42 replies to this topic

[Paul Stanley]

An exchange of views on this thread about carbonara – as well as various comments on some other threads, including one on the choice between pecorino and parmesan cheese – has got me thinking about “authenticity”, what it means, and whether it matters.

As far as “authenticity” is concerned, I like this definition by S L Kinsey:

"Authentic" has to do with the extent to which the food duplicates what is currently being done in the cuisine's culture of origin. If Thai people in Thailand are using ketchup, then it would be "authentic" to do so in a restaurant here. … "Authentic" doesn't necessarily equal "good" nor does "inauthentic" necessarily equal "bad." … Part of looking at it this way is understanding that "authentic" changes with the times. The Thai cooking that is happening in Thailand is always going to be "authentic" on this basis. When Thai people began using ketchup with any frequency, it immediately became "authentic."

I’d only add this: Sometimes it’s not very easy to work out “what is currently being done in the cuisine’s culture of origin” – because there may be quite a wide variation of practice. (To take an example from the carbonara theme: I was taught to make carbonara by two Italians, one of them Roman, from a very old Roman family. The version they used, which they called carbonara, included both cream and onions, and by conventional standards would not be regarded as “authentic”. But it undoubtedly represented “what [was] currently being done in the cuisine’s culture of origin.) Some dishes, even in their “culture of origin” involve (sometimes notorious) “contests” about authenticity.

Now the main question I have is this. Apart from intellectual curiosity – either “grand” curiosity such as that of the social anthropologist, or “pragmatic” curiosity such as that of the person who would just like to taste a dish “as it is made where it comes from” – does authenticity matter at all?

On the thread which started me thinking about this, Maureen B Fant commented. She said she:

gradually came around to being convinced that in the matter of traditional Italian foods, it was foolish not to give the Italians the benefit of the doubt. And I've often said that the chaos that invades so many aspects of life is not found in the food. If you order carbonara in a Roman trattoria, the sort of place to which it is native, you have a right to expect to receive a dish containing only egg, guanciale, cheese, and pepper, and maybe a little olive oil, though that isn't quite "philological". Otherwise you have chaos. To give you an oft-cited example, the restaurant Al Moro in Rome serves "spaghetti al Moro," which is carbonara in which the black pepper is replaced by red. That's the only difference, but they changed the name. If you add leftover chicken to your carbonara, it becomes something else, not carbonara.

My immediate reaction to this was rather negative: that this involved a highly conservative “mystification” of food – that, as S L Kinsey put it, authentic does not necessarily equal good. The question should be “what tastes good?”, itself always a rather personal matter.

But on further reflection, I’m not sure I agree with my own initial view, though I don’t think I agree with Maureen either.

I still don’t think that authenticity is valuable for its own sake. But I think experience may teach that all too often fine traditional dishes are “taken over”, and that in the process of playing “variations on a theme” they are definitely debased, so that inauthentic does (in practice) come to mean worse. The pattern seems to be depressingly familiar: the dish becomes overcomplicated and its subtleties are lost, all too often by the removal of “challenging” ingredients (anchovies, recognisable fat...), and the addition of “non-challenging” ingredients (extra cheese, sweet tomato sauces) or simply by loading so much into the dish that it becomes a sort of garbage bin. And thus we arrive at such dishes as many kinds of commercial pizza, or compost-bin “quiches”, or “chicken Caesar salads” which are just salads with creamy cheesy dressings and a hunk of chicken dumped on top.

This makes me think that there may be some value in trying to maintain knowledge about what is “authentic”, and at least to be both cautious in departing from it and clear about when a departure has occurred. A custard-based tart with cheese, onions and bacon may be worth eating, but it is not a “quiche Lorraine” – or even a legitimate variation on it. A pasta sauce with cream, chicken, bacon, mushrooms, cheese and eggs may (or may not!) be worth eating, but it should not bask in any reflected light that the word “carbonara” could offer . A gelatine-set mousse on top of a cracker crust may be a fine dessert, but it is not a cheesecake. A concoction of vodka and fruit liqueur is not a “martini”. Or, to take an example close to my own culture, a ring of poached sweet dessert apples with sandy crumbs sprinkled over the top does not deserve the name “crumble”.

