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Comment
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midori
snyder
Registered User
(10/16/05 3:31 pm)
ezSupporter
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Folk Tales, Myths and Cooks
Just thought I would poll the group for suggestions on Cooks in folktales and myths. I need a few final references for an article I am working on and this place is always such a treasure trove of ideas!
Thanks everyone!
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(10/16/05 4:29 pm)
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Re: Folk Tales, Myths and Cooks
Hi Midori,
The first things that come to my mind is the travelling man in Stone Soup and the three bears who go out to get honey for their porridge, thus leaving their house open to the depredations of Goldilocks. In some of the many versions of Cinderella, Cindy enacts some form of punishment on her stepsisters that involves doing something like pickling or roasting their flesh and sending it back the stepmother to eat--there's a Chinese version like that in The Classic Fairy Tales edited by Maria Tatar, and I'm positive there's another version, possibly...South Pacific of some kind?...as well. In the earliest Cinderella variant, "Yeh-shien," the stepmother kills and cooks the carp that had been helping out her beleagured stepdaughter. "The Juniper Tree" in the Brothers Grimm has a stepmother making stew out of her stepson's body and her daughter's tears, whereas in "The Rose Tree" in Joseph Jacobs she makes stew out of her stepdaughter's heart and liver. In the Grimms' Red Cap, Red Cap and her grandmother have a second encounter with a wolf which is resolved using the water the grandma had boiled sausages in the previous day. I belive that in the Three Little Pigs, the wolf tries to go down the chimney of the brick house and finds himself boiled to death in a big cauldron of soup. In Perrault's "Sleeping Beauty," the royal chef saves the lives of Sleeping Beauty and her kiddies by hiding them and killing and serving young animals instead.
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Random
Registered User
(10/16/05 4:57 pm)
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Re: Folk Tales, Myths and Cooks
In many versions of the Donkeyskin-type tale, it is her special preparation of food (often with a token inside) that brings her dirty persona to the attention of her future husband.
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AliceCEB
Registered User
(10/16/05 6:17 pm)
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Re: Folk Tales, Myths and Cooks
There are so many cooks... In The Beauty and the Beast, the Beast feeds first Beauty's father and then Beauty great meals (although the cooks are magical servants--which, I suppose, was evidence of the Beast's princely nature). In The Forest Bride by Parker Fillmore, each of the three sons' beloveds must bake bread for the sons' father so that he can see the quality of their beloveds cooking talents--the mouse bride cooking the finest bread of all, of course. In Hansel and Gretel the witch cooks up the house that entices the children, and also threatens to cook Hansel before she is pushed into the fire. In Little Red Riding Hood she is eaten whole and raw by the wolf (in addition to the grandmother)--giving whole new meaning to "al dente." And I would wager that Vasilisa the Fair was one of the most talented cooks of all: although deprived of good foods by her cruel stepmother, and even by Baba Yaga, she manages to find the tastiest morsels for her doll to eat so that she can continue to give Vasilisa advice. (Vasilisa also cooks several meals for Baba Yaga, but only gets to eat cabbage soup.)
In The House of Atreus, Atreus kills his brother's children, cooks them and serves them to him (in vengeance for having stolen his bride). In Gilgamesh, the Immortal Man's wife bakes Gilgamesh seven loaves of bread while he sleeps for a week, one per day, and when he wakes Gilgamesh is shown that all things must eventually rot away. Many of the Brer Rabbit tales involve stealing a meal cooked by another animal.
So many cooks...
Best,
Alice
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Erica Carlson
Registered User
(10/17/05 9:00 am)
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Re: Folk Tales, Myths and Cooks
Last year I heard a storyteller's telling of an Italian tale where a prince's own true love is sent away and he is engaged to a succession of three princesses. For each royal engagement, his true love bakes or cooks something fabulous and, when the princesses try to duplicate it they fail (and injure themselves). I'll hunt down the title. I find the idea of cookery as an expression of worth to be really fascinating, though also a bit disturbing (very 'Angel in the House'). Cooking is still an place where mothers and grandmothers pass along information and tradition to daughters, and more often these days, to sons. I know a lot of rather obscure Swedish cookie recipes, but it's my brother who calls Mom fairly regularly to ask for recipes and cooking advice.
