Food meaning: from tasty to flavourful

Gianfranco Marrone*

Food meaning: From tasty to flavorful

DOI 10.1515/sem-2016-0103

Abstract: Considering as a starting point Greimas’s last work (De l’imperfection),taken into very little consideration by later semiotic research, I would like to seewhether it would be possible to make, in the field of taste, the distinction thatGreimas did in the visual field: between a “figurative” taste (that I should calltasty) and a “plastic” taste (that I should call flavorful). Much has been dis-cussed about the synesthetic nature of gustatory sensoriality. But very little hasbeen said about links and differences between an intellectualistic taste percep-tion (i. e., recognition of figures of food through semantic grids) and a tasteperception of a pure aesthetic nature, supported by the former and producingfurther significations that cannot be reproduced through language words. Howdoes an aesthetic grasp of taste work, if it works at all? In order to answer thisquestion I will briefly analyze different kinds of texts.

Keywords: food, taste, figurative/plastic, tasty/flavorful, aesthetic grasp,perception

1 Taste between perception and cognition

There could be many relevant reasons to discuss taste – a sensorial processgenerating the culinary art and the imagery of gastronomy with all that isconnected to them – exploring the relationship it has with meaning and sensi-bility, signification and perception. Probably the most important of them is thattaste is a theme that interests and brings together semioticians and esthetolo-gists, linguists and philosophers of language. It is not surprising, in fact, thatafter many years of almost total indifference, these disciplines have recentlyturned to culinary art, to questions of nutrition and of being at table together,basically, to taste, as we can see in several recent works (Perullo 2006, 2008,2010, 2011, 2012a, 2012b; Cavalieri 2011; Boutaud 2005; Marrone andGiannitrapani 2012, 2013; Mangano and Marrone 2013). There are also purelytheoretical reasons for this theme to be considered relevant to research andsemiotics, philosophical-linguistic and aesthetic debate. On the side of cogni-tion, taste is undoubtedly the sensorial process most tied to judgments,

*Corresponding author: Gianfranco Marrone, Università di Palermo, Palermo, Italy,E-mail: [email protected]

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recognition and identification, even more than sight, and therefore it is used todeal with categories, schemes, concepts, and models that are as important asneglected. On the side of perception, unlike sight and hearing (the two sensestraditionally considered superior), taste involves the whole body, more thantouch and smell, and it is intrinsically synesthetic. Moreover, it is an innersense, a deep one as sensorimotor skills and viscerality (which Leroi-Gourhan[1964] considers as actual senses): it has a specific syntax of the process thatallows the body and the world to communicate directly. It is a kind of contin-uous cycle bringing something from the world outside into the body and backoutside. When the direction is inverted meanings and values are reversed andgive rise to disgust. Taste, therefore, allows actual transformation processes.What enters the body is not what comes out of it, which, on the contrary,acquires a diametrically opposite meaning due to internal corporeal processes.According to Lévi-Strauss (1968), for traditional myths, cooking is the culturaltransformation of the world just like digestion is the natural one – here “nature”and “culture” are semantically opposite terms, not states of things.

Therefore, taste is, from a semiotic point of view, the most important sensoryprocess, the one producing more meanings and greater signification, moresymbolism and language (in spite of what Leroi-Gourhan himself affirms againstit). That is not paradoxical at all, since taste is the language par excellence, themost silent and least studied. It is an actual primary cultural modelling system.While in other sensory fields the relationship between perception and significa-tion gives rise to some doubts and needs some distinctions that have beenlargely discussed by scholars, in the field of taste the passage from perceptionto meaning is necessarily immediate. There is no taste without identification ofvalue. We taste things that we already see as positive or negative. To tastemeans to identify already meaningful sensible qualities. In taste, perception is,in a way, necessarily semiotic (that is why Boutaud [2005] applies Saussure’sacoustic image to taste and calls it image of taste).

