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Oxford Symposium 2002
FIXED
ON FAT
The 2002 Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery
By Elizabeth D. Richter
Few of us can spread a pat of butter or add cream
to our coffee without a pang of guilt. Fat is bad. The evil “F”
word is ingrained in our psyche. Imagine the pleasure, then, for 170 food
writers and culinary historians from Chicago and around the globe who
gathered last month at St.Antony’s College in the 12th century college
town of Oxford, England, to spend three days talking about, lecturing
about, learning about, and yes, eating fat, all kinds of fat.
Fats, in case you’re not clear on what packs all those calories,
are made up of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen and belong to a group of substances
scientifically known as lipids. They can be of the animal kind, as in
lard and butter, or the vegetable kind, as in canola oil, olive oil, or
coconut oil. But its source doesn’t tell one much about a fat’s
taste or how it’s used. The Oxford Symposium set out to shed some
light on the subject.
St. Antony’s College itself cannot claim 12th century roots, having been founded a mere fifty years ago, quite recent by Oxford standards. But this venerable symposium (whose participants are known in British syntax as “symposiasts”) draws upon over two thousand years of recorded history on food. The subject of fat, both animal and vegetable, was dissected by the experts, plus a few interested amateurs, in 37 papers presented to symposiasts in 22 sessions. Topics ranged from fats in medieval England to the diet of Japanese Sumo wrestlers to dumba, the sheep-tail fat prized in Uzbekistan. Meals, of course, were built around fat, and featured just about everything you think you’re not supposed to eat.
The universal language of the conference was surely humor. Fat by its very nature tickles a multi-national funny bone. “We are at our most intimate with our environment when we are eating it” began British historian and author Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, whose Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food has just been published in the U.S. He delighted delegates with his observations about “the enormous success of our species in mastering fat”. He pointed out the all too familiar paradox that while today’s society celebrates slimness, we’re getting fatter all the time.
Using such images as the ample women painted by Rubens and Botera, the hefty US president William Howard Taft, and Twiggy, he offered a lively history of humankind’s historic ambivalence about fat. In the final analysis, he noted, neither health, capitalism, male attitudes toward women, nor fashion, all commonly blamed for our fat obsession, account for the rise in obesity. Fernandez-Armesto subscribes to the much-debated theory that the upper classes need to separate themselves from the lower. So, if food is scarce and only the rich have access, it’s chic to be stout. Conversely, with food abundant and available to the poor, the only option the rich have to set themselves apart is thinness.
Eyeing their waistlines to determine their social status, symposiasts eagerly sought new insights about fat, both culinary and cultural. Additional subjects included coconut culture in the Philippines, Iran’s reliance on animal fats, “ghee” (clarified butter) as a ritual food in modern India and fat-laden pastries from the island of Crete. Outside the US, it seems, fat is a highly prized ingredient.
In some countries, attitudes about fat are particularly inconsistent. The Japanese, anthropologist Michael Ashkenazi reported, frown on obesity, yet celebrate the popular Sumo wrestler. These mammoth entertainers can weigh in over 300 pounds, sustained by a diet of chanko-nabe (a stew of fish, vegetables, and meat), mochi (a dough-like substance made of glutinous rice pounded in a hollow tree trunk), and beer. Such is the wrestlers’ discipline that having methodically gained enormous amounts of weight, once they retire from the ring for another career, they can drop half their body weight in six months. It’s good luck, by the way, to pat a Sumo wrestler’s belly.
This year’s topic of fat was suggested by Dr. Bruce Kraig, Professor Emeritus in History at Chicago’s Roosevelt University. “Fat has become so important a topic these days…it is the great Satan”, he observed. Currently president of the Culinary Historians of Chicago, Dr. Kraig is a true connoisseur of fat, being an internationally recognized expert on the history of the hot dog. He came to Oxford prepared to share the secrets of Southern Illinois cooking in a paper appropriately titled “Fried in the Heartland”.
Chicago was also represented by Dr. Russell Zanca,
assistant professor of anthropology at Northeastern Illinois University,
an expert in Uzbekistan and it turns out, sheep fat. In his field studies
in Uzbekistan, Dr. Zanca has seen…and eaten…food literally
swimming in cottonseed oil, the most common fat in this major cotton-producing
nation. Yet, the older members of the population yearn for the once more-available
fat from the tail of the sheep unique to that country.
The Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery has been held every year but
one since 1981 when Dr. Theodore Zeldin and Alan Davidson (author of the
Oxford Companion to Food) both in residence at St. Antony’s College,
were spurred by a common interest in food history to launch a series of
seminars. The conference would soon become an annual magnet for anyone
with a serious interest in learning what’s behind what’s on
one’s plate. Past participants counted such luminaries of the food
world as Elizabeth David and Julia Child. This year attendees included
Chef Fritz Blank of Philadelphia’s Deux Cheminees (once a student
of Chicago’s late Chef Louis Szathmary), British food writer Caroline
Conran, and Vogue Magazine food editor Jeffrey Steingarten.
Retired Birmingham, England, businessman Harlan Walker epitomizes the amateur food enthusiast who makes the yearly pilgrimage. Editor of the symposium papers published each year, he is infinitely curious about food and sees the conference as a way to cut through food industry jargon. “It’s quite difficult to communicate even between the English and Americans about food. Here you have to talk in a language everyone understands.”
From a health perspective, the conference did not attempt to resolve the current debate over high vs low fat diets. Australian Cardiologist Dr. David Kelly has spent his professional life trying to get people to stop eating fat. Explaining that the chemistry of fat’s taste appeal is due to its ability to dissolve spices and add new textures to recipes, he outlined the evils of saturated and transfats and the value of monosaturated fats like olive oil, key to the Mediterranean diet. In seeming contradiction, British nutrition writer Barry Groves described his own weight loss while on a high fat diet, disputed the dangers of saturated fat in coconut oil and quoted studies supporting better overall health produced by low carbohydrate diets.
Conferees, however, did not let unresolved health issues to stop them from frequent sampling. Oil tastings offered olive, coconut, walnut, hazelnut, almond, and argan, a nutty flavored oil from the stone of a Morocco fruit. Animal fats were also in abundance at a tasting of top quality English creams featuring single cream, double cream, and thick clotted cream.
But the most anticipated tasting provided samples of lardo, an Italian specialty made in Tuscany from the raw back fat of Cinta Senese pigs. Marinated in salt, herbs, and spices in large marble vats, blocks of fat miraculously turn into an unusual delicacy. Once considered a poor man’s food, lardo is served thinly sliced on bread with tomatoes, walnuts, and sometimes honey.
Saturday’s “fat dinner” was
the gastronomic highlight of the weekend. Jane Levi, this year’s
conference organizer, confided that she and dinner planners, Caroline
Conran and Anissa Helou, struggled to include as many fats as possible
without overwhelming guests. By all accounts, they were successful. Roasted
nuts, exotic salamis, duck fat, walnut oil, ice cream and double cream
for raspberries notwithstanding, all guests and this reporter were able
to stand up from the table.
Fortified by splendid meals, the food-addicted also found ample shopping
opportunities. On-site vendors set up tables selling volumes from previous
conferences and offered many works by conferees. The most delicious cover
design award goes to Robin Weir’s Ices: The Definitive Guide. His
recipes ranging from geranium leaf ice cream to one flavored with Stilton
cheese speak to Weir’s obsession with ice cream. He told tablemates
that he’d collected so much ice-cream related paraphernalia that
he’s planning to open an ice cream museum.
Brighton-based antiquarian bookseller Liz Steeber turned cookbook lovers into collectors with her table of second-hand and antique publications. One attendee was pleased to find an extra copy of his own out-of-print cookbook. Her catalogue lists such classics as an 1851 first edition of The Book of Household Management, by Mrs. Isabella Beeton, for just under $1500.
Hardly the usual conference vendor, a nearby “Bring and Buy” table gave participants in the 21st Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery the chance to empty their own pantries and share the produce of their gardens, while raising money to support the Symposium. One could pick up everything from an organic quince to a handful of medlars, small fruits favored in Tudor England, and for the more practical shopper, a Japanese product that solidifies cooking fat for easy disposal.
Elizabeth D. Richter is a consultant and principal of The Richter Group. She also enjoys historically significant meals of all kinds.
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