Delicacies

Posted by rjhmoore at 6:42 PM 0 comments
Tuesday, November 18, 2008

Mmm... what comes to mind when you hear the word "delicacies?" Warm, fruit pastries, chocolate eclairs, just-out-of-the-oven, moist red velvet cake with cream cheese frosting dribbled over the top, pure dark chocolate... but don't just think of desserts. The things on menus in high-class restaurants (such as Gnocchi bouillabaisse with foie gras and ceviche served on morels in arugula) that you can't pronounce and don't even know the edible substances they relate to that are served in small portions in the middle of huge, sparkling, white plates and are more for decoration than eating: this is a delicacy.

A.E. Young briefly gives her view on delicacies after explaining the food situation in among the Mormons shortly after arriving in Utah. This except is lengthy, so hold on:

"When we arrived at "the Valley" we found the people practising (that's how she spells it) the most rigid economy. The crickets had been very numerous, and had almost entirely destroyed the crops, devastating whole fields, until they looked as though they had been scorched by fire. A few had managed, by most desperate exertions, to save some of their wheat; but as there was only an apology for a mill with no bolting apparatus, this wheat was obliged to be eaten without being sifted. When I have seen persons eating cracked wheat as a delicacy, and heard them speaking of it with the subdued enthusiasm which some people manifest when talking of food, I have thought of the time when this delicacy was the only thing that was seen on the tables at Utah for breakfast, dinner, or supper, and I have come to the conclusion that "delicacies" may, in time, grow monotonous."

She is right, of course. Someday that Gnocchi bouillabaisse with foie gras and ceviche served on morels in arugula may be a common dish for Sunday afternoon lunch, but thankfully not in the near future. However, she gives an example of a common food growing into a fine side dish instead of the opposite. Such is the case of ratatouille, essentially just a vegetable stew. It once was all that the poorest of the poor could afford since they could grow the ingredients themselves. In present times, this food has been recreated by Julia Child and the like and prepared under the label of fine cuisine.

Naturally, the order of progression can be flip-flopped and great things can become common. Provisions sold at the Farmer's Market today were once considered "delicacies" so rich that they could only grace a king's table. My dad goes there every week and buys fresh bread, turkey, countless types of fruit, cheeses, etc. This is what makes up my Sunday afternoon lunch, which is quite the unbreakable habit. It is because this food is so easy to get nowadays that it has ceased to be a dainty treat.

Cracked wheat bread is also easy to come by today, but it is seen as the food of choice for health nuts (or 'aficionados' is much more polite :) and the general public. It seems that either relative ease by which a food is produced or the demand of it by the people affect its "delicacy rating," which means that a food can't be a delicacy for long. Eventually, like A.E. Young said, delicacies will become monotonous because we will have tried all the food there is to have, raised and lowered it on the delicacy scale, and sooner or later, it will just be... food, the stuff that gives us energy.

So, I ask, what is the point of delicacies in the first place? Your thought to think about...