2 Two languages in one

Notwithstanding, the above reflections seem to lack a basic factor that can beidentified as the bifurcation of the processes of taste into two different lan-guages, similarly to what happens in visual semiotics, which identifies a “plas-tic” language, on the one hand, and a “figurative” one, on the other hand(Greimas 1984). According to visual semiotics, figurative language is the repre-sentative activity of image and consequently, from the point of view of the

2 Gianfranco Marrone


beholder, the meaning surfacing when he recognizes the figures of the worldthrough a semantic, and then cultural, “reading grids.” Plastic language, on theother hand, is a language that comes in later, a new articulation of visual matterwithout any aim at imitating the world but directed at building new meanings toimage, through contrasts between forms, colors, positions, textures, etc. Thisdoes not imply that, in images, plastic language is the plane of expression andfigurative language the one of contents (as many use to say), but that imagescan have a double signification since they are cut into two different views. Thesecond of those views is sometimes “poetic” as in Jakobson’s definition andsometimes mythic as in Levi-Strauss’s, with further communicative results(which can be artistic, advertising, aesthetic, etc.). Plastic language does notprecede figurative language, it comes after it: it is as if the eye went beyond itsown perception, as if sensitivity surfaced again, sailing around given culturalperceptive grids to found, possibly, locally new ones.

Hence comes Greimas’s (1987) concept of “aesthetic grasp.” That is theconceptualization of one particular instant in that complex process that trans-forms the subject, not in terms of narrative dimension but in terms of sensori-ality. This process avoids cognition by suspending the discoursivity of spaces,times, and actors, so as to let another “state of things” come out, après coup,says Greimas, thus also causing, when cognition reappears, a later feeling ofimperfection and longing (Table 1). In short, aesthetic grasp is part of a canoni-cal stage-by-stage process of the following kind:

Greimas outlined this scheme using as a starting point its accurate analyses ofsome exemplar literary texts (Tournier, Calvino, Rilke, Tanizachi, etc.), but morethan once it has turned out to be applicable to many different phenomena astragic catharsis (Fabbri 2001), fashion (Floch 1995), politics (Landowski 1997)or – as we will see – gastronomy. Greimas’s concept of aesthetic grasp was born

Table 1: The scheme of the aesthetic grasp.

standardizedperception(figurativedimension)

breaking upof perceptiveschemes,setting asideof cognitionanddiscursivity

surfacingof sensitivity(plasticdimension)

distinguishingof a new stateof thingsaestheticgrasp

turning back tocognition anddiscourse,to standardizedperception, butwith a feeling ofimperfection andlonging

subject’sacknowledgementof their owntransformation

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when the research program of semiotics of image was applied to perception as awhole, following Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological model: “While visualsemiotics – Greimas writes (1987) – somehow produces a coherent interpretationof the double reading – plastic and iconic – of the objects of the world, in orderto account for the aesthetic part, it is necessary to widen the analysis field byincluding in it all sensory channels.” The reason for this is, says the author, isthat “figurativity is not a mere decoration of things: it is the veil of seemingwhose main characteristic is to unveil and let the beholder, thanks to, orbecause of, its imperfection, glimpse a possibility of a further meaning. Thusthe subject goes back to the immanence of sensitivity.” Here we are: aestheticgrasp is the immanence of sensitivity as the result of a fracture, the breaking upof a world of figurative appearances. This can be said for the specific field ofvisuality as well as for somatic perception in general.

Consequently, in the field of taste we can distinguish two specific languages:– On the one hand, there is what can be called tasty. It is the system of

meaning arising from sensorial recognition of already known figures of theworld. So that, when we taste something, we are able – with differentiatedcompetences according to different individual specializations or contexts –to identify what it is due to our semantic and cultural schemes. As when weutter statements such as: “this wine is a Merlot,” “this meat is beef,” “didyou put ginger in the soup?” and so on. Such a perceptive systems goesfrom sensorial to cognitive dimensions.

– On the other hand, we have what can be defined as flavorful. It is whereindependent sensorial “reasoning” takes place, and it works through per-ceptive processes no longer tied to existent cognitive schemes but depend-ing on a direct control on typical sensible qualities of gastronomicalsubstances, that relate to each other in terms of syntagmatic contrasts orparadigmatic references, and relate also to specific contents through ad hocsemi-symbolic systems. Though it cannot be verbalized while it is happen-ing, this process, brings one aprés coup to possible verbalizations (more orless codified into special language of gastronomic critics) such as: “thesweet nutty flavor that the chestnut flour gives to the pasta is a lovelymarriage with mushrooms,” “mild South Indian curry highlights the flavorof the crab,” and so on. This second system of meaning does not deny thefirst but eludes it, in a way. It, then, goes from given (and set aside)cognitive to the epiphany of “pure” sensory, and its possible result is thatthe sentient subject and the perceived substances transform each other. Inthis moment, it is as if there was a syntactic reversal of the actors ofperception: the gastronomic substance “takes” the human perceiving actorand becomes the actual subject of the perceptive action. We can say, in fact:



“that wasn’t just food: it was a sensory experience!” – in the strong,Hegelian sense of Erfharung, not the neo-empiricist one of certain marketingstrategies appealing to experience or aesthetics.

