Authenticity: Seek and Ye Shall Find

[b]Authenticity: Seek and Ye Shall Find

Desperately Seeking Authenticity
*But what would an "authentic" cookbook really look like?

By RACHEL LAUDAN, SPECIAL TO THE TIMES

And that's the point. Our definition of "authentic" suits our resources, our kitchens, our prejudices and our tastes. It is our selection (and adaptation). At best, the notion is a harmless delusion. At worst it leads us to condescend to others, believing that we, not they, know the true essence of their culinary tradition.

So why keep talking about the authentic? Why not just face the fact that what we have can only truly be "our-thentic"?

This post continues a discussion begun in the thread "Ixcapuzalco" on the Eating Out in Chicagoland board with this link to the article from which the above citation was drawn.

While it is true that a slavish worship of the notion of authenticity can itself lead to silliness and pretension and potentially too to stultification, I very much disagree with the facile rejection of the notion of authenticity expressed by Laudan's words cited hereabove. Indeed, Laudan's line of thinking as so expressed strikes me as an attempt to bring the politically-correct/ selectively-all-inclusive /anti-elitist/anti-intellectual /let's-all-feel-good -about-ourselves-no-matter- how-stupidly-we-behave- or-ignorant-we-are approach to cooking; perhaps this is a pose taken in part because it suits the medium and its audience, perhaps not.

In any event, this position I've encountered or witnessed many times on the old 'General Board' of Chef-du-Claque Leff's website, where people insist on their right to commit all manner of atrocities to traditional dishes and at the same time claim that theirs is an improved variant of the traditional dish in question and that, further, anyone who disagrees is a pretentious swine who surely doesn't have the facts straight because they haven't read the Ethnic Cuisine for Gumbies cookbook (a book typically written by some TV 'personality') that they swear by.

People are of course free to cook and eat what they like (within certain simple legal parameters, Mr Hammond - cannibalism is still out) but when someone changes in basic ways the composition of a dish that clearly go beyond the limits of variation conceived of as acceptable by the culture that developed the dish, this is itself an expression of a kind of conceit or arrogance and one that hardly is surpassed by the alleged pretention of those who are interested in learning as much as possible about traditional cooking. It is legitimate to say that, for example, if one wants to make dish X, one must use ingredients a, b and c, optionally also d, all treated in a certain way, but never e or g. That is no prohibition to individuals doing what they want but it is acknowledgement of a tradition and respect for the aesthetic principles which produced and guide a traditional cuisine.

One adapts as one must; some adaptations are merely necessary, some are improvements. Sometimes one experiments and even innovates. But traditions exist for good reasons and our general American inclination to despise or resent them is one of our culture's less attractive little neuroses (all cultures have their own and this one happens to be one of ours).

'Authenticity' as an abstract and absolute ideal is perhaps not terribly useful but nor is it wholly useless. As a principle which inclines us to try to follow traditional recipes and methods as closely as possible before 'kicking it up a notch', it is what good cooking is all about and not, as Laudan would have it, at best 'a harmless delusion.'

Far more deluded is the conceit that the notion of "our-thentic" will lead to anything of lasting worth.

Antonius

Antonius wrote:[i]Indeed, Laudan's line of thinking as so expressed strikes me as an attempt to bring the [i]politically-correct/ selectively-all-inclusive /anti-elitist/anti-intellectual /let's-all-feel-good -about-ourselves-no-matter- how-stupidly-we-behave- or-ignorant-we-are approach to cooking

Antonius,

Being from Oak Park, I'm familiar with the "line of thinking" you express.

However, although I wouldn't try to define "our-thentic," it seems like what Landan might be saying is that authenticity is something that is constantly coming into being.

Whether that's what Landan saying or not, though, I would contend that this is an accurate perception. For instance, when you think of "authentic Chicago food," what comes to mind are hot dogs, Italian beef, deep-dish pizza, etc...food items that did not exist that long ago. Some one had a bright idea, and a dish was born. After time, it was endowed with "authenticity."

It does seem true that to be "authentic," a dish has to have some tradition behind it...but the tradition has to start somewhere, and it seems undeniable that the seeds of potentially authentic culinary traditions are being spawned at this very moment.

Hammond

I thought I would add this into the pot. Lynne Olver is a research librarian with a deep interest in the history of food. She maintains a website, A Food Timeline, which has lots of interesting links. Her page on the history of Tex-Mex food is at: http://www.gti.net/mocolib1/kid/foodmexican.html

So many discussions of authenticity in restaurants ignore the issue of time. Local practices have changed everywhere in the world as new raw materials became available, technology changed and the economic level changed. Spice availabilities have affected cooking for thousands of years. More recently in historical time foods from the Western Hemisphere have had major impacts in Europe. Think about tomatoes and peppers in Italy and Hungary or potatoes across practically all of Europe.

The speed of change has accelerated in the last century. Defining the as of date is more important than ever when looking at ethnic cooking. What was authentic in the 1920s or 1950s could be quite unauthentic today.

Antonius, I couldn't agree with you more. The American tendency to want to monkey with everything is deeply regrettable, as it completely ignores the time-tested nature of cuisines and cooking methods which should be honored, or at least thoroughly learned and respected before one attempts to impose one's own personality upon them. Hear, hear.

Antonius, I couldn't disagree with you more. The fundamental American character trait is fusion. Our most traditional dishes-- hot dogs, hamburgers, pizza-- would strike Frankfurters or Neapolitans as bastardizations, yet we have proven that reinventing traditions in this way is our particular genius. For shame, for shame.

