As we approach the end of 2021, we can look back at the previous two years of restrictions, lockdowns, COVID tests and vaccination lines, not to mention all the political strife… or we can look to the unknown, ahead to the new year. But let us pause ...
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OUPblog » Food & Drink


Holiday cheer [podcast]

Holiday cheer [podcast]

As we approach the end of 2021, we can look back at the previous two years of restrictions, lockdowns, COVID tests and vaccination lines, not to mention all the political strife… or we can look to the unknown, ahead to the new year. But let us pause for a moment and enjoy the now: a holiday season that should be livelier than last year’s. After all that’s gone on, we could use some old-fashioned holiday cheer.

On today’s episode, in the spirit of the holiday season, we spoke with Editor-in-chief David Wondrich and Associate Editor Noah Rothbaum of The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails to talk about their book, the growth of cocktail culture, and some of their favorite holiday drinks from around the world. Then, to speak on Christmas traditions, we revisited our interview with Gerry Bowler, the author of Christmas in the Crosshairs: Two Thousand Years of Denouncing and Defending the World’s Most Celebrated Holiday, from an Oxford Comment of Christmas Past.

Check out Episode 68 of The Oxford Comment and subscribe to The Oxford Comment podcast through your favourite podcast app to listen to the latest insights from our expert authors.

Recommended reading

To learn more about holiday drinks (and drinks in general), your first stop will be David Wondrich and Noah Rothbaum’s The Oxford Companion to Spirits and Cocktails. Here is the Introduction and their entry on the holiday drink to end all holiday drinks, eggnog! Wondrich and Rothbaum have written extensively on cocktails elsewhere, and they can both be heard on their own podcast, Life Behind Bars.

Explore a chapter (and some recipes) from Which Fork Do I Use with My Bourbon?: Setting the Table for Tastings, Food Pairings, Dinners, and Cocktail Parties, by Peggy Noe Stevens and Susand Reigler, on the many possible variations on the “cocktail party.”

Bridging the gap between drinks and Christmas, here is Paul Freedman in The Oxford Handbook of Christmas on the “food and drink” of Christmas around the world.

How did Christmas traditions develop in America in particular? Penne Lee Restad explores the history behind the Christmas tree and gift giving in Christmas in America: A History.

Lastly, for more on the history of Christmas and the controversies surrounding its celebration since its inception, check out Gerry Bowler’s Christmas in the Crosshairs. Also, you can listen to Episode 51 of The Oxford Comment, The History of Holiday Traditions”, from which Katelyn Phillips’ interview with Bowler was excerpted for this podcast, in its entirety on the OUP Academic SoundCloud.

Happy holidays from the Oxford Comment team!

Featured image: Photo by Brooke Lark on Unsplash.

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Ten refreshing books to read for National Beer Day [reading list]

Ten refreshing books to read for National Beer Day [reading list]

Beer is one of the world’s oldest produced alcoholic beverages and since its invention some 13,000 years ago, people across the globe have been brewing, consuming, and even worshiping this amber nectar. Whether you prefer a pale ale, wheat beer, stout, or lager, from the cask or a humble bottle, beer enthusiasts can agree that the topic of beer is as complex as its taste.

In celebration of National Beer Day, discover a refreshing selection of titles that explore the social and historical influence of ale, from ancient brewing to the modern craft beer industry.

Beer: A Global Journey through the Past and Present by John W. Arthur

In Beer, archaeologist John W. Arthur takes readers on an exciting global journey to explore the origins, development, and recipes of ancient beer. This unique book focuses on past and present non-industrial beers, highlighting their significance in peoples’ lives. As this book amply illustrates, beer has shaped our world in remarkable ways for the past 13,000 years.

In Praise of Beer by Charles W. Bamforth 

In Praise of Beer is a helpful guide for beer lovers looking to learn more about what they should look for with each sip of beer. In his latest book, Charles Bamforth brings new light to the topic of beer in ways perfect for any beer fan, lover, or connoisseur. In Praise of Beer is a helpful guide for consumers who want to better understand the beer they drink.

