Infidel Foods: Food and Identity in Early Modern Ottoman Travel Literature

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One of the central credos of food studies is the aphorism of the French writer Anthelme Brillat-Savarin in his 1825 book, Physiologie du goût: “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are.” What Brillat-Savarin sensed intuitively, research has illustrated substantively: anthropologists, literary scholars, and historians have emphasized the power of food to signify, classify, and construct identity. Like language, symbol or ritual, foodways are a powerful means of both delineating and transmitting culture. Because it breaches the body’s internal/ external boundary, and because of the biological imperative to eat daily, food inheres in a unique and intimate way in our collective and individual identities, and functions as a potent social, religious, gender, political, and cultural marker. Foodways form a sort of culinary identity that both defines and differentiates: those who eat similar foods are trustworthy and safe, while those whose foods differ are viewed with suspicion and even revulsion.

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The Journal Of Ottoman Studies

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The Journal Of Ottoman Studies