Whatever the (sometimes dubious) merits of these dishes, they should not be permitted to trade on the reputation of quite different recipes.

Perhaps we need authenticity police, not to prevent innovation, but to insist on keeping the innovation honest, because all too often bad food uses familiar and reputable names as a disguise to insinuate itself onto our menus.

Or is this simply reactionary nonsense?

[Chris Hennes]

And don't forget the related question: '"Authentic": what does that mean, anyway?' Elsewhere, in an eGullet Spotlight Q & A, Paula Wolfert was asked "How do you define "authenticity"?" Her response can be found here. In particular, she wrote that "authenticity is always my guide, but I try not to let it become my straightjacket."

[nickrey]

This is a really good question but I'm sure you will have as many answers as there are people reading the thread.

I've given up searching for "authentic" recipes as there seem to be as many authentic recipes as there are mothers or grandmothers who popularised the dishes. In many cases, when the authenticity card is played, I'm reminded of the apocryphal person complaining that "soup du jour is mushroom, not asparagus." Initial experience is a hard marker to move away from.

You mentioned Italian food. If you really want to start an argument over authenticity, just ask which rice should be used in Risotto. Get people from different parts of Italy and you will have a fight on your hands. Thus, even giving Italians "the benefit of the doubt" can lead to irreconcilable differences.

There is a whole psychological literature on categorisation that could be brought into play here. Eleanor Rosch's work on prototype theory springs to mind. Instead of an Aristotlean view of carbonara having certain ingredients, prototype theory would suggest that carbonara would have ingredients that were unequally associated with the dish. For example, eggs would figure in most people's prototypes of carbonara. Thus if eggs were not present, it is unlikely that a dish would be considered carbonara.

Of course we run into local interpretations of dishes based on experience. Thus you could try a dish in the area where it originated and state that the dish is not a good example of your prototype of that dish. How many Austrians have said that the original Sacher torte is a very dry version of the dish? In that case, because of the evolution of the dish, the original does not necessarily match the prototype.

In sum, a dish is authentic to the degree to which it agrees with people's prototypes of the dish. If the dish is from another culture, be very careful about putting forward your prototype as the definitive version of the dish. To make matters more complex, sometimes the ingredients in the culture of origin are not as good as those used when you first tasted the dish. In this case, your memory is probably closer to an ideal for the dish. But an ideal doesn't necessarily represent the prototype.

[Nikki Rose]

Authentic...defined by whom? As a Greek American now living in Crete, I see both sides of this issue. When people move away from their homeland, they hang onto their culinary traditions, which is very important. They refer to their family recipes as authentic. Indeed they are. We want that spinach pie we love and we don't want any variations. That's a challenge for anyone but the originator of our "authentic" family recipes.

But the people still living in their homeland are just as bored with replicating exact recipes as anyone else. So what is considered authentic Greek spinach pie by one Chicago-based taverna owner or resident is going to be vastly different in every home, village and city in Greece. But it is still authentic to the creators.

Consider the "Greek Salad." A writer from the US dined in a Greek taverna in Chicago. She described the contents of her Greek Salad and asked me to confirm if it was authentic. Well, let's consider this: When you are in Greece, do you think the Greeks order a "Greek salad"? No, they order a horiatiki (village salad). The main components are tomatoes and cucumbers but the rest of the salad contains whatever is ready to harvest in that particular region (or taverna owner's garden out back). Unless they place an imported sardine on top, a horiatiki is still local and authentic. But only if it is served during the summer months when these basic ingredients are, in fact, fresh and local from the horio (village).

So does authenticity matter? Perhaps to some. Respect for local sustainable organic farmers, local ingredients and taste matters more to me. Without the first two, the latter is hard to find.