Smashing the Liquor Machine: A Global History of Prohibition by Mark Lawrence Schrad

This is the history of temperance and prohibition as you’ve never read it before: redefining temperance as a progressive, global, pro-justice movement that affected virtually every significant world leader from the eighteenth through early twentieth centuries. Unlike many traditional “dry” histories, Smashing the Liquor Machine gives voice to minority and subaltern figures who resisted the global liquor industry, and further highlights that the impulses that led to the temperance movement were far more progressive and variegated than American readers have been led to believe.

The Oxford Companion to Beer Edited by Garrett Oliver and Foreword by Tom Colicchio

The first major reference work to investigate the history and vast scope of beer, featuring more than 1,100 A-Z entries written by 166 of the world’s most prominent beer experts. Edited by Garrett Oliver, the James Beard Winner for Outstanding Wine, Beer, or Spirits Professional, this is an indispensable volume for everyone who loves beer as well as all beverage professionals, including home brewers, restaurateurs, journalists, cooking school instructors, beer importers, distributors, and retailers.

Beeronomics: How Beer Explains the World by Johan Swinnen and Devin Briski

From prompting a transition from hunter-gatherer, to an agrarian lifestyle in ancient Mesopotamia, to bankrolling Britain’s imperialist conquests, strategic taxation and the regulation of beer has played a pivotal role throughout history. Beeronomics: How Beer Explains the World tells these stories, and many others, whilst also exploring the key innovations that propelled the industrialization and consolidation of the beer market.

The Economics of Beer Edited by Johan F.M. Swinnen 

This book provides a comprehensive and unique set of economic research and analysis on the economics of beer and brewing, exploring the economic history of beer, from monasteries in the early Middle Ages to the recent “microbrewery movement.” It considers important questions, such as whether people drink more beer during recessions, the effect of television on local breweries, and what makes a country a “beer drinking” nation.

Voices of Guinness: An Oral History of the Park Royal Brewery by Tim Strangleman

In this book, Tim Strangleman tells the story of the Guinness brewery at Park Royal, showing how the history of one of the world’s most famous breweries tells us a much wider story about changing attitudes and understandings about work and the organization in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Drawing on extensive oral history interviews with staff and management as well as a wealth of archival and photographic sources, the book shows how progressive ideas of workplace citizenship came into conflict with the pressure to adapt to new expectations about work and its organization.

Becoming the World’s Biggest Brewer: Artois, Piedboeuf, and Interbrew (1880-2000) by Kenneth Bertrams, Julien Del Marmol, Sander Geerts, and Eline Poelmans

Throughout their histories Artois, Piedboeuf, and their successor companies have kept a controlling family ownership. This book provides a unique insight into the complex history of these three family breweries and their path to becoming a prominent global company, and the growth and consolidation of the beer market through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

New Developments in the Brewing Industry: The Role of Institutions and Ownership Edited by Erik Strøjer Madsen, Jens Gammelgaard, and Bersant Hobdari

Institutions and ownership play a central role in the transformation and development of the beer market and brewing industry. This book explores the implications of this dynamic for the breweries, discussing how changes in institutions have contributed to the restructuring of the industry and the ways in which breweries have responded, including a craft beer revolution with a surge in demand of special flowered hops, a globalization strategy from the macro breweries, outsourcing by contract brewing, and knowledge exchange for small-sized breweries.

The Rise of Yeast: How the Sugar Fungus Shaped Civilization by Nicholas P. Money 

Yeast is responsible for fermenting our alcohol and providing us with bread—the very staples of life. In The Rise of Yeast, Nicholas P. Money argues that we cannot ascribe too much importance to yeast, and that its discovery and controlled use profoundly altered human history. A compelling blend of science, history, and sociology The Rise of Yeast explores the rich, strange, and utterly symbiotic relationship between people and yeast, a stunning and immensely readable account that takes us back to the roots of human history.