3 Clarifications and further research

This conceptual proposal needs some clarifications. The first and more obviousone, is about terminology, which, as any meta-language, is consciously arbi-trary. There is no particular reason to call “tasty” the taste equivalent offigurative and “flavorful” the taste equivalent of plastic (as the terms “plastic”and “figurative” themselves have no particular reason to designate what theyrefer to). Moreover, they are implicitly understood as connoting appreciation inrelation to the sensory process they refer to: “tasty” is, at the same time, one ofthe terms and one of the extremity of the category (/tasty versus disgusting/).The same goes for (/flavorful versus flavorless/). The choice of using them asterms of the meta-language can solve some of the misunderstandings that thedouble semantic value gives rise to in everyday language.

Secondly, as we will see below in analyzing textual examples, the sensoryperception related to tasty and the one related to flavorful can often be confusedin phenomenological experience, exactly in the same way as when we see animage: its meaning comes to us as a whole, regardless of the fact that it has beenbuilt through a double device of signification. But if we do not go beyond thephenomenological experience, we stop on pre-semiotics, that is to say, we donot go from concretely perceived meaning to the semiotic reconstruction of itsformal articulation, to the signification allowing the very experience of meaning.Of course, when anyone, expert or non-expert, tastes wine or food, their tasteexperience will be both syncretic and synesthetic. The subsequent analysis willnot spoil pleasure, but will simply explain its unconscious but necessary con-stitutive mechanisms.

Knowing this, thanks to the distinction between tasty and flavorful, we canidentify different fields of experience and some problematic points.

For example, we can place in the sphere of tasty all discourses about thewell-known connection (which Barthes [1978] identified in his Leçon and is nowpresent in any naive gastromania) between knowledge and flavor, taste andapprehension, palate and culture. That is the difficult question of social con-struction of cultural identities through specific cooking techniques and relatedconstructions of gastronomic aesthetics: individual identities, but also collec-tive, subjective, territorial, historical, and geographical ones. In this perspective,

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to taste means to feel not the sensible qualities of a dish, but its pedigree, itsanthropological values.

In the sphere of flavorful, on the other hand, we put themes belonging tosensorial analysis, rearranged in a specifically semiotic fashion: that is, not as anexternal scientific expertise taken as such (i. e., as a positivistically given per-ceptive process) but as a process in which plane of expression and plane ofcontents build each other, the former in function of the latter. In other words,retracing sensorial processes implies to identify their semiotic values, highlight-ing the reciprocal relationship between an expressive and a semantic plane.From the point of view of the science of signification, what is interesting is notthe physiological data, nor the phenomenological ones, but the way theybecome bearers of meaning, and therefore cultural matters. To consider physio-logical research, though rigorous and refined, as the scientific base for a semio-tics of taste would mean to embrace a non-semiotic, because non-relational,epistemology. So, once again, when we distinguish tasty from flavorful, we arenot making a distinction between signifier and signified, but between twolanguages, both having signifiers and signifieds. Sensorial analysis, therefore,does not work on the signifier of taste giving rise to semantic analysis on dishes(as someone thinks); on the contrary, it is actually a specific segmentation of theexpressive continuum that, as any segmentation, involves specific choices inmeaning. Similarly, semantic analysis that identifies meanings cannot rest onthe forms of expression bearing them (it is the well-known paradoxical base ofHjelmslev’s semiotics: planes are not consistent with each other, but expressionand contents presuppose each other and none exists without the other).

