Applications of Elegance (I)

Jun 29

On an elegant recipe.

.. “may be *perfectly depended on”*

Eliza Acton, 1845

Characteristic of style as well as substance, a recipe is an inconspicuously intricate item of instruction.

Record of nature’s mysteries, nation’s histories and personal memories, no other succinct piece of written information is so methodically insightful or exposing of a people and place, past and present than these compact compositions, directions for the preparation of private pleasures and national nourishments.

Transmitted through word of mouth before the written word and transferred in person before a spoken sound, recipes in their essence precede writing and language, gently but reliably mapping civilisations’ instinctive capacities for physical, psychological and spiritual nourishment.

Discreet chronicles culinary culture, social values and domestic habits, they are interwoven into every way the world works, simultaneously driving and being driven by big brazen ideas:

politics and economics, philosophy and fashion, business and industry, psychology and theology. Seemingly small daily doings, directing and distributing the health and wealth of nations.

Open secrets of the daily hallmarks and celebrations of life, recipes are temporal in an inexplicable and inextricable way: deciphering how and why some recipes outlive civilisations, having fed billions of mouths and counting, and others barely survive beyond a single breakfast, family or generation is one of life’s biggest riddles and impossibilities.

Originating from the Latin “recipere”, meaning “to receive”, the word used today was for a long time referred to as a “receipt”, denoting prescriptions for medicine, redolent of the time-old healing and medicinal properties of food and cookery. Although first cited by Chaucer in the Canterbury Tales in the 14th Century, it was not until the 18th century that the word began to be used in reference to cookery, as cookery and cookery writing took shape and traction, spurred by the Victorians’ incessant preoccupation with domestic responsibility, mired with the rise of the middle classes.

The forerunner of good cookery instructions in the English language was Eliza Acton, often referred to as the “original” Mrs Beeton by cookbook connoisseurs.

Much admired for her precise and practical instructions, she lay ground and standard to much of England’s modern culinary heritage in her seven-year compendium, *Modern Cookery*, where every recipe was tested in her kitchen, as evident in the delightful charm and detail that embellish the pages; the opposite of which is known of the real Mrs Beeton, who supposedly never cooked a single dish, and proceeded, as many other cookery writers who followed, to borrow generously from Eliza Acton, much in methods and entirely in form: the layout of today’s recipes is said to be entirely attributed to Eliza Acton.

“…And now and then I have found myself instructing you to stand in a bain-marie till dinner time, to cook the saucepan, and to pour the pudding over the sauce, and I have clearly accredited you with three hands.”

Constance Spry, 1956

But a recipe is more than correct cookery instructions. Concerned with a practice that is both science and art, the writing itself is part form and part function – for successful results, both which need to resonate with the reader; not only does the method need to be sound and its format clear, its unique and intrinsic style, naturally informing both and responsible for the infinitely differentiating details must also meet its match. And given there are as many recipes for spaghetti pomodoro as there are Italian speakers, picking a recipe is no trivial matter.

This is the recipe’s unspoken charm and pleasure, whether from a favourite book or grandmother: its quiet but steadfast ability to chime and spark the mood that inspires your finest and natural best: its value not only in transferring the science of cookery but as much in cajoling an art from its audience, that personal contribution so vital in any and all successful cookery.

Culinary recipes are not merely instructions for repetitive reproductions; rather, they strive to elicit personal productions, a philosophical distinction meaningful to ancient Greeks, captured by the terms techne and poiesis, where techne was linked to reproduction and poiesis more associated with production. While both concern themselves with making, techne as knowledge which could be taught was concerned with craft and its practical application, the rational method involved in producing something. And while there could be no poesis without techne, poiesis was vital as an action of transformation and “bringing forth”, defined in more detail as ‘an activity where a person brings something into being that did not exist before”.

And that is a recipe at its best.