Featured image by Lance Anderson

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Thanksgiving: Behind the Pilgrim Myth

Thanksgiving: Behind the Pilgrim Myth

The driving force behind making Thanksgiving a national holiday was Sarah Josepha Hale, who was born in 1788 in Newport, New Hampshire. After her husband’s death, Hale turned to writing to generate money. Her novel Northwood: A Tale of New England (1827) included an entire chapter devoted to a Thanksgiving dinner. Its publication brought Hale fame, and she ended up as editor for Godey’s Lady’s Book, the most influential women’s magazine in the pre-Civil War era. For seventeen years Hale campaigned to proclaim the last Thursday in November Thanksgiving Day. Hale encouraged other magazines to join the quest of making Thanksgiving a national holiday, and many published Thanksgiving-related stories, poems, and illustrations. During the Civil War, Hale redoubled her efforts. A few months after the North’s military victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in the summer of 1863, President Abraham Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November a national day of thanksgiving. Every president since has proclaimed Thanksgiving Day a national holiday.

Hale’s pre-1865 letters and editorial promoting Thanksgiving Day made no mention of the Pilgrims or the first Thanksgiving feast. There were several good reasons for this. Jamestown had been settled before Plymouth, and colonists in Jamestown had observed days for thanksgiving before Plymouth was settled. Hale made the connection between the Pilgrims and the first Thanksgiving holiday in an 1865 editorial in Godey’s Lady’s Book. This connection was picked up by newspapers and by other magazines. By 1870 school textbooks contained the story of the “first Thanksgiving.”

By the late 1880s the concept of a Pilgrim-centered Thanksgiving had blossomed in popular books. Thanksgiving plays were produced annually, and many schools offered special dinners based on fictional visions of life in Plymouth in 1621. This curriculum spawned a large body of children’s literature focused on the Pilgrims and the “first Thanksgiving.” These myths were enshrined in books, magazines, and artworks during the twentieth century.

The rapid adoption of the Pilgrim Thanksgiving myth had less to do with historical fact and more to do with the hundreds of thousands of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe flooding into the United States. Because the immigrants came from many lands, the American public education system needed to create an easily understood history of America. The Pilgrims were an ideal symbol for America’s beginning, so they became embedded in the nation’s schools, as did the Thanksgiving feast.

Featured image credit: Priscilla Du Preez via Unsplash

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How drawing pictures can help us understand wine

How drawing pictures can help us understand wine

It’s notably very difficult for most people to talk about wine. Part of this may because wine is a fairly complex product. But the language itself may also be a barrier to understanding. John Cleese once satirized the pretentious oenophile in Monty Python: “Real emetic fans will also go for a ‘Hobart Muddy’, and a prize winning ‘Cuiver Reserve Chateau Bottled Nuit San Wogga Wogga,’ which has a bouquet like an aborigine’s armpit.” But actual terms commonly used to describe wine are often almost equally ridiculous.

Watch here as Master Sommelier candidate Ian Cauble describes a wine blind and identifies its grape variety, vintage and region almost perfectly. The analytic manner in which he does this process is based on the deductive tasting method.

Unfortunately Ian did not pass the exam the year the film was made. Many other students never even reached this point in their tasting career. Most fail.

But despite that, interest in becoming a taste master has never been higher.  Since 2011, registration for the Court of Master Sommeliers’ introductory course has jumped 71 percent, and registration for the certified exam is up 95 percent. There are still under 250 Master Sommeliers in the world, and candidates can expect up to a decade or more of intense training in advance of the grueling three-part test that, on average, takes three tries to pass.

Thousands paid to vicariously experience the Master Sommelier exam through the movie SOMM, whose success has spurred two sequels (SOMM 2 and SOMM 3) as well as launching an annual conference dedicated to the SOMM that started in 2015.