Kali Orexi,
Nikki

Nikki Rose
Founder & Director
Crete's Culinary Sanctuaries

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[Jaymes]

Perhaps we need authenticity police, not to prevent innovation, but to insist on keeping the innovation honest, because all too often bad food uses familiar and reputable names as a disguise to insinuate itself onto our menus.

Or is this simply reactionary nonsense?

I agree that we definitely "need" authenticity police. We do need people that know and understand the rules and parameters of any entity that has a name. And keep us from wandering too far afield. Otherwise, the name ceases to have meaning. If I decide, for example, to add clams and tomatoes to my Carbonara, and I continue to call it "Carbonara," and somehow manage to influence enough people, eventually the term "Carbonara" will have no integrity, no meaning at all.

I suppose I personally am most pedantic about the English language. I lament the fact that few Americans these days seem to know the difference between a "podium" and a "lectern," for example. But too often, some people use superior knowledge as a weapon. In the olden days, pre-net, it would be almost unheard of for someone to be invited to dinner in the home of a friend and comment, "You call this Pasta Carbonara? I can tell you added cream, and that's just wrong. I've spent the last three years in Italy and nobody adds cream. It's cheating. Honestly. Didn't you know that?" But sometimes it seems as though online, we think we can say anything to anybody.

So I do want the "authenticity police" out there. But I feel about them the way I feel about the real police. Share your knowledge. Show us the path. Enable and enlighten us. Educate us. Improve us. Keep the dish true to its origins.

But do it in a kind and generous and nonjudgmental way.

And keep the authenticity billy clubs stowed in the closet where they belong.



________________________

Edited by Jaymes, 30 August 2010 - 08:21 AM.

[Anna N]

I have never been much bothered by "authenticity" in food until a few years back when I visited a local restaurant and ordered a toasted club. There are no doubt as many takes on a toasted club as there are on carbonara BUT here, in my home town it means one thing only - a three decker sandwich on toasted white bread with turkey on one layer and bacon, lettuce and tomato on the other. It is cut into 4 on the diagonal with each triangle held together with a toothpick. Simple. Even the worst restaurants rarely muck it up. It's a safe bet. Until this particular restaurant decided to switch it up. What arrived was some strange bread, perhaps ciabatta, sliced into two and stuffed with turkey, bacon, lettuce and tomato. I protested to the server that this was NOT a toasted club and was rewarded with, well its OUR toasted club. Was it a better sandwich? Who knows. It was not a toasted club, it did not come close to meeting my expectations and I refused it. So, authentic or not, there is a line that should not be crossed without a clear upfront explanation that this is not an authentic/traditional treatment of a dish. That, at least, is my take on "authenticity".

[Kerry Beal]

I have never been much bothered by "authenticity" in food until a few years back when I visited a local restaurant and ordered a toasted club. There are no doubt as many takes on a toasted club as there are on carbonara BUT here, in my home town it means one thing only - a three decker sandwich on toasted white bread with turkey on one layer and bacon, lettuce and tomato on the other. It is cut into 4 on the diagonal with each triangle held together with a toothpick. Simple. Even the worst restaurants rarely muck it up. It's a safe bet. Until this particular restaurant decided to switch it up. What arrived was some strange bread, perhaps ciabatta, sliced into two and stuffed with turkey, bacon, lettuce and tomato. I protested to the server that this was NOT a toasted club and was rewarded with, well its OUR toasted club. Was it a better sandwich? Who knows. It was not a toasted club, it did not come close to meeting my expectations and I refused it. So, authentic or not, there is a line that should not be crossed without a clear upfront explanation that this is not an authentic/traditional treatment of a dish. That, at least, is my take on "authenticity".

I got a club once with ham in place of turkey - "what's this?" I said - "that's the way we make it" they replied. Couldn't eat it - I was in the mood for a club and that was not, not, not a club! Ruined my day!

