Newsletters

  • Newsletter – Number 36

President of ICREFH

Professor Sylvie Vabre

Senior Lecturer in Modern History

Toulouse Jean Jaurès University

Email:icrefh@gmail.com

Newsletter Editor

Em. Professor Peter J. Atkins

Any material for inclusion in the Newsletter should be emailed to icrefh@gmail.com

The International Commission for Research into European Food History was founded at Münster in 1989.  ICREFH is a group of scholars working on the history of food and nutrition in Europe since the late eighteenth century.  Every two years ICREFH holds a symposium on a single theme and publishes the proceedings. The official language is English, with French and German as working languages.

Every two years ICREFH has held a symposium on a single theme in a number of European centres. More significantly, ICREFH has an unmatched record of disseminating its findings by publishing most of the papers presented at its symposia in book form. To date, there are fourteen volumes published in English mainly by commercial publishers. This has made ICREFH unique in terms of its strength and originality as a research seminar committed to the publication of its findings. Its biennial meetings are symposia involving the active participation by members of the network who feel able to contribute their research findings on the chosen theme of the symposium.

The President’s column

In October 2011, in the President’s paragraph Alain Drouard highlighted three points:

  1. “Our originality: our network is a European seminar of research committed to the history of food and our approach promotes comparative analysis and the cumulative production of research outputs.
  2. The necessity of keeping a balance between experienced and early career researchers. We seek new blood among the generation of young researchers.
  3. Our symposia result in the production of books of a high standard. Again, this is an opportunity for young researchers.”

All these objectives were attained in Albi.  A special thanks to Peter Atkins and Peter Scholliers who helped me on this way. It’s an honour for me to continue their efforts and to meet you in Rome for the 16th symposium.

Sylvie Vabre

ICREFH Book News

The book from the 2015 ICREFH Copenhagen symposium was published in 2019 by Routledge under the title Food and Age in Europe, 1800–2000, ISBN: 978-1-138-58968-1 (hbk).The editors are Tenna Jensen, Caroline Nyvang, Peter Scholliers and Peter Atkins.

ICREFH Symposium 2019

On the 30thanniversary of ICREFH, its 15thsymposium was held in Albi, France. The following papers were delivered:

  1. Martin Bruegel (INRA/CMH), ‘A sensible historiography of tastes, 19th-20th century’
  2. Nicolas Cambon (Toulouse University) ‘Feeling the Anthropophagy. The Question of Cannibal Pleasure in French Anthropology in the Second Half of the 19th Century’
  3. Laura Enriquez (Concordia University) ‘Drinking and Thinking Tea: the Making of Taste in Eighteenth Century’
  4. Stefano Magagnoli (Parma University) The Construction of Planetary Taste: the Balsamic Vinegar of Modena in the Age of Globalization
  5. Jean-Pierre Poulain and Jean-Marc Olivier (Toulouse University)‘Feeding Airline Passengers: History and Sociology of a Complex Challenge (1920s – early 21st Century)’
  6. Yuka Saito (Angers University) ‘Taste in the Work of Grimod de la Reyniere’
  7. Agata Stronciwilk (Jan Dlugosz University) ‘“A Tactile Dinner Party”. The Futurist Cookbook and the Multisensory Experience of Food’
  8. Sabine Merta (Freelance social historian and researcher)‘The Sense of Visible Presentation, Smell and Taste of Wartime Food in the Mirror of German Cookery Books’
  9. Peter Atkins (Durham University)‘The Industrialization of the Senses: British Cheese 1750 to the Present’
  10. Sylvie Vabre (Toulouse University)‘The Cheese Platter: a History of Cheese and Senses’
  11. Ilaria Berti (Pablo de Olavide University)‘The “Abominable” and “Offensive” Garlic: Disgusting Smell and Taste as a US Instrument for Despising the Spanish Empire in Cuba (c. 1840s- 1898)’
  12. Ritva Kylli (University of Oulu)‘“The Machine Known as the Human Being” – Food, the Sense of Taste and a Modernising Finland’
  13. Maria Kapkan (Ural Federal University)‘Palette of Tastes in Late Soviet Home Cooking’
  14. Raluca Parfentie (University of Bucharest) Advertising and the Gender Split of Taste in Interwar Romania’
  15. Martin Franc (Czech Academy of Sciences)‘What was the Taste of Socialism? Remembering the Tastes, Smells and Look of Meals in Pre- 1989, Czechoslovakia’
  16. Karl-Heinz Wüstner (Historical Society for Wurttemberg-Franconia) ‘Sausages, Pork Delicacies and the Basin Meal – How German Immigrants Introduced New Tastes and New Ways of Food Supply in 19th Century Industrial Great Britain’
  17. Rita D’Errico (Roma 3 University)‘In a Closed Can: the Language of Canned Food Labels’
  18. Catherine Salzman (Independent researcher) ‘Marketing Margarine: a Comparative Study of the Netherlands and the United States, 1945-1970’

