Gastronomic Essays

Abstract: Many critics claim that the family meal is now extinct and taking its toll on the youth of our society. However, there is little research that proves the family meal is a dying art and is having a negative effect on America’s youth. This paper explores the meaning of shared meals to the family, as well as disproves the consequences of this shifting meal. Although the family meal is changing, it doesn’t necessarily equal a negative experience.

Abstract: Writer Allison James has researched the world of British candy and concluded that confectionary is neither a food nor a nonfood, which allows it to take on symbolic meanings. This essay discusses the symbolic role of confectionery James has laid out, while investigating why this symbolism affects the way a person eats candy.

Thanks to globalization and improved transportation methods, it is virtually impossible to find a culture’s cuisine that has not been influenced by other cultures today. Is it possible for a national cuisine to exist when it has had outside influences and can only generalize a region’s cuisine? In this paper, I argue that while Mexican national cuisine was certainly created through various outside influences, this cuisine has come to define the country and has altered little since its adoption.

According to Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari, “every culture is contaminated by other cultures; every tradition is a child of history and history is never static.” The tandoor oven, a central piece of equipment to Indian tandoori cooking (and a popular cuisine around the world did not originate in India. This paper discovers the tandoor oven’s roots and how it wound up defining Indian cuisine for people around the world.