Projets transversaux Food and Food Practices in Europe from the Nineteenth Century to the Present: Technology and Tastes

The research area focusing on food studies eating practices from a historical perspective, based on interdisciplinary analyses developed first and foremost for the European space.All aspects relating to the material and cultural practices of food production are explored, ranging from different types of agriculture to the most diverse forms of cuisine and gastronomy.This approach seeks to identify the elements that make up a potential European “taste.” Research will examine different locations (inside and outside the home) by focusing on a wide variety of culinary cultures in the form of recipes, technologies, medicine, and the imaginary. As objects of criticism and transmission that generate norms, food practices will be defined from an intra European perspective—which is to say local and regional—and an extra-European one as well.We hold an annual seminar entitled “Food and Taste in Europe,” in addition to study days on contemporary food issues, and an annual conference that takes an interdisciplinary approach to this distinctive subject.This cross-disciplinary project gives priority to three aspects;1- Material Aspects of Food in EuropeThis aspect bears on the evolution of knowledge and know-how relating to cooking and preserving food. We consider the technological innovations that drove the successive transformations from cooking with wood to cooking with coal and later gas, as well as twentieth-century innovations such as microwave ovens and induction cooking. The goal is to identify and assess the concrete impact these changes in knowledge and technology have had on culinary modes of production over the last two centuries in Europe.2- The Food Practices and Taste of EuropeansThis aspect explores the circulation of people, products, and recipes, giving priority to conveyors of cultural influence in European territories (the cooks that crisscrossed Europe during the nineteenth century, culinary magazines, food critics, travelers, doctors, nutritionists, jurists), and attempting to determine the nature and degree of their influence. The objective is to explore the various scales for these transfers of influence (regions, terroirs, countries, social classes), and to identify the degree to which cuisine and gastronomy helped to form a European culture if not a European identity, which we will explore from a perspective of food standards and taste.3- Gender, Food, and CuisineBeyond the centuries-old image of the nourishing mother, we will examine the relations between cuisines, women, mothers, and children in Europe. Iconographic sources (including those from advertising), as well as sociological studies of objects and their uses (for instance toys that convey clichés or stereotypes, such as “doll’s tea sets” or “miniature food processors” inevitably designed for young girls), are mobilized to this purpose.