2 The Four Faces of Taste
W
hat makes certain foods offensive to some, and delicacies to others?
We’re
not talking about faith or culture based food taboos. And we’re not considering
why Westerners baulk at the notion of eating, say, insects, as some cultures
do. (Apparently the giant water-bug Lethocarus
indicus tastes of nothing so much as gorgonzola cheese, according to a
British entomologist in
No, the question in mind is why some diners will prize — while others revile — the likes of molluscs… raw fish… the various types and treatments of offal… and uncooked meat in the form of, say, carne crudo, carpaccio, steak tartare…?
...horrified by the arrival of minced flesh that has felt no flame, adorned with a raw egg yolk...
That last conjures up an hilarious early episode of Rowan Atkinson’s Mr Bean. No descendent, it would seem, of the Tartars — who tenderized their meat by placing it beneath their saddles before a hard day’s riding (“delish”, says one of us) — Bean is horrified by the arrival of minced flesh that has felt no flame, adorned with a raw egg yolk (and persists with another “delish”). Rather than admit his faux pas, and expose himself to the disdain of that arbiter of dining style, the Maitre d’, he endeavors to empty his plate by concealing the meat wherever he can — the salt vessel, a vase of flowers, inside his hastily hollowed-out bread roll, squashed beneath his side plate, in the sugar bowl, down the back of a violinist’s trousers and in the conveniently place handbag of a neighboring diner… Some marks for creativity at least, and he did save himself — as others have not — the ordeal of ploughing through some respectable quantity of the offending dish, swallowing his own disgust with each mouthful.
(The alterative is, of course, to fold in the egg yolk and portions to taste of the condiments provided. Then inform a passing waiter — with all possible chutzpah — that the chef may now cook your meat, this being the only way you’ve found to get a really good burger.)
De gustibus non est disputandum, as the ancients had it — “of matters of taste there is no disputing” or as we’d more likely say today “there’s no accounting for taste”. You might see this said defensively, when someone’s own palate is impugned. Or the words might come with a curled lip and arched eyebrow, when denigrating the dubious taste of someone else.
One man’s meat, then, is another man’s… poison (or, when weighing up between the steak or tuna tartare, another man’s poisson). The famously irascible Friedrich Nietzsche, on the other hand, denied the wisdom of the ages — “all life”, he said, “is a disputing of taste and tasting”. T S Eliot preferred to tread a middle course — “genuine taste is always imperfect taste”. (And at the end of the day it’d be a boring old world if we all liked — or disliked — the same things.)
“Steve, are you at some point actually going to eat
that?” Bo has been considering Fisher’s manipulation of the ingredients left by
the waiter with a mixture of curiosity and suspicion.
“I’m just fixing it how I like it.”
“The waiter said he’d do that for you.”
“I like to do it myself.”
“You haven’t started, and we’re damn near done. Come
to think of it, Jerry, I could go another dozen. What do you say?”
“Very tempting Bo. But we’ve still got mains to come…”
“You can never have too many oysters, Jerry.”
(The first century AD philosopher Seneca would agree,
possessing a truly Roman notion of oysters and excess — “Oysters are not really
food, but are relished to bully the sated stomach into further eating.”)
Levine has already flagged a waiter, and sent her on
her way again, “You can rustle those up quick smart for us, love?”
Fisher continues to prepare his ideal steak tartare —
heavy on the onions and cornichons, light on the capers and anchovies, plenty
of oil, a middling amount of horseradish, a little salt and a good deal of pepper.
“You should try this, guys. It doesn’t get any better.”
“I’d be ill.”
...what precisely is this disgust?
Our taste is opposed by more than a sense of distaste. The foodstuffs we sense as most offensive fill us with disgust. And what precisely is this disgust? While people might have difficulty defining it, pretty much everyone would agree “I know it when I see it (smell it, feel it, taste it…)”. In English, its root is the Latin gustus — “taste”. So taste and disgust are linked etymologically. Disgust is taste’s reverse — anti-taste, if you like.
“our capacity for disgust is in close proportion to our desires...”
Amongst
the lesser (and lesser known) achievements of Charles Darwin is his pioneering
work in the field that came to be called ‘the psychology of disgust’. During
his travels on The Beagle to
Paul
Rozin of
(Speaking of bodies and souls, an intrinsic facet of the dining experience, or at least its aftermath — the hangover — takes on both aspects of disgust — physical nausea arising from a poisoned system, coupled with moral self-loathing. Though not, if you aren’t overly given to remorse… or can manage to comfortably sleep it off.)
“noses, eyes, cheeks, livers, bowels, heads, kidneys, tripe, tongues, sweetbreads, cockscombs and testicles…”
Humans have chowed down on every manner of flesh, fish and fowl through the ages. And one period’s meat has certainly proved to be another’s up-turned nose. Consider the following, in Classical times regarded as “the summit of epicurean delight” according to Roy Strong in his Feast: A History of Grand Eating — “noses, eyes, cheeks, livers, bowels, heads, kidneys, tripe, tongues, sweetbreads, cockscombs and testicles…” Surely all modern diners would find exception with at least some items on this list. And of those foodstuffs still deemed acceptable eating today — any chef will tell you (perhaps to their despair) that they are none of them amongst a menu’s better-moving dishes. Still, they were sought after by our forebears — whose gustatory senses and digestive systems were much as our own.
Is it simply a matter of taste?
