Revisiting Robert Carrier's Great Dishes of the World

"Everyone, at some time or other, has to eat a dish for the first time."

Robert Carrier

I have been rereading my recent op shop gift of the 1983 version of Robert Carrier's Great Dishes of the World. Well I am doing a lot of reading of all kinds actually because of my current enforced immobility.

It's a much glossier version than my own little paperback, but nevertheless it is actually exactly the same - I am willing to bet it is word for word exactly the same and ditto for the recipes. So I suppose a bit lazy, though mostly on the part of the publishers. I wonder whether Carrier refused to write a 'new' introduction or whether he was even asked. Normally when a book is reissued there is a 'preface to the new edition'. But not here. The introduction, for example, is exactly the same as in the original. It's short but full of quotable quotes such as these.

"The history of every nation lies visible on its table. Its wars and victories, its occupation in defeat, the marriages of its kings, its religion, its overseas empires - all have left behind them a dish or two destined to be adopted into the national life."

Perhaps to these historical events we should now add the movement of peoples - for pleasure, as escape from poverty and strife and for business reasons. Plus the all encompassing social media. These too have become part of the modern history of food.

He goes on to say:

"Civilisation itself, in fact, is founded upon food, for it began with the domestication of animals and cultivation of crops. As soon as people could stay still - were released at last from the travail of following the game on which they fed - they ceased to live from hand to mouth, began to build up stocks and to store their wealth. With this wealth they bought leisure and leisure brought them culture."

Now there's a lot to argue with here, not least the definition of civilisation itself - are nomadic peoples uncivilised? Do they not have their own culture and sets of rules? And even in 'civilised' societies as defined here, there are plenty who still live hand to mouth.

Nevertheless there is a grain of truth there that should not be ignored. Certainly the domestication of animals and cultivation of crops - food - is responsible for the building of permanent dwellings, villages and towns, and for the specialisation of tasks and the leisure hours, for some, that enabled over consumption of complicated foods, experimentation and innovation.

The book is peppered with little essays on particular dishes, those he considers to be "part of the story of mankind ... they have all history behind them." And some of his little essays - most in fact - are filled with personal reminiscences evoked by a particular dish. And that is what food does doesn't it? Well the best food anyway - and I don't just mean exotic dishes one tasted on far flung continents, but also the food of home, of one's childhood. There is a wonderful passage in the novel I have just finished, A Gentleman in Moscow that describes a dish of bouillabaisse that has been assembled with great difficulty and enjoyed by the three men at the centre of the story in an ageing hotel in Moscow in the Stalinist era. I would like to share it with you because I think it illustrates admirably what Robert Carrier is trying to do with this book.

"One first tastes the broth - that simmered distillation of fish bones, fennel and tomatoes, with their hearty suggestions of Provence. One then savours the tender flakes of haddock and the briny resilience of the mussels, which have been purchased on the docks from the fishermen. One marvels at the boldness of the oranges arriving from Spain and the absinthe poured in the taverns. And all of these various impressions are somehow collected, composed and brightened by the saffron - the essence of summer sun, which having been harvested in the hills of Greece and packed by mule to Athens, has been sailed across the Mediterranean in a felucca. In other words, with the very first spoonful one finds oneself transported to the port of Marseille - where the streets teem with sailors, thieves and madonnas, with sunlight and summer, with languages and life. ...

And what did these old friends talk about? What did they not talk about! ... They spoke of the once and the was, the wishful and the wonderful." Amor Towles

For food evokes memories - even a simple dish of sausages and baked beans - the sausages were different then and from there I remember butchers' shops where the strings of sausages were hung high on hooks. And the baked beans - the tin might look much the same but they taste a bit different. And rereading this book - well rebrowsing the actual recipes - has evoked countless memories for me. For flipping through the pages I realise have cooked, at one time or another, almost all of the recipes. Not the offal, or the shellfish, or the exotic venison, grouse and hare, and maybe not some of the more complicated desserts, but almost everything else. Just seeing the titles of some of them brought back memories. Some were also published at the same time by Elizabeth David and Penguin, so maybe I sometimes used those rather than his, but, more likely, I tried each version and compared.

For instance Chilli con carne. When we were first married we lived in a tiny basement flat in Hampstead a stone's throw from the heath. There was a bedroom, another multi-purpose room - our lounge and dining room, a bathroom and a tiny kitchen, whose only working space was the top of the waist-high fridge. But in this kitchen I tried to cook something new for my new husband every night. And one night I tried Robert Carrier's Chilli con carne. Well! Would you believe the recipe has 4 tablespoons - yes tablespoons - of chilli powder, and being a novice cook I did as I was told. Well it might have been 2 because I probably halved the quantities. David remembers it still. He thinks he remembers palpitations. We certainly both had to lie down and not much was eaten. The flooring of this flat was a black and white chequer pattern lino. Weirdly we both remember this floor in association with the chilli con carne. Maybe it looked cool. It took me years before I made chilli con carne again, by which time I was brave enough to modify instructions. Probably no more than a teaspoonful, probably less, was what I used then. But merely seeing the title of this recipe and checking the quantity of the chilli, brought back, not just memories of that particular dish as described above, but a whole lot of other memories associated with that happy time in that tiny flat when we were all young and beautiful and life was beckoning.

This recipe is perhaps the only Robert Carrier recipe that has been a failure for me, everything else has worked. Some of the recipes in this book I still make on a regular basis, though probably modified through the years. Spaghetti and meatballs, Beef Stroganoff, Carré de porc Provençale, Old English apple pie, Choucroute. Some I must revisit because I know that I have made them and I know that I liked them. They just have been overlooked in my constant search for something new and wonderful. And some of them are amazingly simple. In fact hardly any are really complicated.

But last of all, in spite of its title, Great Dishes of the World, this book is largely Great Dishes of France with a few from Italy, England and America and the very occasional one from somewhere more far flung. There is not even any pizza! It was written - this 'new' edition too - before his love affair with Morocco and its food - there are just two Moroccan recipes in this book I think - an orange salad and a roast chicken and not even a tagine. And no mention of preserved lemons. The couple of vaguely curry recipes use curry powder, although he does mention cumin and coriander and turmeric a bit. At this time he was based in England, having spent some years in France, and having come originally from America. So the emphasis on French cuisine is completely understandable - and was actually pretty exotic to most of us back then. Not to me, but then my teens had been privileged - I had spent every summer in a French home. Much later in life he published New Great Dishes of the World which did indeed cast its net much wider. The New Basics section in that book demonstrates that very clearly. But that's for another time.

Perhaps the last thing to note about this book is his emphasis on herbs - the endpapers show the plans of his herb and vegetable garden at his grand mansion in the English countryside - and just about every recipe makes use of one or another fresh herb. Back then some of these were hard to obtain - tarragon and basil being just two. Fresh coriander was literally unheard of - but is now, I believe, the most sold fresh herb in the UK. How times change. How history changes and with it food.

"Culture stems from the stomach as well as the brain." Robert Carrier

Thank you Monika.