Consumers today are not content with merely knowing about a product, they desire mastery. Expertise can seen as a social cue for when it comes to high status products. Certification can also lead to professional opportunities and higher salaries. A list of wine certifications are available here.

Taste and smell, which combine to form flavor, are two of the senses that humans least understand (or trust). Constellation Brands research finds about a third of consumers state that they are confused about wine.

Learning to taste and appreciate the target product is key to become an expert in all taste domains. In wine education programs students are given a template for wine analysis (see grid from the Court of Master Sommeliers here ) and taught to learn the language of wine. This is supposed to make the otherwise ambiguous taste experience more concrete and reduceable to different attributes (color, aroma, taste, quality, etc.).

Beyond wine and the wine aroma wheel, other domains have developed similar systems such as cheesecoffeechocolateteawhisky, and beer. Beer has its own certification system, as does cheesewhiskytea, chocolate and there is even a water sommelier.

Part of the purpose of education is to provide experts a meaningful way to communicate to consumers about how a wine tastes. The problem is that verbal descriptors can only go so far when describing a perceptual experience like wine. The expert lexicon can distance the average consumer from the taste experience.

Media coverage on the “most irritating wine words” to consumers, which include terms like “firm skeleton,” “old bones,” and “nervy.” Some 55% of consumers said that many descriptors did not help them understand the taste of wine. Yet, instead of changing the terms, or way wine is described, publications like Wine Spectator have encouraged consumers to learn the lexicon.

But while the traditional verbal and analytic tasting notes are important for the novice taster, over time, to become expert, a different way of tasting is called for.

It may be useful to encourage consumers to harness their overall impression of the wine by thinking of it as a shape, and to have them draw it as an image. The drawing process allows consumers to pay more attention to their taste experience and notice subtle differences. This also allows consumers to think about flavor more holistically: The process of doing the drawing allows consumer to see whole experience of wine and how develops on their own palate, in turn allowing them to better connect what’s in the glass with the flavor they perceive. Using a visual sense to portray a lesser understood sensory modality is effective in learning as the image can serve as a mnemonic device for later memory. See an example below:

Drawing from one of the wine studies in the article. Used with permission by the article author.

Some wineries try to use shapes/imagery as part of their marketing, see Domino wines, where the winemaker uses his shapes on the label. Gilian Handelman, Director of Wine Education for Kendall Jackson, has used shape drawing to portray differences in their wines. Elaine Chukan Brown (aka Hawk Wakawaka) has visual tasting notes that have been used for wine cartoons and labels .Even some wine apps like QUINI are moving in the direction of having visual tasting notes. The majority of the wine industry, however, still relies on verbal descriptors which fail to capture the holistic taste experience.

Thinking of wine in this new manner, as a shape, may seem unusual for consumers, but it has the potential to improve how people think about and order wine. In the future, we may order wines in restaurants not by asking for “full bodied” with “red fruit,” but having guests use Etch a Sketch devices so consumers can convey their taste preference to the sommelier.

Featured image credit: “Okanagan Valley, Canada” by Kym Ellis. Free use via Unsplash.

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A classic christmas dinner with the Cratchits

A classic christmas dinner with the Cratchits

Following a recipe for roast goose by Mrs Beeton, here’s that classic Christmas dinner portrayed by Charles Dickens in the famous scene from A Christmas Carol. Here Ebeneezer Scrooge watches with the Ghost of Christmas Present as the Cratchit family sits down to roast goose and Christmas pudding.

“And how did little Tim behave?” asked Mrs Cratchit, when she had rallied Bob on his credulity, and Bob had hugged his daughter to his heart’s content.

“As good as gold,” said Bob, “and better. Somehow he gets thoughtful, sitting by himself so much, and thinks the strangest things you ever heard. He told me, coming home, that he hoped the people saw him in the church, because he was a cripple, and it might be pleasant to them to remember upon Christmas Day, who made lame beggars walk, and blind men see.”

