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The death of Smithfield Market: Urbanization and the meat markets of 19th-century London
ARTICLE IN PRESS 394
Abstracts / Appetite 47 (2006) 384–401
From abjection to ecstasy: The emotional ends of eating in Monique Truong’s Book of Salt. ALICE MCLEAN. Honors
Program, Sweet Briar College, Sweet Briar, VA 24595, USA. [email protected] Nine years after the American writer Gertrude Stein died in 1946, her partner, Alice B. Toklas, composed a cookbook devoted to the culinary adventures that the couple shared in France. Fifty years later, Monique Truong fashioned a novel narrated from the perspective of the Vietnamese cook who worked for the famous couple. While the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook underscores cooking as a medium through which to express cultural authority and expertise in a foreign land, Book of Salt deals directly with food as a colonizer’s weapon. By giving voice to a Vietnamese protagonist skilled in French culinary techniques and practices, however, Monique Truong does far more than shed light on culinary colonialism; she underscores cooking as a powerful means of communication and cultural transgression. Like Toklas and Stein, Binh, the narrator of Book of Salt, speaks French haltingly. Like Toklas, however, Binh is eloquently well-versed in French culinary beliefs and practices, a fact that enables him to destabilize myriad power relations. Binh’s culinary expertise challenges and dissolves hierarchies that privilege heterosexuality over homosexuality, white over non-white, colonizer over colonized, and stasis over dislocation. This underscores the power of food as a medium of self-construction and cultural defiance. 10.1016/j.appet.2006.08.036
The death of Smithfield Market: Urbanization and the meat markets of 19th-century London. ROBYN METCALFE. History
Department, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA. [email protected] Although farmers’ markets are making a comeback today, they are nothing like the public food markets of the 19th century, particularly if you are looking for fresh meat. The history of fresh meat markets offers insights into society’s relationship to meat, their cities, and to the animals that produce their food. Urban markets, such as the Smithfield Live Cattle Market in central London, became the focus of modernization during the 19th century. In 1852, Parliament passed the Smithfield Market Removal Act to abolish the Smithfield Market, London’s historic live cattle market. The removal of the market from the city center was a metaphor for the rupture of modern British society with the old order of pre-industrial Britain. According to George Dodd, who wrote The Food of London in 1856, Smithfield represented a
‘‘continued manifestation of prejudiced adherence to an old system,’’ a ‘‘continued display of the meat-buying powers of the London Public,’’ and a ‘‘perennial declaration of the wonderful improvements gradually introduced in the size, quality, and condition of grazing-stock,’’ a testament to the industrialization and modernization of London. British economic statistics, the arrival of new technology, public discourse, and social reform movements point to a more complicated assessment Smithfield. The interplay between multiple interests includes those of Smithfield’s managers, the consumers, butchers, Parliament, and social reformers. Meat would reappear in the city center, but this time as a frozen commodity, separated from live animals and their slaughter. What impact did this have upon the urban food landscape? How did the farmers respond? Perhaps a consideration of the Smithfield Live Cattle Market will shed light on similar market changes in other modern cities during the 19th century. 10.1016/j.appet.2006.08.037
Jiternice and Kolache: Food and identity in Wilson, Kansas.
