The Gastronomical Arts in Spain: Food and Etiquette ed. by Frederick A. de Armas and James Mandrell (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Gastronomical Arts in Spain: Food and Etiquette ed. by Frederick A. de Armas and James Mandrell Rebecca Earle The Gastronomical Arts in Spain: Food and Etiquette. Ed. by Frederick A. de Armas and James Mandrell. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. 2022. vii+ 288 pp. $75. ISBN 978–1–4875–4052–4. Olla podrida was a complex stew, fashionable during the early modern era in Spain and elsewhere; the English called it an olio. It consisted of a great number of meats roasted and boiled, together with vegetables and other seasonings, which were then served on separate platters. The Gastronomical Arts in Spain is a bit of an olio. Individual chapters examine a diverse range of topics, from the symbolism of honey in medieval Spanish verse to the gastronomical writings of Manuel Vázquez Montal- bán (1939–2003). There is even a chapter on the olla podrida itself. As with an olio, the structuring principles are loose. According to the Introduction, the chapters are organized in 'three courses'—looking at foodstuffs, how and what to eat, and 'modern appetites and culinary fashions'—but unsurprisingly many contributors in all three sections touch on attitudes towards how and what to eat, or discuss individual foodstuffs. What, then, do we learn? Ryan Giles examines the religious symbolism associated with honey and wax in Alfonso X's thirteenth-century Cantigas de Santa Maria. Carolyn Nadeau traces the emergence of a concept of 'Spanish' cuisine in the sixteenth century, in part by studying 'gastrotoponyms' (Alberto Capatti's term for recipe names that reference a specific place). John Slater's chapter on maize shows, inter alia, how nineteenth- and twentieth-century French and US scholarship on its origins ignored Spain's role in disseminating this now global crop. Fernando Serrano Larráyoz examines the dietary advice proffered in four sixteenth-century regimens, including one composed by the patient himself. Several chapters study representations of eating in Golden Age theatre, and James Mandrell considers anti-French sentiments in varied eighteenth-century sources, some linked to food. Íñigo Sánchez-Llama and Dorota Heneghan examine how two nineteenth-century authors (Mariano José de Lara and Benito Pérez Galdós) used food to advance their critiques of Spanish society. José Colmeiro's concluding chapter reviews the extensive gastronomic writings of Vázquez Montalbán. Most chapters focus on cookbooks and literary sources, which, some contributors suggest, led ordinary people to adopt elite attitudes towards food etiquette. As with an olio, the individual components are presented side by side, but on separate platters. The absence of a Conclusion reinforces the reader's sense that the chapters, interesting though they are, do not add up to something greater than the sum of their parts. As the editors themselves observe, 'we only seek to provide a taste of some of the many ways in which food, etiquette, medicine, and taste develop in Spain over time' (p. 20). Call me old-fashioned, but I think edited collections ought to offer their readers some sort of programmatic overview of how the individual chapters fit together beyond the very loose metaphor of a three-course meal. Taken on its own terms, to be sure, the collection succeeds in conveying the omnipresence of food in Spanish culture over a long period, and I learnt a good deal from individual chapters. (I also encountered some words that do not appear [End Page 631] in the Oxford English Dictionary, such as a 'swivel' (pp. 19, 129), which appears to be a translation of yesca, or tinder.) At the same time, I was surprised by some of the absences. Most strikingly, the contributors pay little attention to the larger imperial context. 'Slavery' and 'race' do not appear in the index, although 'sugar' does. 'Neo-colonialism' by US multinationals receives some attention, but, aside from Slater's chapter, Spain's centuries-long history as a colonial power features only tangentially. The Gastronomical Arts in Spain thus gives the impression that this history had scant effect on Spanish eating habits, or attitudes to food. Not all scholars of Hispanic foodways would share this view. Overall, The Gastronomical Arts in Spain explores some of...