Page 34 - Studio International - September 1974

structure laid out, one could have asked rhythmic qualities of other symbolic systems. compact and highly organized set of rules. The
reasonably why they never serve potatoes in The capacity to recall the whole by the structure clear focus on the selected aspects of the food
meal B. The answer now would be that potatoes of the parts is a well-known technique in music system seen as a system of rules making a formal
are the staple for meal A course one. That part and poetry for arousing attention and sustaining pattern enables us to explain some characteristics
of the pattern would lose its distinctiveness and interest. of the nutritional part of the food system which
the pattern would lose its shape if potatoes were The same recurring theme is visible in the otherwise remain mysterious. Nutritionists tend
served in course two or meal two. There may sequence from thick gravy to thicker custard to to deplore the preference of some parts of
also be a rule of non-reversibility as between the solid icing sugar. One of the structural rules of English society for carbohydrate and highly
first and second meal, course or item concerning this food system is progressive desiccation and processed foods instead of more nutritious raw
hot and cold: a hot course one can be followed geometrication of forms through the day. The fruits and vegetables, but there is no explanation
by a hot or cold course two, but a meal that first course of the main meal is presented in to my knowledge of how this kind of preference
starts cold cannot go back to a hot course later. what appears to the uninitiated as a slushy arises. In the food system I have just described
indistinguishable mixture in which it is difficult there is obviously no place for raw fruit. Any
to distinguish the trimmings and solid dressings housewife who puts money aside for buying raw
from the meat and potatoes under their lavish fruit will still have to spend again on the main
coat of rich brown gravy. The second course, structure part of the food system. Fruit can only
though still wet and viscous, has an undeniable come into the system as a snack. She would be
sculptural form, whether it be the sphere of the condemned by her family on all the criteria they
Christmas pudding, or the trifle decorated with use for judging what is a meal and what is a good
fruit. meal if she were to try to serve them with raw
We can summarize the rules transforming the fruit instead of puuding. Of course there is an
elements of the sweet part of any meal, through important economic factor here. Carbohydrates
the sequence of meals as follows : and sugars are cheaper than meat an fruit. But
what is interesting is the large amount of work
the housewife is prepared to do herself in order
On to the three courses of the main meal are to peel, cook and serve and wash up after her
mapped the sequence, ranking and rules of the daily potato meal. The combination of the food
three meals of Sunday. First the potato meal, system as it has developed autonomously and
second the main cereal meal, third the last cereal, the economic factors explains the extraordinary
sweet and dry. The diagrams in the unpublished phenomenon of the British cheap biscuit. Here
report show that the last course of the first two is an example of a national preference, the kind
meals and the only solid of the third meal is of taste-formation which the economists are
exactly the same item except that it is only too glad to leave aside as not susceptible of
progressively drier. The lavish liquid dressing of economic analysis. The British like to have
sweet custard has been poured over a cake, cheap biscuits and they do not mind whether
whether plum cake or jam sponge and dried in they all taste much the same so long as they are
the form of icing sugar. The option to select any very varied in their shapes and sizes, colours and
of the possible ingredients of a second course in geometrical decoration. The same designs of
the main meal is given even more latitude in the biscuits are found in other European nations but
minor meal, but working through the menus, they are generally expensive and of good quality
week by week and month by month the materials, with considerable difference between
prototype puddings and custard in the second The movement from wet food to dry food one biscuit and another as to its taste. The
course of the main meal are recognizable in the through the day involves a shift in utensils; explanation that is offered here of the British
minor meal in their dry forms as plum cake and fingers can take up dry food, but forks and demand for cheap biscuits is that the biscuit is a
jam sponge cake. When it comes to the final spoons lift wet food to the mouth. The axis condensed symbol of all the food events and the
course of the main meal or the last meal on between wet and dry used in this way allows of social events of a day and a week and a life-time.
Sunday night, the range of sweet biscuits reveals a correspondence between intimacy and It has to be cheap because it has to be used so
the pudding again, in its most desiccated forms : distance, thus linking this aspect of the food often to make the regular summation of the
currant biscuits, sugar-coated biscuits, jam- system to a dimension of the social system. The symbolic system which in the case of the food
centred biscuits. Nowhere else in the world is main course of the Sunday dinner is for the patterning that we have described occurs very
there a steady demand for small geometrically intimacy of the family circle. When this circle is frequently. It has to be cheap because it is an
shaped sweet biscuits with a layer of jam or greatly enlarged, as for the weddings, New Year integral part of the working-class food system.
cream in the middle and coated with icing, at a party, 21st birthday or Christening celebrations From the perspective of this system the wedding
sufficiently modest price to permit them a that Michael Nicod attended, dry foods are cake can be presented plausibly as the most
regular place in the daily menu of the majority suitable. Thus the third course and the third formal pile of biscuits offered in the course of a
of the population. In so far as the sweet biscuit meal have a further dimension of usefulness in life-time. As the ordinary biscuit sums up the
eaten last thing at night on Sunday is a dry summarizing hospitality when the intimate mode daily and the weekly food system, so does the
version of the cake, and the cake a dry version of is not appropriate or possible. wedding cake sum up the high moment in the
the pudding, we can regard it not merely as a life cycle. It is a sweet cereal confection on which
coda or as an irrelevant conclusion, but as a Conclusion a white liquid dressing has been poured, but the
summary form, literally, of those courses. The This account is notable for what it omits to dressing has set into the hardest, shiniest and
biscuit is capable of standing for all the discuss. We have said nothing about the taste of most improbably patterned crust. The icing of
sequences of puddings through the year and of the food or the smells of food, nothing about the the wedding cake is able to express what it does
wedding cakes and christening cakes through division of labour, nothing about the way the because it is at the pinnacle of a very rigorously
the life cycle. Our analysis is beginning to reveal food is served. By confining our observations to formalized set of rules which segregate liquid
a dietary system, which, with undeniable a few very salient characteristics of the food from solid with complete consistency right
economy of means, has all the mimetic and system we were able to get out this extremely through all the constituent food occasions.q
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