JEFFREY P. MILLER. Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA. [email protected] A small town in north-central Kansas uses its ethnically Czech heritage, especially traditionally Czech food products, as a way to maintain personal and social identity and to encourage heritage tourism as a means of economic development. Wilson, Kansas, is a town with a significant proportion of its population that is ethnically Czech. The town is attempting to use this ethnic background and its historical nature to deal with economic and demographic problems caused by its location away from major transportation infrastructures and lack of large-scale employers. The residents are using elements of Czech ethnicity and historical identity to create useful social and personal identities in the face of the challenges created by their unique situation. We focus on the primary areas of the food served at the After-Harvest Czech Festival, the Midland Hotel, analysis of local cookbooks featuring Czech cooking, and changing meal patterns among local residents in order to examine the nature of the changing identity of the residents and the town. The four areas examined show the difference between the ways that ethnicity is performed in the public and private space and the way in which the Midland Hotel functions as a metaphor for the larger changes that are affecting the community. 10.1016/j.appet.2006.08.038
Abstracts / Appetite 47 (2006) 384–401
From abjection to ecstasy: The emotional ends of eating in Monique Truong’s Book of Salt. ALICE MCLEAN. Honors
Program, Sweet Briar College, Sweet Briar, VA 24595, USA. [email protected] Nine years after the American writer Gertrude Stein died in 1946, her partner, Alice B. Toklas, composed a cookbook devoted to the culinary adventures that the couple shared in France. Fifty years later, Monique Truong fashioned a novel narrated from the perspective of the Vietnamese cook who worked for the famous couple. While the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook underscores cooking as a medium through which to express cultural authority and expertise in a foreign land, Book of Salt deals directly with food as a colonizer’s weapon. By giving voice to a Vietnamese protagonist skilled in French culinary techniques and practices, however, Monique Truong does far more than shed light on culinary colonialism; she underscores cooking as a powerful means of communication and cultural transgression. Like Toklas and Stein, Binh, the narrator of Book of Salt, speaks French haltingly. Like Toklas, however, Binh is eloquently well-versed in French culinary beliefs and practices, a fact that enables him to destabilize myriad power relations. Binh’s culinary expertise challenges and dissolves hierarchies that privilege heterosexuality over homosexuality, white over non-white, colonizer over colonized, and stasis over dislocation. This underscores the power of food as a medium of self-construction and cultural defiance. 10.1016/j.appet.2006.08.036
The death of Smithfield Market: Urbanization and the meat markets of 19th-century London. ROBYN METCALFE. History
Department, Boston University, Boston, MA 02215, USA. [email protected] Although farmers’ markets are making a comeback today, they are nothing like the public food markets of the 19th century, particularly if you are looking for fresh meat. The history of fresh meat markets offers insights into society’s relationship to meat, their cities, and to the animals that produce their food. Urban markets, such as the Smithfield Live Cattle Market in central London, became the focus of modernization during the 19th century. In 1852, Parliament passed the Smithfield Market Removal Act to abolish the Smithfield Market, London’s historic live cattle market. The removal of the market from the city center was a metaphor for the rupture of modern British society with the old order of pre-industrial Britain. According to George Dodd, who wrote The Food of London in 1856, Smithfield represented a
‘‘continued manifestation of prejudiced adherence to an old system,’’ a ‘‘continued display of the meat-buying powers of the London Public,’’ and a ‘‘perennial declaration of the wonderful improvements gradually introduced in the size, quality, and condition of grazing-stock,’’ a testament to the industrialization and modernization of London. British economic statistics, the arrival of new technology, public discourse, and social reform movements point to a more complicated assessment Smithfield. The interplay between multiple interests includes those of Smithfield’s managers, the consumers, butchers, Parliament, and social reformers. Meat would reappear in the city center, but this time as a frozen commodity, separated from live animals and their slaughter. What impact did this have upon the urban food landscape? How did the farmers respond? Perhaps a consideration of the Smithfield Live Cattle Market will shed light on similar market changes in other modern cities during the 19th century. 10.1016/j.appet.2006.08.037
Jiternice and Kolache: Food and identity in Wilson, Kansas.
JEFFREY P. MILLER. Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA. [email protected] A small town in north-central Kansas uses its ethnically Czech heritage, especially traditionally Czech food products, as a way to maintain personal and social identity and to encourage heritage tourism as a means of economic development. Wilson, Kansas, is a town with a significant proportion of its population that is ethnically Czech. The town is attempting to use this ethnic background and its historical nature to deal with economic and demographic problems caused by its location away from major transportation infrastructures and lack of large-scale employers. The residents are using elements of Czech ethnicity and historical identity to create useful social and personal identities in the face of the challenges created by their unique situation. We focus on the primary areas of the food served at the After-Harvest Czech Festival, the Midland Hotel, analysis of local cookbooks featuring Czech cooking, and changing meal patterns among local residents in order to examine the nature of the changing identity of the residents and the town. The four areas examined show the difference between the ways that ethnicity is performed in the public and private space and the way in which the Midland Hotel functions as a metaphor for the larger changes that are affecting the community. 10.1016/j.appet.2006.08.038