Many phenomena, of course, stand between the two spheres. Rituals andlanguages of wine tasting, for example, on the one hand, require competencesrelated to recognition of relevant qualities of the flavorful (sourness, bitterness,softness, etc.) and, on the other hand, correlate them in analogical relationship –distantly related to a conjectured subjective memory – with relevant qualities of thetasty, that is to say with sensible qualities of recognizable figures of the world (“itreminds me of licorice, brush, leather, rose, etc.”) often translated synesthetically(airy, rough, soft, round, etc.) and standardized into sophisticated technologies ofsommeliers and their avatars. Some recent trends in wine tasting are leaving asideculturalized and standardized elements of tasty experience, for the benefit ofanother, merely flavorful experience. The latter can surface only if the former isset aside, andwhat ismore, it leads to a total questioning of the subject in front of theglass (Sangiorgi 2010) and, consequently, it leads back to the hedonistic dimensionof the inebriation the media culture use to deny (Perullo 2012a).

Such a distinction, actually, was also indirectly present in the well-knownopposition /bricoleur versus engineer/ Lévi-Strauss constructs in The Savage Mind



(1962a), which can easily be applied, as it has partly been done, to the productionof food and taste, that is, to cuisine and gastronomy. The same can be said,though not as easily, to the perception phenomena we are discussing, that is, thereception through taste of food itself. As we know, according to Lévi-Strauss theengineer builds what he needs based on a preliminary project he designed for thispurpose. He looks for the raw materials he needs to carry out his project, thusconfirming their function and meaning, and strengthening, together with hisgoals, his own rationalistic and functionalistic subjectivity. This figure, therefore,goes from the idea to its concrete realization. The bricoleur, instead, builds what hecan on an imprecise idea of what could be useful to him. He then uses rawmaterials and objects he comes across in the actual situation he is in, oftenremoving their original function and meaning and giving them new ones, basedon their inner sensible qualities. So when he has to build a roof and finds a part ofan old raft, he uses it because it is horizontal and resistant. The bricoleur, thoughimprovising, builds something new, and thus transforms himself, his needs, hisdesires, and goes from the sensible world to the ideation of something new. To acloser look, both engineer and bricoleur are pragmatic characters, but in differentways: the first one goes from theory to practice, while the second goes frompractice to theory. Both take matter into consideration, but the engineer uses itas it is usually used, while the bricoleur works on it taking into account itssensible qualities. The first thinks, therefore he perceives; the second perceives,therefore he thinks. They are, of course, abstract models that in real life can mix.However, for what concerns us, they can perfectly apply to gastronomy and, forexample, to different kinds of cooks: the engineer cook will use the right ingre-dients for any recipe, while the bricoleur cook, having certain ingredients (e. g., ina particular place or market), will use them to make up a new dish (cf. Floch 1995and recently Pozzato 2012). So there are two different cuisine practices. On the onehand, there are recipes that are perfect in every detail, serial “perfect” dishes (i. e.,packed industrial food or, on the opposite side, certain performances of the so-called molecular cuisine). On the other hand, there are invented, or modified,recipes, imperfect dishes with unexpected taste (i. e., local innovation), based oningredients and tools available. On the one hand, rigorous intellectualism, on theother hand, creative sensualism.

It seems possible to use the same distinction also for what concerns tasteperception or, even better, an inclination towards it, a kind of perceptive com-petence. Let us suppose that there are two kinds of taste. The first one, theengineer’s taste, is meant as the recognition of known flavors (and contrasts offlavors), as the perceptive identification of traditionally edible ingredients andtheir properties that are already known in human and social world (somethingsimilar to what Lévi-Strauss [1962b] called “good to think”). The second one, the

Food meaning 7


bricoleur taste, is meant as the possibility of a regained direct experience ofsensitivity, the ability of perceiving new flavors (and their contrasts) from adifferent articulation of sensible qualities of ingredients. Let us make clear thatthe opposition at stake is not between intellect and sensibility, but between twoforms of sensibility, of taste, of pleasure/non-pleasure: one confirms mentalmodels for perception (therefore it can be said); the other, setting aside suchmodels and schemes, perceives the world anew, giving new, unexpected feel-ings (and for that reason it cannot be said but through specialized, oftenmetaphorical meta-languages).