Several of the examples we've already come up with, though, are pretty horrific. The first thing that popped into my mind upon reading this thread was, "Be he alive or be he dead, I'll grind his bones to make my bread" (a really bad idea, actually, now that we know about things like mad cow disease). And for another example of horrific cooking, there's Titus Andronicus and that terrible scene where Titus serves the Queen of the Goths a meal of her own sons.
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midori snyder
Registered User
(10/18/05 1:50 pm)
ezSupporter
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Re: Folk Tales, Myths and Cooks
Thank you all...these are wonderful suggestions...though I agree with Erica, I had forgotten how many really cruel cooks there in myth and folklore. (Oh that scene in Titus is so gruesome to watch..have you seen the french film The Delicatessen?).
I am writing a little piece that is more in praise of the cook...as a figure of transformation, alchemy and creative energy. I admit, I was first thinking of my father--a ballet dancer, a professor of African Literature, a poet and best of all a rather magical cook. It was the one activity that seemed to join all the other facets of his life and enchanted all of us. So I have been looking at cooks like the young woman in Esquivel's Like Water For Chocolate and the woman in the film Chocolat...along with more mythical cooks, the Norse god Andhrimnir, chef of Valhalla and Corn Woman in Native american mythology.
The modern day versions of these kitchen alchemists seems to be in the arena of Molecular Gastronomy...an amazing subject. (or why egg and bacon icecream tastes really good with tomato jam.)
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Lotti
Unregistered User
(10/18/05 3:03 pm)
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Literary Fairy Tale with Cook
Midori, I am not sure if this one "qualifies" in your search, but there is a tale by Wilhelm Hauff called "Dwarf Nose" ("Zwergnase" in German). The son of a woman with a vegetable stall on the market talks back to a witch customer, who turns him into a dwarf but teaches him to cook. When he escapes from her, he becomes cook to the duke ruling the land. He once buys a goose who really is the enchanted daughter of a sorcerer. Both are returned to their original form eventually, but not without all kinds of food being cooked and described first. Might fit your criteria?!? It is not a folk tale, though.
Greetings, Lotti
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(10/18/05 4:07 pm)
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movie cooks
Hi Midori
If you're looking at non-mythical cooks too, I have two movies/shows to suggest: Who's Killing the Great Chefs of Europe and Sweeney Todd. You could also look at Heartburn by Nora Ephron, the first, to my knowledge, of the novels-that-include-recipes.
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sally e
Registered User
(10/19/05 2:09 pm)
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Re: movie cooks
I just read my daughters a story called something like "Like Meat Loves Salt." It was a Jewish folktale, a take on the King Lear theme of a king trying to figure out which of his three daughters loves him most. The first two offer jewels or gold and the last says "I love you like meat loves salt." He thinks that's not good enough, kicks her out. She ends up marrying a prince and her father (not knowing it's her) comes to her wedding feast. She cooks everything without salt, thus proving the extent of her love to her father.
I know I've read this theme somewhere else too. Could it be Princess Furball? Can't remember for sure but daughters said they remembered it from a more fairyish tale too.
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Veronica Schanoes
Registered User
(10/19/05 3:00 pm)
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Like meat loves salt
Oh, yes, I've read that too, but I've always remembered it as being British, not Jewish.
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Heidi Anne Heiner
ezOP
(10/19/05 4:40 pm)
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Re: Like meat loves salt
According to various sources, it's both. Joseph Jacobs' Cap O' Rushes uses the theme. The picture book The Way Meat Loves Salt by Nina Jaffe includes an introduction in which she cites Yiddish Folktales edited by Beatrice Silverman Weinreich as her primary source.
Heidi
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neverossa
Registered User
(10/21/05 5:51 am)
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transformation and pollution
Hi Midori, this is a wonderful subject!
...Food is one of the many things that "violates" a bodily boundary (the mouth).
Just a suggestion: when you deal with cooking and transformation did you think about the polluting aspect of food? One of the accusations to early modern European witches was that of poisoning through food, ripe food (apples! for example, like in Snow White) or cooked one, like soups served to the new mother that caused the interruption of her breast's milk.
