In the Devil's garden - Softcover

ALLEN, Stewart Lee

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1841954055 ISBN 13: 9781841954059

Publisher: Canongate Books, 2003

Synopsis

From the forbidden fruit of the Old Testament to the numerous laws broken at Francois Mitterand's final meal, In the Devil's Garden is a mouth-watering history of food taboos from around the world - a smorgasbord of culinary titbits to spice up any after-dinner conversation. In a history peppered with religious extremists who would rather starve to death than violate ancient taboos, and in an age when half the world's population - from cow-loving Hindus to Kosher Jews and Western vegetarians - still live with harsh dietary restrictions, Allen reveals just how significant, and pervasive, our relationship with food is.

About this title

Review:

Lust, gluttony, pride, sloth, greed, blasphemy, and anger--the seven deadly sins have all been linked to food. Matching the food to the sin, Stewart Lee Allen's In the Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Foods offers a high-spirited look at the way foods over time have been forbidden, even criminalized, for their "evil" effects. Food has often been, shockingly, morally weighted, from the tomato, originally called the love apple and thought to excite lust; to the potato, whose popularity in Ireland led British Protestants to associate it with sloth; to foods like corn or bread whose use was once believed to delineate "lowness," thus inflaming class pride. Allen's approach to this incredible history also includes tales of personal journeys to, for example, a Mount Athos monastery, where a monk reveals the sign of Satan in an apple, and to San Francisco to investigate dog eating. If his history is sometimes too glancing and facetious, even beyond the sensible need to entertain, it is always fascinating.

The book also features "forbidden" menus--such as the one devoted to gluttony that includes an entire steer stuffed with a whole lamb, stuffed with a pig, stuffed with a chicken, and served with sausages--and quite doable and delicious recipes, such as a dynamite hot and sweet banana ketchup and Lo Han Jai, a mushroom-replete vegetarian feast. But the real focus is on the human response to a primal pleasure--eating--and the way people have sought to control it, in every society and every culture, through prohibition. It's quite a tale. --Arthur Boehm

From the Inside Flap:

ously organized by the Seven Deadly Sins, here is a scintillating history of forbidden foods through the ages—and how these mouth-watering taboos have defined cultures around the world.

From the lusciously tempting fruit in the Garden of Eden to the divine foie gras, Stewart Lee Allen engagingly illustrates that when a pleasure as primal as eating is criminalized, there is often an astonishing tale to tell. Among the foods thought to encourage Lust, the love apple (now known as the tomato) was thought to possess demonic spirits until the nineteenth century. The Gluttony “course” invites the reader to an ancient Roman dinner party where nearly every dish served—from poppy-crusted rodents to “Trojan Pork”—was considered a crime against the state. While the vice known as Sloth introduces the sad story of “The Lazy Root” (the potato), whose popularity in Ireland led British moralists to claim that the Great Famine was G

About this edition

• Publisher: Canongate Books
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1841954055
• ISBN 13: 9781841954059
• Binding: Paperback