4 Fennel and sea bass

In his study on visual identity of the Michel Bras Restaurant in Laguiole, Floch(1995) has implicitly outlined the distinction between tasty and flavorful. Hisanalysis starts from the lettering used for the brand name of this famous Frenchchef (Eve light italic) and finds out that it has the same aesthetic characteristicsof delicacy of the image they chose as a symbol: the Alpine fennel, a wildscented plant often used in the dishes on the menu. Alpine fennel is thearomatic emblem of Bras’ cuisine and, at the same time, the figurative elementrepresenting the identity of the brand and an element characterizing the tasteand smell of some important dishes.

To prove it, Floch analyses one of Bras’ signature dishes – Loup au petit-laitet à la cistre, baselle et quenelle de pain à la sausage [‘Bass with whey and alpinefennel with Malabar nightshade and quenelle of sage bread’] – and shows how itcan be seen as an actual text telling a story. A story where fennel plays a preciserole, the one of a hero that – as a gastronomic critic said – throws anise andmenthol spears on the sea bass body, attacking it as an Opposer would do tryingto stop the Subject, but actually increasing its power, as an Assistant would dohelping the Subject by showing it the right modality of doing and being. Thanksto fennel and to the other ingredients (whey, Malabar spinach, and quenelle)that mix with each other in the plate according to paradigmatic criteria ofselection and syntagmatic criteria of combination, bass succeeds in his para-doxical narrative program: to show itself as an astonishing Object of aestheticand tasty value for a palate that is able to appreciate it.

Up to now the role of fennel is the same as that of any other ingredient of anyother elaborate dish. But, for example, what is the role of the “instantaneousand spontaneous” processuality of fennel in the culinary-semiotic constructionof Bras’ bass? And what of the “throwing” that according to the critic – who



translates his taste experiences in a specific meta-language – “penetrates” bothbass and who is tasting it? In order to answer this questions, it is necessary toextend the narrative analysis of the dish to other possible levels of meaning wheresensory analysis could have a relevant role.

So Floch seems to say (not in our terminology) that, as an image does, a dishalso, if well-made and tasted, can reveal, along its tasty dimension (due towhich we can name ingredients, classify them according to specific culturalcodes of reference, and give them connotative meanings), an actual flavorfuldimension. This second dimension, as the plastic-visual one, goes beyond verballanguage that speaks specifically of the dish. And then, in some way, it isimpossible to put into words if we do not use ad hoc meta-languages, as theone of the gastronomic critic, who uses specific terms and metaphors in order tomake his own consume experience understandable (for those, of course, whoknow his communication codes). Or else we could develop – as semiotics didfor the plastic-visual dimension – a set of descriptive categories to makethe descriptive meta-language of the sensory dimension clear and coherent,and therefore shareable.

Even if the distinction between a figurative dimension that can be verbalized(tasty) and a sensory dimension currently unspeakable (flavorful) is notexpressed explicitly, they are actually present in Floch’s analysis of Bras’ dish.At the level of tasty, Bras meant to differentiate his dish from the recipe usedmainly in Provence, where they cook this kind of food dressing it with herbs andspices, and Alpine fennel among the others. He elaborates a new way ofpreparing a quite famous recipe, by giving fennel – a mountain plant typicalof the terroir he works in – a leading role. In order to highlight the taste ofLaguiole on the bass, without it being too strong, Bras also uses other differentaromas and flavors (both wild and natural and highly elaborate) creating aharmony of taste: the whey, the liquid left behind after churning butter out ofcream; the Malabar, local vegetable; the quenelle and sage bread. The fish isthen “imported” to Laguiole mountains where it becomes part of a happy newenvironment without losing its original identity.

The somewhat explicit discourse about Bras’ dish, a gastronomic discoursethat is socially recognized (Bras himself mentioned it in more than one inter-view), is backed up by the flavorful dimension of the dish itself, and therefore bythe special combination of the sensible qualities of its ingredients. On one sidewe have hot and dry ingredients: the fennel (wild) and the quenelle (elaborate).On the other side, cold and wet ingredients: the whey (elaborate) and theMalabar (wild). Among these there is the sea bass that, absorbing them, bal-ances it all and makes a “poetic” coexistence of opposite elements (paradigm) inthe same dish (syntagm) possible.