Bob’s voice was tremulous when he told them this, and trembled more when he said that Tiny Tim was growing strong and hearty.

His active little crutch was heard upon the floor, and back came Tiny Tim before another word was spoken, escorted by his brother and sister to his stool before the fire; and while Bob, turning up his cuffs — as if, poor fellow, they were capable of being made more shabby — compounded some hot mixture in a jug with gin and lemons, and stirred it round and round and put it on the hob to simmer; Master Peter, and the two ubiquitous young Cratchits went to fetch the goose, with which they soon returned in high procession.

Such a bustle ensued that you might have thought a goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter of course — and in truth it was something very like it in that house. Mrs Cratchit made the gravy (ready beforehand in a little saucepan) hissing hot; Master Peter mashed the potatoes with incredible vigour; Miss Belinda sweetened up the apple-sauce; Martha dusted the hot plates; Bob took Tiny Tim beside him in a tiny corner at the table; the two young Cratchits set chairs for everybody, not forgetting themselves, and mounting guard upon their posts, crammed spoons into their mouths, lest they should shriek for goose before their turn came to be helped. At last the dishes were set on, and grace was said. It was succeeded by a breathless pause, as Mrs Cratchit, looking slowly all along the carving knife, prepared to plunge it in the breast; but when she did, and when the long expected gush of stuffing issued forth, one murmur of delight arose all round the board and even Tiny Tim, excited by the two young Cratchits, beat on the table with the handle of his knife, and feebly cried Hurrah!

There never was such a goose. Bob said he didn’t believe there ever was such a goose cooked. Its tenderness and flavour, size and cheapness, were the themes of universal admiration. Eked out by apple-sauce and mashed potatoes, it was a sufficient dinner for the whole family; indeed, as Mrs Cratchit said with great delight (surveying one small atom of bone upon the dish), they hadn’t ate it all particular, were steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows! But now, the plates being changed by Miss Belinda, Mrs Cratchit left the room alone — too nervous to bear witness — to take the pudding up and bring it in.

Image credit: “Reproduced from a c.1870s photographer frontispiece to Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol” by Frederick Barnard (1846-1896). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Suppose it should not be done enough! Suppose it should break in turning out! Suppose somebody should have got over the wall of the back-yard, and stolen it, while they were merry with the goose — and supposition at which the two young Cratchits became livid! All sorts of horrors were supposed.

Hallo! A great deal of steam! The pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook’s next door to each other, with a laundress’s next door to that! That was the pudding! In half a minute Mrs Cratchit entered — flushed by smiling proudly — with the pudding, like a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half-a-quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.

Oh, a wonderful pudding! Bob Cratchit said, and calmly too, that he regarded it as the greatest success achieved by Mrs Cratchit since their marriage. Mrs Cratchit said that now the weight was off her mind, she would confess she had her doubts about the quantity of flour. Everybody had something to say about it, but nobody said or thought it was at all a small pudding for a large family. It would have been flat heresy to do so. Any Cratchit would have blushed to hint at such a thing.

At last the dinner was all done, the cloth was cleared, the hearth swept, and the fire made up. The compound in the jug being tasted, and considered perfect, apples and oranges were put upon the table, and a shovel-full of chestnuts on the fire. Then all the Cratchit family drew round the hearth, in what Bob Cratchit called a circle, meaning half a one; and at Bob Cratchit’s elbow stood the family display of glass. Two tumblers, and a custard-cup without a handle.

These held the hot stuff from the jug, however, as well as golden goblets would have done; and Bob served it out with beaming looks, while the chestnuts on the fire sputtered and cracked noisily. Then Bob proposed:

“A Merry Christmas to us all, my dears. God bless us!” Which all the family re-echoed.

“God bless us every one!” said Tiny Tim, the last of all.

Feature image credit: “lights christmas luminaries night” by Jill111. CC0 via Pixabay.

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