Is there too much sanctimony in today’s food writing?
June 26, 2012 by Lindsay
Stephen Budiansky in The Wall Street Journal has a thought-provoking article about today’s
food writing. Among the disturbing traits he notices is the use
of the word “preferably,” as in “1 teaspoon paprika,
preferably sweet Spanish pimentón dulce” – a
sure sign of pretentiousness. And there’s the hectoring that
accompanies too many recipes, “½ cup brown sugar, preferably
fair-trade organic.”
To expand upon his argument that food writing is missing an essential element of humor, he reviews four new cookbooks: Change Comes to Dinner by Katherine Gustafson, Culinary Intelligence by Peter Kaminsky, The Locavore’s Dilemma by Pierre Desrochers & Hiroko Shimizu, and The Taste of Tomorrow by Josh Schonwald.
Budiansky introduces the books with a note that “Making a cause out of epicurean pleasure has become equally de rigueur in food books. Four new ones all follow the basic template: to amalgamate personal stories of culinary discovery with exhortations to treat food as something meaningful and earnest.” Among the themes he finds in these books are a surprising dislike of eating, self-absorption, and a nanny approach. In short, as he writes, “…even with the best of intentions, making a cause out of what we eat has a way of coming back to bite us. And likewise that in place of so much earnestness, the ingredient modern food writing could use more of is wit – preferably, the dry kind.”
Together, these four short book reviews provide a lot of food for thought.
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