“The Taste of Freedom” – The revolution doesn’t just eat children

Real socialism had the wrong recipes. This is to be understood literally. You didn’t have to have dined in Italy or France to realize that consumer and HO restaurants were not the pinnacle of culinary art. And the fact that East Germans lost their appetite for communism was also because the word had gotten around: “The food is better elsewhere.”

Socialism, which was a social progress in the sense of Karl Marx, turned out to be a regression in culinary terms. The word “enjoyment” did not appear in five-year plans and party slogans. No wonder that many were fed up with what filled them up. The gold broiler didn’t change that.

This makes it all the more worthwhile to take a closer look at the eating culture of the predecessors – i.e. civil society. Because it was a revolution not only in the Marxist sense, but also in the gastronomic sense. Before the storming of the Bastille there had been a few dozen restaurants throughout Paris; twenty years later there were thousands.

Such surprising information can be found in abundance in Ute Cohen’s culinary journey through time “The Taste of Freedom”. You couldn’t have asked for a better author for this book. Because Ute Cohen is not only familiar with the development of the art of cooking, but also knows how changes in society have affected the stove. When social life heats up, things get hotter in the kitchen than usual.

What is taken for granted in the bourgeoisie today – “going out for a fancy meal” – was actually revolutionary back then, from 1789 onwards. When royal families and nobles were driven out of their residences, this also had an impact on the job market: numerous top chefs stood on the streets like guillotines. Until then, elegant cooking had only been done behind closed palace doors. But now haute cuisine opened up to the middle class. The unemployed chefs became self-employed and became restaurateurs. You no longer had to be a noble to eat like a prince. A bulging wallet was enough to have Versailles on your plate.

Even home-cooked German cuisine benefited from the upheaval in the neighboring country, at least in isolated cases. Many a chef de cuisine loyal to the king went into exile and bridged the waiting period by sizzling on his own account. The cook of the beheaded Queen Marie-Antoinette was not the only Frenchman who opened a restaurant in Hamburg after 1789. One can assume that no pickled herrings were served there.

The French Revolution also broadened the culinary horizons of the Germans. Unfortunately not across the board. Apart from gourmet islands like Hamburg, it wasn’t until 100 years later that Germans discovered the joys of going to a restaurant. Unlike in France, the bourgeoisie was too weak and poor to develop gastronomically.

And what about freedom? Ute Cohen begins her first main chapter with the words: “The history of gastronomy is also a history of freedom.” When she writes, “Pleasure has been democratized,” then this certainly applies to the Italian and French bourgeoisie, who were finally allowed to feast . The abolition of the guilds in 1791 also put an end to the madness that, for example, cakes and chocolates were not allowed to be served in restaurants because these were part of the confectioners’ field of activity. The long-overdue freedom of trade ensured that there was suddenly diversity on the menus.

But that’s just the way the world goes. The fact that restoration followed the revolution is not only to be understood in gastronomic terms. Strict rules soon also applied “in the new places of civic gatherings.” “The wrong suit and the wrong tie are reason enough to become a pariah in a society that defines itself by codes and symbols.”

And there were many of these codes. The new moneyed nobility “no longer felt compelled to impress the marquis or the king with their exquisite choice of words, but used stylistic sensitivity and clear evaluation criteria as a distinguishing feature compared to less cultivated contemporaries.” In addition to the food, the restaurant also tested its own market value. »Seeing and being seen were of central importance for the image and reputation. Whoever is seen exists! From a commercial perspective, whoever is seen counts!« That doesn’t sound particularly relaxed, let alone free.

Nevertheless, one should not expect a fundamental criticism of capitalism from the book. Ute Cohen – this is evident from the enthusiasm with which she writes about chefs and the art of cooking – is a gourmand. A citoyenne who makes no secret of the fact that gourmet pleasures combined with intellectual exchange are part of the essence of the bourgeoisie. But that doesn’t stop them from taking a closer look. So she repeatedly spices her praise of the “taste of freedom” with bitter undertones. She bluntly describes the brutal competitive pressure that 19th century restaurants were already exposed to.

She is aware that the revolution is also eating its children in the kitchen. The brand new makes short work of the new thing from yesterday. Henri Gault (the man from the restaurant guide “Gault-Millau”) is just now on the barricades: “The star hierarchy of the Michelin Guide reflected an official France that was frozen in mayonnaise and trapped in prescribed figures. For example, veal inevitably had to be served with spinach. So we did our palace revolution and launched a gastronomic magazine on the market in 1969, in the wake of May 68. But just a few years later, the revolutionary himself was part of the establishment.

It’s a vicious circle. »Evaluate, compare, improve, the wheel of change turned faster and faster. The politics of eternal change and the capitalist motto of continuous change harbor the danger of destabilizing the individual. Burnout and nervous breakdown are the consequences of constantly being overwhelmed.” This goes so far that top chefs kill themselves after losing a Michelin star.

Then, at the latest, you begin to doubt the freedom that begins on the tip of your tongue. Especially since even the guests are sometimes overwhelmed by the freedom. History – including that of culinary art – shows that people tend to go to extremes. He oscillates between gluttony and asceticism. The latter attitude currently dominates. “Exhibited decadence is frowned upon in a bourgeois society that leans more towards an ethos of renunciation than culinary eccentricity.” But this self-restraint can only be allowed by a society “that has already achieved a certain level of prosperity in which the fight for food is won.”

So everything in butter or diet margarine? On her meticulously researched, baroque-opulently described journey through time, Ute Cohen also stops off with Michel Houellebecq and his novel “Annihilate”. When she speaks in this context of the “inability to taste life and to give voluptuous expression to sensual enjoyment,” one suspects that she, the joyful connoisseur, is suffering from the present. Her final words – “For me, knowledge of the history of culinary art is essential for discovering and expanding one’s own ability to enjoy food” – should therefore also be understood as an appeal. When was the last time you had a good meal?

Ute Cohen: The taste of freedom. A history of culinary art. Reclam, 272 pages, hardcover, €24.