The Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery is an annual weekend conference at which academics, food writers, cooks, and others with an interest in food and culture meet to discuss current issues in food studies and food history.
Overview The Symposium has taken place every year since 1983, with the proceedings published in an annual volume about a year later. Since 2006 the annual venue has been St Catherine's College, Oxford.Petits Propos Culinaires no. 80 (2006) pp. 7-8. The Oxford Symposium has been a Charitable Trust since January 2003. Influential in its field,P. D. Smith in The Guardian (12 August 2011) the Oxford Symposium is the oldest such annual meeting in the world,2003 Proceedings at amazon.com though a series of scientific conferences on the anthropology and ethnology of food began in the 1970s.[Alan Davidson], "Other Meetings and Conferences" in Petits Propos Culinaires no. 9 (October 1981) pp. 53-55
The Oxford Symposium is a registered charity in Britain, with a group of distinguished Trustees, and there is a support group called Friends of the Oxford Symposium.
"Science and Cookery": the 1979 seminars The origin of the Symposium is traced to a series of three historical seminars on science and cookery arranged in 1979 by the scholar and former diplomat Alan Davidson (who was Alistair Horne Research Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford for 1978/79) and sponsored by Theodore Zeldin, historian of France and a fellow of St Antony's.Paul Levy, Out To Lunch (London, 1986) p. 31 Zeldin had asked Davidson: "Tell me ... how do you propose to make manifest to the other members of the college your presence here?" The seminars were the answer. About twenty people attended on each occasion."An Oxford Symposium" in Petits Propos Culinaires no. 6 (October 1980) p. 8 The title of the first seminar, on 4 May 1979, was that of Davidson's fellowship, "Food and Cookery: the Impact of Science in the Kitchen". Academic disciplines represented ranged from the history of medicine to mathematics and French literature; Nicholas Kurti, Professor Emeritus of Physics at Oxford, was among them, and some of the 21 participants were not academics at all. Elizabeth David was among them, though she was reported to be "ambivalent at best" about the value of this academic approach to food. Also present were David's publisher Jill Norman, Anne Willan, Paul Levy and Richard Olney.
The second seminar, a week later, focused on 19th century research on food chemistry, notably Friedrich Accum's Culinary Chemistry (1821) and the writings of Justus Liebig. The third meeting became a general discussion of cookery books in their historical context. On this occasion Elizabeth David enunciated the rule-of-thumb that it takes a generation (a minimum of 25 years) for a newly devised dish to pass from the kitchen to the written record. Claudia Roden joined the group on 11 May; by 18 May participants included Jane Grigson, Elizabeth Lambert Ortiz, Sri Owen and the Dutch food writers Berthe Meijer and Titia Bodon."History of the Oxford Symposium "Paul Levy, Out To Lunch (London, 1986) pp. 30-32, 37
"Cookery Books": the 1980 symposium The next event in the series was a one-day meeting at St Antony's College in May 1980, chaired by Davidson and Zeldin. Participants, numbering nearly seventy, included many from overseas. The topic, the history of cookery books, had been prefigured in a brief article by Davidson, published in the first issue of the food history journal, Petits Propos Culinaires, in 1979.Alan Davidson, "Possible Future Bibliographies of Cookery Books" in Petits Propos Culinaires no. 1 (1979) pp. 68-69 Speakers included Kai Brodersen, then at St John's College, Oxford, on cookery writing in Europe before the era of the printed book, and Claudia Roden on Islamic cookery manuscripts. The event was "best described as a symposium, since one attractive feature of it was that everyone brought food they had prepared themselves". Culinary contributions by Sonia Blech and Josephine Bacon were noted; Nicholas Kurti served Bombe Allotropique (Graphite-Diamant), a dish he had invented 25 years earlier at the annual Diamond Conference to celebrate the production of artificial diamonds at the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady.Paul Levy, Out To Lunch (London, 1986) pp. 30-32 The proceedings were not published in volume form, but one paper appeared in Petits Propos Culinaires no. 5 and three more in no. 6.Lynette Hunter, "Cookery Books: a cabinet of rare devices and conceits" in Petits Propos Culinaires no. 5 (May 1980) pp. 19-34Claudia Roden, "Early Arab Cooking and Cookery Manuscripts"; Uta Schumacher-Voelker, "German Cookery Books, 1485-1800"; David Adlard, "The Role of Cookery Books in a Professional Kitchen", in Petits Propos Culinaires no. 6 (October 1980)