[Chris Amirault]

One of the many problems with the concept of authenticity is that it refers to a fiction: "the original dish." As pointed out by several people above this post, often the items that are the battlegrounds for authenticity debates outside of their home country (spaghetti carbonara, ma po tofu, etc. etc.) are are also battlegrounds for authenticity debates inside their home country. Cassoulet is a good example, with several variations involving meat, bread crumbs, number of times you break the crust... on and on.

Given that there's no One True Thing to cast a shadow on the cave, Nick's reference to prototypes makes a lot of sense to me, and it fits nicely with the work on "authenticity" and food that Ian Duncan has done. He uses "authenticity effects" instead of "authenticity" because it allows you to more clearly codify the weighted criteria people use to assign relative authenticity value. So, in the carbonara example, eggs would be a heavily weighted positive criterion, whereas grapefruit would be a heavily weighted negative criterion. Guanciale... pancetta... bacon... that's where you start getting into real trouble.

The food industry has beaten us to this game, of course, figuring out what ingredients, adjectives, and methods convey authenticity and which don't. They also know that those effects are variable, depending on demographics, geography, and other contexts. For example, there's a new "Asian" restaurant being advertised in the suburbs here, and the billboards have a photograph of a maki roll on one side with a Benihana-style chef on the other, holding a cleaver and screaming. My sense is that this campaign would not convey anything authentic in Little Tokyo LA (or on eG Forums), but someone around here certainly thinks it'll work for Cranston.

One of the points that Ian made to me (while we were eating some "authentic" Rhode Island 'cue at United BBQ ) is that the folks to whom ethnographers turn to provide firm assertions of authenticity are often maddeningly accommodating of innovation. This is particularly true among people preparing dishes of a particular cuisine outside of the home of that cuisine, ex-pats, immigrants, refugees, and so on. Circumstances have forced them to make accommodations they would not have made back home, but in the grand scheme of things, this for that in a dish is a small matter indeed.

[IndyRob]

For me there are only two cases in which I care at all about something being 'authentic'. First, as a matter of advertising - like in the club sandwich examples. But adding a qualifier to the menu can easily solve that. If I saw, say, 'Mr. Frisbee's Club Sandwich' on a menu, I would infer that there's some sort of twist involved.

The other case is finding an authentic example to use as a benchmark when I try something for the first time. I mentioned in another thread that I've never had risotto but see it all the time. This has made me curious enough to want to try it. There's obviously some technique involved, so I could easily screw it up without ever knowing it if I tried it myself. So I need to find an 'authentic' example. Perhaps 'representative' would work just as well.

But once I've sampled it and recreated it (if desired), then authentic goes out the window. I'll put cream in it if I want.

[Alcuin]

One reason the idea of an "authentic" dish is good is that authenticity relies on tradition, and tradition tends to hand down good ways of doing things. To keep with the Carbonara example, it is a dish that is honed down to its most important elements. You can add cream for a creamy effect, but you don't have to because the dish with its most basic elements will provide that for you. Good tradition often tells us what works.

On the other hand, if we're too constrained by the idea of authenticity, it becomes a problem. You're chasing after an ideal that doesn't really exist (there is no outside the cave). I'd say it's best to have the idea of the authentic as you're starting point, rather than where you want to end up. That way, you're moving forward not backward. You, not the "recipe" or someone else's idea of what's authentic, can then decide what you like and what works.

[Chris Hennes]

One of the many problems with the concept of authenticity is that it refers to a fiction: "the original dish."

I'd amend this slightly to point out that while it usually refers to a non-existent "original," there are in fact a few cases when we do have an original, and we still can't agree on what is "authentic"! For example, the Caesar salad, which is widely agreed to have been created by Caesar Cardini (though there is even some dispute over this, primarily on the internet). Does it contain anchovies? Cardini said "no," but nearly any foodie you run into will scream bloody murder if you suggest that the anchovies aren't essential. Actually, I rather like them, myself.

