Sources (not sauces)
Books are a very important part of our lives. They help us transmit culture, especially elite culture. Newspapers, too (as I just got an email from a friend telling me about the ‘Jewish mafia’ which is an piece of anti-Semitism that I wish would be thrown out as past its use by date – and why anyone should be sending it to me, much less a good friend is something that worries me – but that isn’t relevant to this blog) but that’s a bit different in how it works.
I was thinking today about how many science fiction or fantasy novels only have very limited discussions of food. Despite the fact that speculative fiction fans I know (including myself) are often totally enamoured of cooking and of exploring new cuisines, the literature seldom has fully developed cuisines.
This means that food historians in 50 years time will be looking at an impoverished source to establish the food aspect of fan culture. Sure, they can look at SF conventions or fanzines or various other places, but the main source of elite transmission does not actually reflect the position out there.
I can give you examples of foodie writer who don’t include much food at all in their books and of foodie writers who do. The simple truth is, however, that food has very low importance in most speculative fiction. It doesn’t have equally low importance in the lives of all those who enjoy speculative fiction.
Why am I telling you this? Recently I keep noticing people extrapolating broad understandings of a place or a time from a single source or type of source. This is only very, very occasionally a good thing. Not everyone Jewish eats New York Deli style food. Not every SF fan lives on junk food. Balanced sources and appropriate use of sources are just as important for food history as for any other variety of history.
It being food history, your sauces also have to balance, but that’s really a different matter.
March 23rd, 2009 at 10:05 pm
Soeaking for myself, lack of food detail is because I go “Now what would they be eating? And can I find a useful source on this in, say, 10 minutes?” Followed by “I don’t know” and “obviously not”. Therefore, little mention of food, except for potatoes. I have noticed my characters eat potatoes a lot.
Also, there are more meals being eaten in my things set in the future. This is because I can have them eating whatever I bloody well want.
March 26th, 2009 at 12:42 am
“What would they have eaten” is not nearly as hard as that. You can build up straightforward menus for all kinds of circumstances using the worldbuilding you must have anyhow to set the scene and make the novel work. Understanding and extrapolation - those are the names of the game.