"National and Regional Styles of Cookery": the 1981 symposium The first full symposium, announced in October 1980, took place over two days in September 1981. There were nearly 150 participants, including 12 from the United States and seven from France: the latter included Jean-Louis Flandrin and . The majority were food writers, academics in food studies, publishers and journalists; there were few chefs. Plenary sessions took place on the first day, and papers had been circulated in advance. Participants split into three groups for the sessions on the second day, which were then summarized by rapporteurs in a final plenary.Alan Davidson, "Oxford Symposium 1981" in Petits Propos Culinaires no. 9 (October 1981) p. 52 Maria Johnson, speaking on "North Balkan Food Past and Present", showed photographs of two models found in archaeological excavations in Bulgaria and claimed to be as much as 7,000 years old, one of a bread oven and one of a loaf decorated with impressions of acorns.See also Maria Johnson, "The Eneolithic Bread Oven and Loaf of Bread" in Petits Propos Culinaires no. 9 (October 1981) pp. 49-51 The archaeologist Helen M. Leach spoke on "Cooking Without Pots" in prehistoric and traditional Polynesian cuisine; Raymond Sokolov, American cookery writer, discussed Southern cooking, describing it as "the major surviving native cuisine in the USA" and defending the popularity of deep frying, "an ideal method for the restaurateur". Speakers in Near Eastern cuisines included Charles Perry, editor on the Los Angeles Times, who discussed "Three Medieval Arabic Cook Books". R. E. F. Smith, professor of Russian at Birmingham, was one of two speakers on the history of Russian food. There was a session in which symposiasts attempted, but failed, to devise a test for distinguishing bogus from authentic regional styles of cookery,Paul Levy, Out To Lunch (London, 1986) pp. 32-34 a question that was to be taken up again in the 2005 symposium, Authenticity in the Kitchen.Authenticity in the Kitchen (Richard Hosking, ed.) Prospect Books, 2006. The 1981 proceedings were published in volume form, the first occasion on which this was done.Oxford Symposium, 1981: National & Regional Styles of Cookery. Proceedings (Alan Davidson, ed.) Prospect Books, 1981.
Annual symposia of the 1980s The 1983 symposium, described by one participant as "solemn but light-hearted",Paul Levy, Out To Lunch (1986) p. 34 had the catch-title Food In Motion. The theme was the migration of foodstuffs and cookery techniques, including the most significant single such migration event in history, recently studied in Alfred W. Crosby's The Columbian Exchange (1972). Other major topics included the historical significance of the potato in Ireland, discussed by the social historian Jillian Strang and the food writer Joyce Toomre. There was a discussion by Raymond Sokolov and others of the origins of nouvelle cuisine (in and around 1972) and cuisine minceur, the approach championed by Michel Guérard. Sokolov allocated the principal role in these innovations to Paul Bocuse, Fernand Point, Guérard's book La Cuisine gourmande and the work of the Troisgros brothers; he pointed out the close relationship between Japanese culinary tradition and nouvelle cuisine.Paul Levy, Out To Lunch (1986) pp. 35-36 At this 1983 symposium it was agreed that the event should repeat annually.
There is no published volume of proceedings corresponding to the 1984 symposium, which took as its theme "the ideal cookery book and recipe". Many contributions consisted of recipes "with comments upon their composition and their culinary possibilities", a form unsuited to reprinting in the usual volume format; some of the others were published elsewhere.Quotations from Cookery: Science, Lore & Books (Tom Jaine, ed.; London: Prospect Books, 1986. ) p. v Fourteen remaining papers appeared in a two-year volume, alongside the 1985 symposium proceedings, under the section title "Cookery Books and the Transmission of Recipes".Cookery: Science, Lore & Books (Tom Jaine, ed.; London: Prospect Books, 1986. ) pp. 2-72 The 1985 proceedings have the section title "Foodways, Science & Lore in the Kitchen", though the original symposium title was "Science, Tradition and Superstition in the Kitchen". Organised by Tom Jaine, restaurateur and restaurant critic, it was the largest symposium so far, with 150 delegates from Britain, many European countries, Australia and the United States. Among them it was possible to identify "six cooks/hoteliers, thirty-one journalists/writers, thirteen publishers/editors, nine historians, seven booksellers ... and twenty-three academics". The archaeologist Bruce Kraig traced the history of cynophagy in the prehistoric record and in anthropological reports. Aphrodisiacs were discussed by food writers and medical specialists, and at least one traditional aphrodisiac, Chinese three penis wine, was available for tasting. Unusual foods at the regular bring-your-own lunch included gravad lax and chocolate-covered garlic.Paul Levy, Out To Lunch (1986) pp. 36-40 The keynote talk was "Science and the Study of Food" by Harold McGee, whose On Food and Cooking: the Science and Lore of the Kitchen had been published in 1984. Anthropologists Gerald and Valerie Mars offered a classification of food scholars and enthusiasts on the grid/group scales developed by Mary Douglas. Their title was "Classifying Cuisines: Epicures, Isolates, Messmates and Cultists".Cookery: Science, Lore & Books (Tom Jaine, ed.; London: Prospect Books, 1986. ) pp. 73-187
By this time the Oxford Symposium claimed imitators elsewhere in the world: there had been four recent conferences under the aegis of the American Institute of Wine & Food, while other series of symposia were under way in Australia, Turkey and New England (the latter hosted by the Culinary Historians of Boston).Paul Levy, Out To Lunch (1986) p. 37