more typical of a Land and its inhabitants as the image of a vacation brochure of beaches, hotels and tourist restaurants ”).
See also
literature
- Eva Barlösius: Sociology of Eating. Juventa, Weinheim 1999, ISBN 3-7799-1464-6 .
- Stephen Mennell: The Cultivation of Appetite. History of food from the Middle Ages to today. Athenaeum, Frankfurt am Main 1988, ISBN 3-610-08509-6 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Uwe Spiekermann: Europe's kitchens. An approximation. In: International working group for cultural research on food. Issue 5, p. 42 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 575 kB)
- ↑ a b Eva Barlösius: Sociology of eating. Weinheim 1999, p. 148
- ^ Eva Barlösius, p. 147
- ^ Eva Barlösius, p. 149
- ^ Eva Barlösius, p. 150
- ^ Eva Barlösius, p. 151
- ^ Eva Barlösius, p. 152
- ↑ a b Eva Barlösius, p. 153
- ^ No such thing as a national cuisine, in: Johns Hopkins Magazine, September 1996
- ↑ a b c d Maren Preiss: Feasting for the Fatherland
- ^ Eva Barlösius: Social and historical aspects of German cuisine. In: Stephen Mennell: The Cultivation of Appetite. Frankfurt / M. 1988, p. 425
- ^ Sabine Verk: A matter of taste. Cookbooks from the Folklore Museum. Berlin 1995, p. 64
- ^ Eva Barlösius: Social and historical aspects of German cuisine. P. 432
- ↑ a b Article Contemporary Issues in Japanese Cuisine in the Encyclopedia of Food and Culture
- ↑ Hans-Jürgen Teuteberg: Mother's cooking pot as an orientation in the foreign ( Memento of the original from October 5, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Konrad Schröder u. a .: Aspects of European Cultural Diversity. 1995, p. 229
