Culinary culture - an approach from interdisciplinary research

In Vietnam, books on cuisine, including Hanoi cuisine, have long held a stable position in the hearts of readers. However, while the market is flooded with books on cooking and mixing, the need to learn more about the history, culture, and science behind each dish has not been fully met.

Book Hunter, a publishing house known for its in-depth book selections and academic thinking, has decided to embark on this new journey: Launching a bookshelf specializing in culinary culture. The special feature of the Bookshelf is not the recipes, but the approach to this topic through the lens of cultural anthropology, sociology and even the science of tasting, a field that is still very new in Vietnam.

To date, Book Hunter’s Culinary Culture series has published 12 titles, of which 10 take an interdisciplinary approach: from anthropology, cultural studies to history and sociology. Not simply talking about food, these titles place cuisine in a specific social and historical context, clarifying the connection between food, power, identity and community change.

Many outstanding titles from world-class scholars have been translated into Vietnamese by Book Hunter, including: “Cuisine and Empire” by Rachel Laudan, “Hummus and Falafel - Preserving Traditional Cuisine in the Face of Industrialization in the Gaza Strip” by Liora Gvion, “The Kingdom of Rye” by Darra Goldstein, “The Institution of Food and Nutrition” by Marion Nestle, “A History of Cookbooks” by Henry Notaker, “The Untold History of Ramen” by George Solt, “Coffee Life in Japan” & “The Paths of Food” by Merry I. White.

In addition to approaches from anthropology and history, Book Hunter is also one of the rare units in Vietnam that tries to introduce the science of tasting, a field that is still young even in the world. This is a direction that requires a combination of senses, biology, psychology and philosophy, to explain how people experience taste in a deeper way than just “good or bad”.

The first two books that laid the foundation for this approach were Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s “Physiology of Taste,” a famous 19th-century French work on culinary philosophy that is considered the first “manifesto” for modern culinary art, and Tony Gebely’s “The Science of Tea,” a highly experimental book that analyzes in detail the process of tea flavor perception from the perspective of chemistry and sensory science.

In the recent conversation “Cuisine - The Way of Humanity” with the book publisher and readers, researcher Vuong Xuan Tinh, former Director of the Institute of Ethnology and researcher Dinh Hong Hai, Head of the Department of Cultural and Development Anthropology, Faculty of Anthropology and Religious Studies (University of Social Sciences and Humanities, Vietnam National University, Hanoi) affirmed the importance of culinary research and shared that an interdisciplinary approach is an inevitable choice. Not only interdisciplinary, but researchers also require a diverse background in world history and culture as well as practical experience. Therefore, Book Hunter's Culinary Culture bookshelf makes a very important and pioneering contribution.

Writer Ha Thuy Nguyen, founder of Book Hunter, said that in the next phase, the Culinary Culture Bookcase will continue to launch works that delve into modern tasting science and research on Vietnamese cuisine or are written by Vietnamese authors. In particular, the diverse and rich culinary life in Hanoi will certainly be a topic that authors invest in researching thanks to the advantages in documents and fieldwork. The 12 books in the first phase of the Culinary Culture Bookcase are a period of learning from great researchers in the world so that Vietnamese authors can further perfect their unfinished works.

Source: https://hanoimoi.vn/van-hoa-am-thuc-tiep-can-tu-nghien-cuu-lien-nganh-718417.html