For further information please visit the ICREFH website.

Minutes of the Business Meeting of ICREFH held at the Albi Symposium

  • President’s welcome and report.
  • Report on the Copenhagen Symposium, 2015.
  • Resignation of the past President and the installation in 2017 of an ad hoccommittee: Sylvie Vabre (President), Tenna Jensen, Peter Scholliers, Peter Atkins.
  • Plan for the publication of the book arising out of the Albi Symposium. ICREFH books are not conference proceedings but rather volumes made up of chapters selected from the papers given. A commercial publisher will be approached and the book will be in English.
  • The Albi Scientific Report will be published on the ICREFH website.
  • The ICREFH Newsletter will be emailed as widely as possible. Please notify us at icrefh@gmail.comif you know of anyone who may wish to join the mailing list.
  • The ICREFH Constitution was reviewed and modified. The Scientific Committee will now be two women and two men.
  • It was agreed that the next Symposium will be in Rome in September 2021. The organisers are Rita d’Errico (Roma 3 University) and Stefano Maganoli (Parma University).
  • Sylvie Vabre was re-elected as President, to serve until 2021.
  • The Scientific Committee was elected as follows: Rita d’Errico, Maria Kapkan, Nicolas Cambon and Stafano Magagnoli.
  • A vote of thanks was offered to Sylvie Vabre for organizing the very successful Symposium in Albi.

ICREFH Committee

The ad hoccommittee appointed in the emergency conditions of 2017 stood down at the Albi Symposium. After a constitutional amendment requiring there to be two women and two men on the committee, the following were elected with a mandate to serve for four years: Rita d’Errico, Maria Kapkan, Nicolas Cambon and Stefano Magagnoli.

ICREFH 2021

Rita d’Errico (Roma 3) and Stefano Maganoli (Parma) offered to organize the 16thsymposium in Rome and this offer was accepted by the ICREFH meeting. The theme will be ‘Eating on the Move’/‘Manger en Voyage’/‘Mangiale in Viaggio’, 19th-21st centuries.

The Revised ICREFH Constitution

  1. The International Commission for Research into European Food History (ICREFH) is a working group of those studying the history of food and nutrition in Europe since the late eighteenth century. ICREFH holds biennial symposia upon subjects agreed by the members and publishes its findings. It issues a Newsletter outlining its activities and has a website.
  2. ICREFH is led by a President, who acts as its spokesperson. The President normally holds office for four years and may be re-elected for one further term. Holders of the position become Vice-Presidents on their retirement from office. One of the Vice-Presidents will assume the office of President if the President resigns or, for any reason, cannot complete his or her term of office.
  3. Four members of ICREFH act as a Committee to support and advise the President, two women and two men. The term of office is four years. No one may serve more than two terms consecutively.
  4. ICREFH holds a Biennial General Meeting (BGM) at each symposium. The BGM chooses the President and Committee members. The BGM agrees the theme and location of the next symposium. The BGM may appoint a Symposium Planning Committee of up to three members to advise the Organizer of the next symposium. Notice of the BGM and its Agenda will be circulated by ICREFH Newsletter before the symposium. The President shall ask one member to take the minutes of the BGM. These will be circulated to members by the ICREFH Newsletter.
  5. Membership is by invitation.