The word "authentic" seems to have morphed in meaning to be more like "meets general expectations about what the item you order is going to be." After all, are we certain that "the original" club was made with turkey? Or is that a recent change, like the addition of anchovies to Caesar Salad?

[BadRabbit]

I don't mind a little artistic license occasionally as long as the original dish is still evident in the final product. I do have a problem with someone naming a dish in a way that is completely misleading (e.g. I once had a "bolognese" that had no meat in it).

I really do hate the folks who are overly aggressive about enforcing "authenticity." For example, Scott Conant considers anything that contains both seafood and cheese to be an abomination because the Italians don't think you should combine them. I've seen him basically declare a pasta dish inedible because someone decided to grate some parm on top of some shrimp. It's a ridiculously stringent rule. Cuisines evolve. I've had delicious Italian influenced dishes that contained shrimp and cheese. To declare them invalid is to limit ones experiences unnecessarily.

[Chris Amirault]

One of the many problems with the concept of authenticity is that it refers to a fiction: "the original dish."

I'd amend this slightly to point out that while it usually refers to a non-existent "original," there are in fact a few cases when we do have an original, and we still can't agree on what is "authentic"! For example, the Caesar salad, which is widely agreed to have been created by Caesar Cardini (though there is even some dispute over this, primarily on the internet).

Exactly -- and bold mine, to reiterate my point above.

I think that dishes created for restaurants in the 19th and 20th centuries are a lot easier to tag as authentic, because there's usually some documentation that indicates the provenance of and criteria for this "authentic dish."

Of course, this documentation is also known as "marketing." Et tu, Caesar.

Much harder to authenticate, whatever that means, a dish that came to exist in home kitchens. Speaking of which, I need to call my PR guy about this authentic scampi a la parmigiano reggiano dish I'm working on....

[Jaymes]

Rather than use the term "originally" to refer to a dish, I prefer "traditionally."

As in: "Did you know that traditionally Italians don't combine cheese and seafood? Please pass the tuna melts."

[Dakki]

This reminds me of the problem of authority in the English language. Unless we all accept one single authoritative dictionary (or culinary reference book) there will always be some differences in what we consider correct usage (or authentic).

For one rather dumb example, my family's pozole recipe is of the red variety; on posting it in another forum I was told in no uncertain terms that "real" pozole is green, as any New Mexican knows. Rather than waste my internet breath on explaining that pozole is made in white, red and green varieties (that I've eaten; some guy in the Tarahumara mountains makes it fuschia for all I know) in different regions of old Mexico and according to the preference of the cook and the available ingredients I simply changed the recipe title to "Red Pozole Nuevo Leon Style."

So, "authentic" to one guy is "inauthentic" to someone else. And, maybe, some authorities aren't as authoritative as they think they are.

Digging a little deeper, we come to the problem of chili. Chili is interesting because of the purists' rule that chili cannot contain beans, a rule that is ignored by (my observation) well over half of chili recipes. "No beans" aside, chili is the sort of anything-goes dish where the authenticity of the dish is determined not by the ingredients but by a certain chili gestalt. My brother (local chili cookoff champion, '07-'09) reports that Heston Blumenthal's chili recipe is "tasty, but not chili."

So here's the problem, in a nutshell: Most people will recognize chili with beans as chili, but the people who are presumably most expert on chili, such as cookoff organizers, do not.

Is chili with beans "real" chili? Does common usage trump expertise?

I'm going to be the elitist jerk and say no. "Chili" (containing beans) may be used for the stuff but it is no more "real" chili than processed cheese food is "real" cheese, no matter how many people call it that. I agree it can be very tasty but be prepared to offer an explanation ("I know its not authentic but...")if you serve it to the wrong person. (I'll be happily scarfing it down; "tasty" trumps "authentic" 10 times out of 10).

Is Heston's chili not authentic because it doesn't taste like what you'd expect chili to taste like?

