Volume 29, Number 18 · November 18, 1982
Slow Food
By Geoffrey Grigson
Culture and Cuisine: A Journey Through the History of Food
by Jean-François Revel, translated by Helen R. Lane
Doubleday, 289 pp., $24.95
Plenty of aesthetic history—in so far as we can talk of the history of aesthetic response—is presented to us in the words we use for selecting, eating, and liking food, and mixing it, and making it more likable. If we start with cookery words, our prime vocable may be or may long ago have become English enough. From the Latin coquus, 'cook' ('coc' in Old English) has been around for most of 2,000 years, if for most of that time cooks haven't worn white hats and aprons. But we moved quickly enough into French, after 1066, under Norman kings and abbots and other territorial grandees. Sidestepping that decidedly English pudding, which to begin with denoted a brutish stuffing of pig meat and blood into guts, tart and soup are French or come to us from French; and it is the same with veal and pork and beef and venison and mutton and vinegar and verjuice and sugar, and with process words, roast and toast, fry and boil and poach.
Review, 2040 words
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