NEWSLETTER – Number 35, April 2018President of ICREFH
Professor Sylvie Vabre
Senior Lecturer in Modern History
Toulouse Jean Jaurès University
Email: icrefh@gmail.com

Newsletter Editor
Em. Professor Peter J. Atkins
Any material for inclusion in the Newsletter should be emailed to icrefh@gmail.co

The International Commission for Research into European Food History was founded at Münster in 1989.  ICREFH is a group of scholars working on the history of food and nutrition in Europe since the late eighteenth century.  Every two years ICREFH holds a symposium on a single theme and publishes the proceedings. The official language is English, with French and German as working languages.

Every two years ICREFH has held a symposium on a single theme in a number of European centres. More significantly, ICREFH has an unmatched record of disseminating its findings by publishing most of the papers presented at its symposia in book form. To date, there are twelve volumes published in English mainly by commercial publishers. This has made ICREFH unique in terms of its strength and originality as a research seminar committed to the publication of its findings. Its biennial meetings are symposia involving the active participation by members of the network who feel able to contribute their research findings on the chosen theme of the symposium.

ICREFH News

Following the Copenhagen ICREFH symposium in 2015, the elected President, Dr Karl-Peter Ellerbrock, felt unable to continue in the role. Since none of the Vice-Presidents were in a position to step in, as per item 2 of the ICREFH constitution (see below), an ad hoc Committee was formed to discuss the future of ICREFH. This Committee approached Professor Sylvie Vabre and she kindly agreed to act as President and to organize a symposium in Albi, France in 2019. The provisional details of this symposium represent the main business of the present Newsletter.

The ad hoc Committee formed in August 2017 remains in an advisory capacity for the time being, its members being:

Professor Sylvie Vabre, President
Professor Alain Drouard, immediate past President
Professor Peter Scholliers, past President
Professor Peter Atkins, past President
Dr Tenna Jensen, organizer Copenhagen symposium

A new Committee will be elected at the next Annual General Meeting of ICREFH.

The ICREFH Constitution

  1. The International Commission for Research into European Food History (ICREFH) is a working group of those studying the history of food and nutrition in Europe since the late eighteenth century. ICREFH holds biennial symposia upon subjects agreed by the members and publishes its findings. It issues a Newsletter outlining its activities and has a website.
  2. ICREFH is led by a President, who acts as its spokesperson. The President normally holds office for four years and may be re-elected for one further term. Holders of the position become Vice-Presidents on their retirement from office. One of the Vice-Presidents will assume the office of President if the President resigns or, for any reason, cannot complete his or her term of office.
  3. Three members of ICREFH act as a Committee to support and advise the President. The term of office is four years. No one may serve more than two terms consecutively.
  4. ICREFH holds a Biennial General Meeting (BGM) at each symposium. The BGM chooses the President and Committee members. The BGM agrees the theme and location of the next symposium. The BGM may appoint a Symposium Planning Committee of up to three members to advise the Organizer of the next symposium. Notice of the BGM and its Agenda will be circulated by ICREFH Newsletter before the symposium. The President shall ask one member to take the minutes of the BGM. These will be circulated to members by the ICREFH Newsletter.
  5. Membership is by invitation.

Call for Papers

The International Commission for Research into European Food History will hold a symposium at Albi, France, September 2-6, 2019. The theme will be ‘A Feast of Senses: European Food and History, 18th-20th Centuries’.

In projects developed in the area of food history and in the different symposia organised by ICREFH in the past 30 years, the history of the senses has remained in the background. However, the senses of smell, touch, sight, hearing, and taste are appealed to when we deal with the production of foods for consumption. The use of the senses, which is quotidian, but equally ephemeral, seems to be outside of the written scholarship produced by historians. The creation, by elites, of taste, of fashion, of “bon gout”, are familiar areas of discussion today. This symposium, which will be presented for the 30th anniversary of ICREFH, proposes moving forward in our analysis of this area by drawing on recent research.