Again, I'm going to be the jerk and say yes. Even if it's not easy to define there is a very real chili gestalt (and, presumably, a carbonara gestalt, a club sandwich gestalt and so on). Fail to capture it in a dish and you're guilty of false advertising, even if it is tasty.

So where am I going with all this?

Basically, I think for most cases "authenticity" can be more or less defined as capturing a dish's gestalt as opposed to not substituting a single ingredient. The importance of authenticity is a separate matter: are your guests/patrons looking forward to something like you'd see in a Tokyo izakaya or do they want some tasty, non-challenging food in the Western idea of the izakaya style?

It all amounts to meeting their expectations, I guess.

[Toliver]

Perhaps then it should be a discussion not of the authentic but of the traditional.
Authenticity is more difficult to come by. It can veer off into terrior territory which makes "authenticity" more difficult to attain.

[Dave the Cook]

I have never been much bothered by "authenticity" in food until a few years back when I visited a local restaurant and ordered a toasted club. There are no doubt as many takes on a toasted club as there are on carbonara BUT here, in my home town it means one thing only - a three decker sandwich on toasted white bread with turkey on one layer and bacon, lettuce and tomato on the other. It is cut into 4 on the diagonal with each triangle held together with a toothpick. Simple. Even the worst restaurants rarely muck it up. It's a safe bet. Until this particular restaurant decided to switch it up. What arrived was some strange bread, perhaps ciabatta, sliced into two and stuffed with turkey, bacon, lettuce and tomato. I protested to the server that this was NOT a toasted club and was rewarded with, well its OUR toasted club. Was it a better sandwich? Who knows. It was not a toasted club, it did not come close to meeting my expectations and I refused it. So, authentic or not, there is a line that should not be crossed without a clear upfront explanation that this is not an authentic/traditional treatment of a dish. That, at least, is my take on "authenticity".

I got a club once with ham in place of turkey - "what's this?" I said - "that's the way we make it" they replied. Couldn't eat it - I was in the mood for a club and that was not, not, not a club! Ruined my day!

Case in point: almost all of the earliest recipes for club sandwiches call not for turkey but chicken, and were single-layer affairs. The third slice of toast didn't become the standard until the '30s.

[percival]

Authenticity is like a gun. By my putting it on a table, it allows me to say that I am right, that you are wrong, so you best nod your head quietly and eat your food. Well let me just raise your gun and bring my own authentic gun to the table...

The real sin in claiming authenticity is the common fallacy that authentic equals good, better, or best. Let's be clear: I do not think one could find a more authentic hamburger than one from McDonald's. However...

I think the real issue is expectations. There is a difference between presenting a variation on a classic and intentionally misleading the customers. Using spaghetti instead of rice noodles or pork broth instead of beef broth, and calling it Vietnamese pho is being misleading, not being creative. I would say an easy litmus test is this: does this variation seem like a shortcut by the chef? Less time or less money? If so, then any claim of authenticity should be thrown out the window. Beans in Texas chili, for example.

I know that big chefs feel the need to stamp their ego into every dish they serve. It's expected of them by their clientele. At the same time, the clientele expects a certain level of authenticity. Unless one were going to a molecular gastrohaus, Surf and Turf should generally resemble a grilled slab of beef and some kind of expensive piece of inoffensive seafood. If the plate arrived at the table with a shaking beef salad with uni dressing and parmegiano monkfish shavings, most people would consider that inauthentic. It might sound good. It might taste good. It is indeed ocean creature plus land creature. It may be "surf and turf", but it's not Surf and Turf. Call a chicken a chicken, not a duck, and no one's expectations will be ruffled.

Edited by percival, 30 August 2010 - 10:50 AM.

[Chris Amirault]

I think the real issue is expectations. There is a difference between presenting a variation on a classic and intentionally misleading the customers. Using spaghetti instead of rice noodles or pork broth instead of beef broth, and calling it Vietnamese pho is being misleading, not being creative.

