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Primal needs and pleasures - What’s prohibited to you could be a delicacy for me

By Francesca Cellauro

April 2005

There are certainly many other examples; these are only a few that come to mind when one tries to broaden his/her mind and goes beyond ‘mama’s food’. Stewart Lee Allen has published a fantastic essay on ‘forbidden’ foods, In the devil’s garden; according to his theory we “judge a dish largely by how guilty we feel about eating it”. Allen deals with the classic ‘food and sex’ combination, but also analyses the New Age ‘food and meditation’ relationship, the class-conscious ‘food as a status symbol’ theme and the subtle ‘food taboos and subliminal manipulations’ politics uses to create lucrative urges or - worse - to criminalise dishes and with those the entire set of customs and traditions of ‘non-wanted’ populations. Allen’s book is an essay of how important and central food has been and is to us, and is equipped with historical references and curious anecdotes, spacing from the most famous apple bite to the mad cow disease, through to Hitler’s and Mitterand’s last meals and the neurological connection between crunchy chips and vicious murder.

Do you want to know how absinthe became the Impressionists’ inspiration? Or why King Arthur can be considered a wannabe cannibal? Or to what extent beer and potato can be considered a mixed blessing for the Irish? Allen makes sure you won’t be disappointed, and for good measure he has included seven menus, one for each of the capital sins (forget the silly ads out these days for a well known industrially produced ice-cream); the book finally includes many nice and interesting recipe, but if you are planning that romantic or erotic dinner, you must get Aphrodite, by Peruvian/Chilean magical realism queen: Isabel Allende. With classics as “Soup for orgies (for ten bacchants)” and the “Reconciliation soup” through to listings of “Forbidden herbs” and “Aphrodisiac vegetables”, or the etiquette tips “With the tip of the tongue” and “Whispers”, Allende entertains us, with the art of a Latin Shrerazade, in yet one more unbelievable book, filled with irony, magic and lavishness. I admit that in reality I have never read it from start to finish but I have kept it by my bedside for longer than five years now, savouring this recipe one night, relishing that description tomorrow, enjoying the beautiful stories told and sharing the desires and visions of millions of lovers, free of absurd senses of guilt or self-imposed mutilations.

Allende’s intent isn’t a blind and full-hearted apology of lechery or an anti-religion manifesto, although I doubt that many of the lustful Aphrodite’s pages would favourably impress any blind and full-hearted believer of any of the major religions described above. She is a true storyteller, and loves life above all. She doesn’t give up researching a way to understand humankind and she is not bashful to admit transgressions, yearnings and cravings that are within each one of us, no matter how hard some try to repress them.