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In this way, as Floch says, due to the sensory game of its different elements,Michel Bras’ dish – unconsciously – recalls and doubles the famous Greek mythof Adonis: the beautiful youth that was born in the fennel (hot and dry) and diedas an adolescent in the lettuce (cold and wet), and caused some moment ofeuphoric confusion in the balanced world of cereals (barley and wheat) Demeterloved, by claiming the importance of instinctual pleasure in a world devoted tomarriage and war. Gastronomic and anthropological cultures meet, leavingbehind socialization and stereotypes that society necessarily imposes on cuisinepractices and taste experiences.

5 Culinary misunderstandings

The textual space where the distinction between tasty and flavorful acts in amuch clear way is the famous Babette’s Feast, as it appears both in KarenBlixen’s short story (1958) and in Gabriel Axel’s film (1987; cf. Appelbaum 2011and Mangiapane 2013).

The story is known (here I will follow it as it is in Blixen’swork): in a very sad andpious Norwegian village, the inhabitants devote their whole life to worshipping theLord; people pray, theDeanpreaches, everybody sings the praises ofGod. Thearrivalof two male characters, a soldier (Loewenhielm) and a famous opera singer (Papin),unsettles two of the girls of the village, the Dean’s daughters, though they do notsurrender tomundanepleasures. Suddenly awoman comes fromFrance,hername isBabette, and she had to leave Paris because of the fighting for the Commune. Fordecades, Babette works as a housemaid for two very pious women of the village, theDean’s daughters who have grown old. Then she unexpectedly wins a large sum ofmoney and she decides to prepare a wonderful lunch with excellent dishes. Thatlunch seems to cast a spell on the whole community, which, from then on, recoversits joy, its social identity, the desire of being together without duplicity. The plot isbuilt around basic oppositions linked with the mouth and its different functions: onthe spiritual side, related toNorwegiannational identity, to speak, to pray, to narrate,to sing; on the carnal side, reminding one of far-away France, to eat, to drink, to kiss.Moral: food and language have the same physical origin; they are generated by thesame physiological place, the mouth. That is the reason why they cannot but meet,often in a kind of constitutive chiasmus: they are two different forms of communica-tion with different functions (physiological and social) but probably with the samebasic structures.

What interests us here are the different ways in which every dish ofBabette’s feast is tasted by the local community and by Loewenhielm – back



home by chance that very night, as an old officer in the house of his oldsweetheart. As he eats, Loewenhielm recognizes the delicious dishes he hadeaten years before in a restaurant in France, and they act now as signs of thechef who enchanted him then and who (he does not know that, but readers do)is Babette herself. So he speaks continually of this chef, seeking the others’backup. The others, though, do not have enough competence in tasting to noticethis, and what is more, they have promised each other not to talk about foodand its pleasures. So they talk of other matters. Their bodies, however, begin tochange slowly, and it is through those progressive transformations that readersinfer the results of a new way of tasting, an implicit, silent, unspeakable way,but a very effective one. The superficial attitudes of the guests change alongwith their body, and so does their system of values. After the meal, a kind ofexpanded saisie esthétique, guests are not themselves anymore; their subjectivityhas changed due to an aesthetic experience as strong as unconscious.

Let us follow one by one the stages of the meal. In the following passage weare presented with the first offer of a glass of wine to the guests, both insidersand outsiders, and the first tasting of the soup:

Babette’s boy filled a small glass before each of the party. They lifted it to their lipsgravely, in confirmation of their resolution.

General Loewenhielm, somewhat suspicious of his wine, took a sip of it, startled, raisedthe glass first to his nose and then to his eyes, and sat it down bewildered. “This is verystrange!” he thought. “Amontillado! And the finest Amontillado that I have ever tasted.”After a moment, in order to test his senses, he took a small spoonful of his soup, took asecond spoonful and laid down his spoon. “This is exceedingly strange!” he said tohimself. “For surely I am eating turtle-soup – and what turtle-soup!” He was seized by aqueer kind of panic and emptied his glass. (Blixen 1958: 56)

The officer expects no good from this meal: what could they offer in sohumble a place? And yet here is an excellent wine that he has to taste two timesto be sure it is extraordinary, and after that a very good turtle soup. His feelingof surprise he puts into words in a kind of inner discourse, also known by thereaders. Due to that feeling he first questions his own competence in tasting(hence the double sip of Amontillado) and then feels actual panic that changesthe meaning and function of wine: it is no longer a noble matter to taste, but analcoholic liquid that can calm the spirit. This is the intellectual expression of thebewilderment of a soldier who was expecting a low level cuisine and finds hautecuisine dishes. Thanks to the tasty recognition of wine and soup, Loewenhielmunderstands that things are not as he thought. And he loses cognitive control ofthe situation. It is a question of veridiction: what it seems is not true (lie), then –we can infer – there is probably something true, but it does not appear (secret).