Interesting example. I'm sure that there have been plenty of Vietnamese refugees in the US and elsewhere who have used ersatz pho ingredients because they can't source the real thing, and I'd certainly find it difficult to tell those folks that their soup is inauthentic.

Of course, if Cheesecake Factory tries to sell that as pho, it's another matter.

[Jaymes]

Perhaps then it should be a discussion not of the authentic but of the traditional.
Authenticity is more difficult to come by. It can veer off into terrior territory which makes "authenticity" more difficult to attain.

I find "traditionally" to be less confrontational, probably because it is also less authoritative and definite a term.

If, for example, I had dinner guests and, at the last minute, while they were arrayed expectantly around my table, my Carbonara seemed not to be behaving as it should, and I had the unmitigated effrontery to whisk in a thimbleful of heavy cream, I'd much rather have one of my company say, "This is very tasty, but I understand the Italians traditionally don't add cream."

Rather than, "OMG, amica, tell me you didn't!"

[Dakki]

I think the real issue is expectations. There is a difference between presenting a variation on a classic and intentionally misleading the customers. Using spaghetti instead of rice noodles or pork broth instead of beef broth, and calling it Vietnamese pho is being misleading, not being creative.

Interesting example. I'm sure that there have been plenty of Vietnamese refugees in the US and elsewhere who have used ersatz pho ingredients because they can't source the real thing, and I'd certainly find it difficult to tell those folks that their soup is inauthentic.

Of course, if Cheesecake Factory tries to sell that as pho, it's another matter.

I wouldn't dream of telling the hypothetical refugees their pho wasn't authentic, but wouldn't they recognize it as an adaptation themselves?

I lived in the US for years and had to use a some substitutes, particularly in chiles. When I had dinner guests I'd point out this or that dish is usually made with ingredient X but is pretty decent with Y instead.

"Traditional" instead of "authentic" is becoming appealing to me.

[Alcuin]

Etymologically, traditional implies a handing down of something, whether a recipe or a song. This is more flexible, because I can hand down one thing and you can hand down another. Those two maybe slightly different traditions are part of a culture.

Authenticity implies authority, or even an author. That's why there are no tradition police, but there are authenticity police. Whenever you invoke authenticity, you're getting into contentious territory.

I don't always think its pedantic to talk about authenticity. Pedantry is about style not content to me. When I make a dish, I often like to have a baseline in the tradition. To get that, I often go to an author for a recipe whose ethos (and my experience with it) tells me it will be authentic, in the sense of an authoritative iteration of a tradition which can be multiple and that amounts to culture.

That said, I wouldn't refer to anything I made as authentic. The idea of authenticity is useful, but that's where I like to leave it.

[Jaymes]

I don't always think its pedantic to talk about authenticity. Pedantry is about style not content to me. When I make a dish, I often like to have a baseline in the tradition. To get that, I often go to an author for a recipe whose ethos (and my experience with it) tells me it will be authentic, in the sense of an authoritative iteration of a tradition which can be multiple and that amounts to culture.

I suspect that's what most of us on eG do when we want to add a new dish to our repertoire. Go to an authoritative source, find an "authentic" recipe/methodology (or at least as close as we can get), learn about the origin and history, etc., master it.

And then unapologetically make whatever adjustments and adaptations that suit us and our various needs, abilities, preferences and lifestyles.



__________________________

Edited by Jaymes, 30 August 2010 - 12:38 PM.

[Paul Stanley]

I don't have the same problem Chris Amirault has with the idea that authenticity is a "fiction". I think Chris is thinking of "authentic" as tantamount to "original". That works in a few cases (Caesar salad, perhaps; tarte Tatin). But in many cases there is no (discernible) "original". I don't think that makes it impossible to think or speak of the authentic.

I think of authentic along the lines suggested by S L Kinsey in the post I linked to above. It's essentially a term which describes fidelity to the basic principles followed by those who regularly make and eat the dish in question in its "home territory". As such it's always a relative term (so, perhaps strictly, one should speak of "authentically Roman carbonara"). And it may allow for degrees of variation.