Each sense can be a separate topic of historical research. However, separating each sense activated by food presents a somewhat impoverished image. In fact, all the senses are at work when we are eating. Thus, let us take them as a whole so as to seize a “balance of the senses” (Corbin), a rapport among them which can appear in the form of a hierarchy or of a balance.  This ensemble is produced, it grows, it transforms, and then it sometimes disappears. Actually, the enhancement of taste indicates a constructed and deliberate hierarchical organization. In the same way, a crunch activates our sense of hearing initially, with the other senses staying in the background. All of this remains to be explored in order to evaluate and historicise the place accorded to the senses vis-à-vis food by 19th and 20th century society.

We shall approach the history of food and the senses by means of an event, a product, a particular source (a family journal, a cookery book…), prohibitions, speeches… On the basis of already familiar archives or by utilising lesser known sources is it possible to generate new avenues of research or to reinterpret previous research?

Three main themes have been adopted, but the organizing committee is open to other proposals:

1 – An analysis of the hierarchy of the senses in the 19th and 20th centuries, and their transformations:  these can be produced in various ways:

  • By vocabulary: In this time period how was specific vocabulary constructed (e.g., for wine), how were words for food and the senses created? Some words disappear or change their meaning.
  • Can we observe geographical food distinctions that arose from the senses? Did the combination of the senses and food play a part in the creation of nations or of nationalism (national dishes and the senses that are particularly connected to them). Can we distinguish between the senses developed at home, and those developed outside of the home?  Do there exist places of intensity for the senses (the kitchen, for example)?  Seasons?
  • Is the appeal of the senses a function of social group, stages in life, type, body type (fat or thin, small or large, healthy?). The analogy between body odours or social position and certain dishes and their odours should perhaps be explored: foot odour/ cheese; poverty/cabbage smell; wealth/gameyness.
  • The industrialization of the senses: a new hierarchy?

2  Production and construction of norms  

Are there rules, and how are they applied when it is a question of combining colours, forms, tastes, and odours?   We can envisage the roles of regulations, European or national, of specific trades (doctors, cooks…), hygiene and the senses, the media: the press, radio, books, religion…

The questioning can concern the manufacturing of products, but also raw products, agricultural products: meat and plants.  How and why do breeding and the modes of culture transform the smell, the taste, the colour and the texture of products?  Do the techniques of cutting and cooking appeal to the senses?  What are the results, the reception?

Are there links between the price of a food product and the senses it appeals to:  in other words, are caviar or truffles desirable because they are expensive?

Certain events place food and the senses at the core of their functioning: for example, cooking expositions and competitions. Is there food that is typical of a certain time period?  The Jerusalem artichoke or the swede, for example, symbolise the vegetable of the Second World War for the generations who lived through it.

  1.  Styles of usage and also emotions connected to food

We can analyse emotions surrounding food in several ways. The modalities through which we learn about our senses:

  • Eating with fingers/eating with knife and fork…
  • Pleasure or displeasure? Taste / disgust, pure / impure.
  • Prohibition/permission; past/present; measurement of pleasure.
  • The mediation of the senses, for example: how does food packaging replace the senses?
  • Food migrations / fusion of cuisines.

Applications must be received at the latest by 7 September 2018. The application form will be found in full call for papers, which will be attached to this Newsletter. Please submit the form to the ICREFH Committee at icrefh@gmail.com. There will be a registration fee of €200 (including hotels and lunches/meals). The symposium is organized by Sylvie Vabre, Senior Lecturer, Toulouse Jean Jaurès University.

ICREFH 2021

Expressions of interest are invited for organizing the next ICREFH symposium, to be held in 2021. The preliminary details of this will be discussed at the Annual General Meeting of ICREFH at the Albi symposium.

ICREFH Book News

The proceedings of the Brussels symposium in 2013 were published as:

Teughels, N. and Scholliers, P. (Eds)(2015) A taste of progress: food at international world exhibitions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries Farnham: Ashgate. ISBN: 9781472441836.

The proceedings of the 2015 Copenhagen symposium will be published in 2019 by Routledge. The editors are Tenna Jensen, Caroline Nyvang, Peter Scholliers and Peter Atkins.

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