From Garum to Mole Sauces and Identity in the Western World

The sauces we eat evoke emotions, define our meals, direct our conversations over those meals, and influence the way we think about ourselves and each other. Sauces, through their consumption and rejection, create bonds between peoples and distinguish outsiders. This multidisciplinary volume brings together leading scholars to reconsider sauces and identity beginning in the ancient Roman world and ending in the kitchens of modern homes, restaurants, and culinary schools. From garum, ketchup, and mole to olive oil, maple syrup, and even human sweat, the contributors examine critical parts of meals that are neither filling, sturdy carbohydrates, nor critical proteins, but complicated flavors that enhance the dining experience. They reflect on the cultures that produced and consumed sauces and how each one informs our understanding of those cultures. Featuring a foreword by prominent chef Ana Ros and peppered with recipes, From Garum to Mole offers insights for scholars, chefs and cooks, and anyone who wonders about the meaning of what we eat.

1 - Sauces and Condiments in the Middle Ages
2 - Sauces: The Basis for Classic French Cuisine
3 - What's Roman About Fish Sauce?: Garum and Garum Containers in Early Roman Portugal
4 - Sauces in Late Antiquity and the Ascetic Redefinition of the Discourse on Food, Health, and Pleasure
5 - Salsa, Sugo, e Intingolo: Cooking Italian Identity in Artusi's La Scienza in Cucina
6 - "It's Maple Syrup Time!": The Hard Work and Pure Pleasure of Real Maple Syrup in the Back-to-the-Land Movement
7 - Bixa orellana in Belize: Flavoring Postcolonial Cuisine
8 - Sriracha and the Performance of Identity
9 - A Matter of Haut Gout: The Ragout in English Print Culture
10 - Hot Sauce and Colonial Degeneracy: Making of the Self in the Eighteenth-Century French Caribbean
11 - "To Change This Sauce Would Be Little Short of Heresy": The Geopolitics of "Rancid" Olive Oil in Nineteenth-Century Spain
12 - Ketchup as a Vegetable: Condiments, Culture, and the Politics of School Lunch in Reagan's America
13 - "Feeling-Up" the "Ingreasements" as Foundations of Sauces: The Culinary Gene in Austin Clarke's Pig Tails 'n' Breadfruit
14 - Mole Poblano: Profile of Taste and Culture in Mexico Through Digital History Analysis
15 - Mother of Whom, Exactly?: Toward a Science-Informed Sauce Curriculum

Andrew Donnelly is Assistant Professor of History at Texas Tech University. Beth M. Forrest is Professor of Liberal Arts and Applied Food Studies at the Culinary Institute of America, and past president of the Association for the Study of Food and Society. Deirdre Murphy is Professor of Liberal Arts and Applied Food Studies at the Culinary Institute of America.