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The future of cooking: In the kitchen at Interlude
A couple of weeks ago I spent the afternoon in the kitchen of Robin Wickens and his chefs at Interlude. He was developing a new lamb dish which involved spraying coffee in the air while eating it (you may recall later that night I sucked on the glass straw). This weekend my account of that afternoon and subsequent meal was published in The Australian.
Local chef George Biron points me towards Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, a fascist and founder of the Futurist movement, who published his manifesto of cookery La Cucina Futurista – futurist cookery – in 1932. Apparently, the book had stuff like a meal where while dunking salami in coffee, you stroked a cat and had perfume sprayed in the air to the sounds of Wagner.
Marinetti’s thought diners were weighed down by pasta which filled stomachs. he also thought it made people placid and sceptical if it was eaten too frequently. In short pasta was subversive stuff.
According to Ask Oxford:
“This absurd gastronomic religion, he said, must be abolished immediately.”
“Predictably, these ideas provoked uproar in the Italian press and among the general public. In every restaurant and in every home there were arguments about the benefits or otherwise of a diet of pasta. The Mayor of Naples declared that vermicelli al pomodoro was the food of the angels; Marinetti’s reaction was that, if that were the case, it simply served to confirm the boredom of life in paradise.”
Everything was prescribed to be sensual. Ingredients included flowers, exotic fruit, coffee, raw eggs, and cloves and perfumes were to be sprayed in the dining room.
“…and the diners were given materials of different textures such as velvet and sandpaper to stroke with their left hand. Sweet was combined with savoury to produce startling effects, and bitter and sour tastes were given their place: sardines with pineapple, mortadella with nougat, cooked salami with coffee and cologne. An aphrodisiac cocktail was devised, consisting of pineapple juice, eggs, cocoa, caviar, red peppers, nutmeg, and cloves…”
I’ll leave the fascism alone for now. But I have a cat, Wagner and an atomiser.
More experiments in futuristic cooking coming soon. In the meantime, anybody got a copy of Marinetti’s book for sale?
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I recently read something about Marinetti’s cookbook and if I remember it right, it did have some impact and introduced one or two dishes or ways of serving food that are common use now but I can’t remember what it was. As usual. If you want I can try to find it here but it would be in Italian, don’t know if you read that. I found this reference for an English translation:
The futurist cookbook /Marinetti ; translated by Suzanne Brill ; edited with an introduction by Lesley Chamberlain. San Francisco :Bedford Arts,c1989.
Thanks Ilva, Sadly I don’t read Italian but I have found some copies in the US for over US$100 plus postage to Australia. Only last week I said I had to give up buying cook books. I suspect there is little hope for me.
Don’t tell me that you actually bought it??? I cannot but shake my head and sigh…Well, now I HAVE to buy it in Italian! But for far less I hope…
No, I haven’t bought it yet but I’ve had a recent binge buying five new food related and cookbooks. But don’t let me stop you buying the Italian version as then I’ll have to get the translation.
ok, I’ll let you know when I get my hands on it!
Hi Ed!
Nice website you have here, it is very professional and has very different topics than the regular fare out there! I am enjoying it!
JenDZ, thanks v much. Will post the badge soon.
Ed, did you ever get hold of the English-language Marinetti you were looking for?
They do turn up occasionally on abebooks.com, BTW, and normally they’re a lot more affordable than USD $100…
EuroCuisineLAdy, I did get it in the end for less than $100. Thanks.
That’s great! It’s such a fun book.
Euro, it is isn’t it (he said crunching muesli while stroking a cat).