If disgust for something can be learned, then can it be unlearned? Can a taste that once revolted us be overturned by habituation? Can disgust be transformed to something more neutral, then perhaps to acceptance or even enjoyment? These questions would seem to bear on the phenomenon we know as “acquired taste”. In The Rituals of Dinner, Margaret Visser writes “…a taste acquired is rarely lost.” But can a distaste acquired be turned about?
acquired taste... is tantamount to joining an exclusive and rarefied company
As disgust has its physical and metaphorical aspects, so too does taste. Most foods regarded as acquired tastes have about them an air of sophistication. Acquiring the taste is tantamount to joining an exclusive and rarefied company. And if the resultant personal satisfaction reinforces their future desirability so too does the ceremony of being served these items in the ritualized setting of the restaurant dining room. Beyond what we put in our mouths and whether, once it’s there, we experience sweet, sour, salty, bitter or savoury — “taste” is seen as discernment, appreciation and aesthetic sensibility. Indeed, it’s often presented as delicacy of feeling, cultivation of manner… and onward and upward to the heights of connoisseurship. (Though humorist Ambrose Bierce, in his Devil’s Dictionary, prefers to define a connoisseur as “a specialist who knows everything about something and nothing about anything else”.)
Levine holds up his glass to the passing sommelier,
who approaches.
“Your Volnay now, sir?”
“We all done with that white? No, then don’t bring the
Volnay yet. Better give us another bottle of that Chablis first. Go better with
these …” as the fresh platter of oysters is set down. “And you can leave the
bottle at the table with us this time, I get edgy when my glass gets empty.” Turning
back to his tablemates, “Jerry, get stuck into those oysters. And grab a couple
yourself, Steve, there’s plenty.”
“I’m fine, Bo.”
“You sure you don’t want any? Speak now, or there
won’t be any point.”
“I don’t like them.”
“You are kidding me. Goddamn, you’ll eat raw meat but
not oysters. That’s not natural.”
“They’re an acquired taste I never acquired. Like you
and tartare, I suppose.”
“That’s not a taste, it’s a bloody peccadillo,” Levine
picks up his just-filled wine glass, “isn’t that so, Jerry?” raising the glass
in a mock toast.
“Certainly not my style, Bo.”
“Different strokes, then,” says Fisher around a mouthful
of the offending steak.
“Steve, Steve, Steve — that’s no attitude for an ad
man. We want the broadest possible
strokes ’cause that’s the broadest market, and that’s our business.
A word to the wise and a lesson in life, right here
and now gents. Take the market messages of our respective dishes. Our…” tilting
his head back for one final oyster, and smiling as he catches the gaze of a
woman nearby “our delectable dainties here, and Steve’s minced and uncooked
carcass. That market is at best a pissant, boutique, obscurantist one, and
stodgy ’cause its devotees are dying out, and there’s nothing in place to bring
new blood in. That’s your plate, Steve. Ours, on the other hand, it’s elite,
it’s about prestige, it’s got profile and it’s got legs and best of all it’s
growing because it’s aspirational.”
(The great eighteenth century wit and embryonic ad-man
himself, Samuel Johnson, observed, “whatever has, by any accident, become
fashionable, easily continues its reputation, because everyone is ashamed of
not partaking.”)
Levine takes a moment to loosen his tie a little, and
to drink some more wine, still holding the gaze at the other table.
“There was a campaign in the Sixties, Bloody hell it
was clever. Doesn’t seem anything out of the box these days, but in its time it
was groundbreaking, and for Porsche no less.
Porsche
is an acquired taste.
Anyway, what it says is indulgence, it positively cries out luxury, conspicuous consumption and capital L lifestyle, be living it and be seen living it...
Print ad. Narrow top panel showed the car in profile,
nice lines, gleaming metal, just what you want. But it was the bottom panel,
that was the kicker — oysters, caviar, some froggy paté as well, I think. Anyway,
what it says is indulgence, it positively cries out luxury, conspicuous
consumption and capital L lifestyle, be living it and be seen living it — an
association forged in the mind with Porsche. And Porsche was not at the time
the auto aristo it is now, not outside
The real beauty, though, is in the subtlety. Calling
it an ‘acquired taste’, that’s really throwing down the gauntlet.
It’s a challenge — have you grown up and into this?
And it’s a promise, of an adult world with adult
pleasures. ‘When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I
thought as a child: but when I became a man I put away childish things’.” Levine
inclines his head apologetically to Schneider, “Fruits of a Jesuit education,
I’m afraid.
Anyway, as I was saying, it’s a challenge and it’s a
promise, but more than those, it’s a veiled slight — can you cut it, do you
really have the sophistication?
And when you’ve plucked a little at their self-doubt,
they’re primed for what it is you’re really offering — the dream. It’s yours,
and you deserve it — it’s ‘acquired’ taste, remember. Hell, that means you’ve
practically earned it...”
(JOIN US ON JULY 31 for the next episode — The Idea of Dining. Having begun in the middle, we now return to the beginning and look at what dining out means, to us and to a bunch of indulgers through history, with a view to consideration of what it might mean to you.)
SOURCES
Reference to the entomologist’s
taste appraisal of the giant water-bug, and to the work of Paul Rozin, come
from Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works,
The Penguin Press,
Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra,
T S Eliot, The Use of Poetry and the Use of Criticism, Faber,
Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle, Penguin,
Harmondsworth, 1989
Thomas Mann, The Confessions of Felix Krull, Confidence Man, Secker and Warburg, London, 1955
Charles Darwin, The Expression of Emotion in Man and
Animals,
Roy Strong, Feast: a history of grand eating, Pimlico,
Margaret Visser, The Rituals of Dinner, Penguin,
Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, Folio Society,
Copy of the Porsche ad in Rebecca
Stott, Oyster, Reaktion Books,