I think Laudan's major point (because I know she's a lover of the traditional as well) is that there's a conceit in those who insist on a very strict definition of authenticity that exists more in their ideal of a cuisine than in the reality of that cuisine. It's not an ethical or aesthetic point. She's not saying what *should* be, but just describing what is.

Personally, I think it's imprecise and faulty to insist on authenticity as originality, ie, the genesis of a dish or cuisine. There's no way to nail that down. What is the original taco? Is it the taco pre-conquest? Is a taco al pastor an authentic taco? There were no pigs prior to the conquest. Is flan or churros authentic Mexican desserts? They were Spanish first. Is a burrito or flour tortilla an authentic Mexican dish? Most foodies seem to think not despite the fact that Mexicans in Sonora invented them. Are nachos and fajitas Mexican? Again, most foodies seem to think not, despite that Mexicans in Texas invented them. Etc.

Honestly, I think that a search for authenticity is a fool's pursuit. The best you can do is act like a historian asking: "What were the best or most interesting dishes or versions of dishes at a certain time and a certain place?" And the question of authenticity probably has to be reduced to just a question of what people eat at a certain time and place. Is Bimbo bread authentic Mexican? Sure, Mexicans created it, eat it, and even like it. Is a McDonald's burger authentic American? Yes, and for all the same reasons.

Of course, what's authentic has nothing to do with questions of quality.

What we should do, imo, is get away from the question of authenticity and that's part of how Lauden's article has informed me. We should be concerned instead, I think, with maintaining traditions and technologies before they're lost.

I don't mourn the movement in Mexico away from tortillas and towards bread because it's a loss of authenticity. I mourn it because the knowledge of how to make a lovely food like tortillas is moving out of the skillset of Mexicans. In the same way, I mourn the loss of garum, even though it's no longer a part of authentic Meditteranean cooking.

The problem, of course, is that as one horizon because visible in our future, one almost necessarily falls away in our past and something as "living" as a cuisine can't be forced into stasis anymore than we can keep the sun from going down. And I don't know that I'd want that to happen anyway. Imagine how much would have been lost from our future if native Mexicans hadn't adopted or adapted to Spanish influences.

In the same way, I think it's a bit foolish how Europeans, especially in France and Italy, try to straight-jacket what is this food and what is that dish. It's a corny attempt to freeze time and put a static label on something that developed often over hundreds of years and will probably go on developing even if it can't be legally called Neopolitan pizza or whatever.

Good historical and archeological work, chronicling of technologies and recipes, is great and worthy work and allows for something that might be lost to be found again.

Despite all that, I think that anyone who truly loves food and truly is interested in a cuisine should make an effort to understand and search out its traditions. Just like I imagine Pablo Picasso had an intimate understanding of the skills and works of the masters that preceded him before he started creating new traditions, a cook or diner should do the same. I think they'll benefit from it.

I think there are two issues that often get lumped together in this topic. First, there is authenticity; second there is evolution. One is a snapshot, the other is a radio wave. But, to me, it should be understood that all authentic food evolves. Surely, the tomato was a very inauthentic ingredient at one time in Italian cooking. I think "authentic" is really how something evolves, the rules and restrictions and guidelines that cause a cuisine to change (or switch to music, does free jazz sound like dixieland, but what kept them both "jazz".)

An interesting question, which I think is less debated, but perhaps more debatable, is the idea of how fast food moves. I had such a debate with Mr. Antonius a few weeks ago. It is my contention that the bar of authenticity, the stacis of accepted cuisine changes very fast and very completely. Pizza is mentioned above, with the notion of it being one of these frozen in time creations of the Neopolitans. Yet how old is Neopolitan pizza? [Yes, Antonius, I am sure people were baking rounds of bread forever.] Yet, pizza, even the classic "Margareta" or cheese/tomato pie is a very recent invention. Or, let us move to Buffalo. Buffalo Chicken Wings, if I remember correctly, date back only about 40 years. 40 years from one bored bartender to an institution. There are tons of other examples all over the world. I find it amazing how quickly things can enter the cannon and become considered authentic or "real".

Rob

On Gastronomical Authenticity [by Raymond Sokolov]

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The problem with this debate—between modernists and traditionalists—is that it rests on a false idea of primordial culinary traditions under vulgar contemporary attack. Authenticity in food, like similar notions of authenticity in ethnic makeup, or national character or culture, doesn’t stand up to close scrutiny as a historical principle. Even the most worshipped dishes of Italy were invented by someone not that long ago. Although the actual names of the cooks who first brought the tomato into Italian cooking some time after it arrived from the New World in the wake of Columbus are unknown, their recipes are roughly datable. Polenta, the cornmeal mush of the Italian north, brought a Mexican plant to a region of Europe sunk in poverty, where its adoption by peasants unfamiliar with its nutritional properties led to an epidemic of pellagra. Plentiful records show when this classic vitamin b3-deficiency disease swept over a population newly dependent on corn and ignorant of the need to process the grain in an alkaline medium to make its niacin available to human digestion.
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For me, anyway, culinary authenticity reflects vernacular practice in a culturally coherent region at a particular time. Getting those recipes right is not, or at least wasn’t, a delusionary mission. Julia’s cassoulet is an authentic version of a regional bean dish of southwest France, as it was cooked in Julia’s time. Does it continue to be a regular feature of vernacular gastronomic life in the region today? Will it be bubbling away on farmhouse stoves in 2030? This is an authentically unanswerable question.
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