But for all that, there are often some things which "native speakers" would definitely regard as "wrong" -- variations which make the dish in question practically unrecognizable. And, although part of me dislikes the prescriptivism, I'm inclined to think that these instincts deserve more respect than the iconoclast in me wants to give them. At the very least, I think it's worth trying to understand the "authentic" dish before starting to make changes.

[paulraphael]

Chris's idea of authenticity as fiction is a useful way to frame the issue. Although even this could suggess that there is one fiction, while very often there are multiple fictions vying for the the crown of Authentic.

My definition of authenticity is recursive, open ended, and deliberately unhelpful: Something is called authentic when it gives the impression of being authentic to someone who holds opinions about authenticity. Which qualities specifically lead to this impression are likely fictional, historically and logically fallacious, and unrelated to anything that will determine the thing's success or failure. But still the impression is likely to be a strong one.

This doesn't make the concept completely useless. If you are aware of the perceptions of authenticity surrounding a type of food, you have the choice to either play to them or play against them. Perceptions count, regardless of what, if anything, they're grounded in.

[Chris Amirault]

I think paulraphael nailed it. I don't intend calling the original dish a "fiction" to be denigrating; I think you capture the recursive, open-ended part really nicely. Churchill said, "History is written by the victors"; one might say that authenticity is written by victors as well, but the battle continues to unfold.

[David A. Goldfarb]

It's hard to recognize innovation without a sense of what is authentic or at least traditional, but I would always think of "authentic" as "authentic to a certain time and place, and maybe a person." Demi glace with tomatoes is authentic to Escoffier, but was probably an innovation on his part, since it's not authentic to Ranhofer.

One of the interesting things one can discover by striving at least occasionally for authenticity to some particular moment is what it is that all those degradations of food in the course of history were trying to replace. Like if you reduced a can of beef stock with a can of Campbell's Tomato Soup, you would get something not unlike Escoffier's demi glace, but it would be saltier and a lot less subtle than a version made by reducing lots of homemade beef and veal stock with tomatoes and a little roux. Ranhofer had so many creamy sauces with mushrooms and mushroom essence where you might imagine a mid-twentieth-century home cook substituting cream of mushroom soup, though they would lose a good deal of the complexity of a sauce made with three kinds of stock.

[Fat Guy]

I think no matter how much we know better or try to intellectualize it, almost everybody who speaks English sees a value judgment attached to the terms "authentic" and "inauthentic." Authentic is good, and there's something wrong with inauthentic. You will not likely ever see a restaurant advertising "inauthentic Mexican/Italian/etc. cuisine," even though any restaurant with a creative chef is selling exactly that.

[Shalmanese]

The way I see it, there are two main ways a dish can come about which I'm going to term the "evolution" way vs the "intelligent design" way. A dish that is evolutionary develops slowly, over time within a community. Small variations are made through the process of trial and error and either are rejected as inferior or accepted and integrated into the mainline of the dish. A dish that is "intelligently designed" is created, out of whole cloth by a cook. They may have influences but they don't have any direct lineage.

By saying that a dish is authentic, I interpret it to mean that it's firmly in the mainline of an evolutionary process. If I eat an inauthentic dish and I dislike it, it's unclear whether my dislike is with the concept of the dish or this particular execution. After I eat an authentic version of the dish, I can confidently say that many people, in many places liked this dish so my dislike of it boils down to some core dislike of the basic concept.

[David A. Goldfarb]

I remember taking a Mexican friend to a restaurant called "The Heights" on Broadway not far from Columbia University, where they serve something called "Mexican Timpano," which is kind of like a lasagna made if I remember correctly with beef or chicken, cheese, and rice and maybe mole poblano layered between brightly colored vegetable tortillas, with refried beans and guacamole on the side, and he said, "no one makes this in Mexico, but everything in here is Mexican" and he liked it, so it seemed to be in essence authentic despite its inauthenticity.