I don't have in mind any Indian tale, but just this idea from anthropology: in Hindu conception of the world, the cooked food instead of the ripe one is the dirty and polluting one, because it has been managed, and so corrupted by men.
From fairy tales, maybe it has already been mentioned, but what about Baba Jaga who's flying in a mortar?
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janeyolen
Registered User
(10/22/05 4:34 pm)
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Re: transformation and pollution
"As Meat Loves Salt" is one of the Cinderella varients.
Hansel and Gretel--the witch cooks up children. (And makes candy to decorate the house, unless there's a "Sweeties" down the road.)
In the Grimm's "Juniper Tree" the wicked (step)mother cooks up her dead son and feeds him to the family.
JaneY
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princessterribel
Registered User
(10/23/05 10:37 am)
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Re: transformation and pollution
I have not read all the reply's (Bad me!). However, I did read somewhere that in Basile's version of Cinderella, 'The cat Cinderella', the figure of the COOK can be likened to the mother or stepmother figure...read some excellent points on this observation made by Maria Tatar in her book, ' Off With Their Heads!'
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Judith Berman
Registered User
(10/24/05 9:40 am)
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Cooks
What immediately springs to mind is not, alas, anything traditional that you could use, but the druid Getafix, from the Asterix comics, who always cooks up his magic potions like a French chef. Lobster bisque that gives you superhuman strength!
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Crceres
Registered User
(10/24/05 10:19 am)
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Cooks
How about the cook in the home of the monster? The adventurer always seems to run into the human doing housekeeping and cooking for the giant, robber bridegroom, or some other unsavory character. For instance, in the Luck Child (done very nicely in Jim Henson's the Storyteller) the cook keeps his life because the griffin likes the goulash he makes.
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avalondeb
Registered User
(10/27/05 6:31 pm)
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Re: Cooks
"Like Water For Chocolate" and "Chocolat" are two of my favorite movies. If you are looking for more contemporary stories on cooks who transform ...
This is a stretch, but in the Matrix trilogy, the Oracle "transforms" Neo with a "cookie". The "cookie" transforms his program and basically changes or transforms the entire course of human existance.
It know it is a stretch, but it is the first thing I thought of!
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midori snyder
Registered User
(10/28/05 7:56 am)
ezSupporter
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Re: Cooks
oh these are all wonderful thank you all so much.
Judith,
I'd forgotten about Getafix! (and I grew up with Asterix...)
Avondale; "Cookies"...awesome. Since the Crossroads articles are about the place where the traditional fatnastic and the modern tech (bordering on it's own version of the fantastic meet!). I shall have to reference it.
also I have been rereading Richard Park's brilliant story "The Ogre's Wife"...not for the feint of heart however.
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Midori
Unregistered User
(10/29/05 10:38 am)
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correction!
Ah sorry, "The Ogre's Wife" that I am reading is not the one by Richard Parks...but Pierett Fleutiaux! It's in the 5th Years Best...
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Judith Berman
Registered User
(10/31/05 10:08 am)
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Food panel at WFC
Somewhat apropos of this topic, there is a food and fantasy panel Thursday night at WFC, which I am on, along with Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman and a couple of other folks.
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Thursday 10:00-11:00PM
The Kitchen: Food in Fantasy Capitol A
Well, you know, we've all got to eat. Often, on the quest to who-knows-where, we just assume that the characters are eating something. But other characters get meals described in glorious and loving detail. How can realistic food add to a story? Whose people eat the best? Whose castle has the best cooks? Bring a notebook in case there are recipes to share.
Judith Berman, Esther Friesner, Douglas Hulick, Ellen Kushner, Delia Sherman
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Midori
Unregistered User
(10/31/05 10:21 pm)
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the article is live
Thanks everyone for your thoughts! I never quite know how these articles are going to turn out...half way between academic and a long way to being personal reflection.
Anyway the new Autumn issue of Endicott is now live and my article "In Praise of the Cook" can be found here:
www.endicott-studio.com/crossroads/crCook.html
There is an especially beautiful piece of art of Baba Yaga and Vasilissa the Wise by Forest Rogers who was so kind to give us permission to use.
Let me invite you to have a glance at the rest of the issue. There's some great stuff there!
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