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Let us see now how the other guests react to these first moments of the meal.

Usually in Berlevaag people did not speak much while they were eating. But somehow thisevening tongues had been loosened. An old Brother told the story of his first meeting withthe Dean. Another went through that sermon which sixty years ago had brought about hisconversion. An aged woman, the one to whom Martine had first confided her distress,reminded her friends how in all afflictions any Brother or Sister was ready to share theburden of any other. (Blixen 1958: 56)

Here is the narrator who keeps telling what was happening, though ques-tioning his own interpretative competence about it (“somehow”). So, whilethey know quite well what is happening in the officer’s mind, here readersknow nothing of what the group thinks and what gastronomic pleasure theyare enjoying: how do they like the wine and soup? Readers can infer what isreally happening to guests only by their queer behavior, manifestation of someinner transformation (“usually” → “but this evening”). This change involvesthe tongue as language – but maybe also as the sense organ of taste – thatloosens. What actually become senseless are the specific contents of discourses(though a part of those is about a particular kind of conversion), which giveway to mere conversation, where the phatic function of language overrules theothers.

But while Berlevaag people talk animatedly with each other, there cannot beany communication between them and Loewenhielm, as if this could break theimplicit and impossible communicative agreement:

General Loewenhielm, who was to dominate the conversation of the dinner table, relatedhow the Dean’s collection of sermons was a favorite book of the Queen’s. But as a new dishwas served he was silenced. “Incredible!” he told himself. “It is Blinis Demidoff!” Helooked round at his fellow-diners. They were all quietly eating their Blinis Demidoff,without any sign of either surprise or approval, as if they had been doing so every dayfor thirty years. (Blixen 1958: 56)

The officer tells something he thinks could interest everybody, but readersknow nothing of how they react. Another dish is served and the officer issilenced, he tastes it, he is amazed, and talking to himself he shows surpriseand approval (“Incredible!”). He then takes a different attitude and observes theother guests, but he cannot understand them: they give no sign of amazementnor they explicitly approve the dish (as he does). Their respective attitudes arethe most different:

General Loewenhielm again set down his glass, turned to his neighbor on the right andsaid to him: “But surely this is a Veuve Cliquot 1860?” His neighbor looked at him kindly,smiled at him and made a remark about the weather. (Blixen 1958: 57)



Beside the continual amazement of the guests (cognitive dimension) there isa social closure (collective dimension). And in that very moment of completedissociation from the social order, in that quite paradoxical and almost funnysituation of complete loss of communication and understanding, the results ofthe silent meal show themselves among the religious people of Berlevaag:

Most often the people in Berlevaag during the course of a good meal would come to feel alittle heavy. Tonight it was not so. The convives grew lighter in weight and lighter of heartthe more they ate and drank. They no longer needed to remind themselves of their vow. Itwas, they realized, when man has not only altogether forgotten but has firmly renouncedall ideas of food and drink that he eats and drinks in the right spirit. (Blixen 1958: 58)

The passage has the same argumentative structure as the previous one: itleads to a very important topical disjunction and aspect modification (“Mostoften” → “tonight it was not so”). Alongside social anomaly, there is now aphysical and physiological queerness that is immediately transposed to theinner, religious and ethical level: more food and wine does not mean heaviness(usual) but lightness (unusual). They lose their bodies with their leaden materi-ality, and their whole subjectivity is transformed. This, in turn, brings about anew consciousness of which meaning must be given to eat and drink: they arenot related to a possible gluttony sin any more, but, on the contrary, they mustbe enjoyed in “the right spirit.” While the tasty is seen as evil, and therefore it isrefused, this does not happen to the flavorful. This second dimension ends uplosing any negative nuance (“They no longer needed to remind themselves oftheir vow”), dismissing any memory (“altogether forgotten”), and, in general, itis free of any cognition (“renounced all ideas of food and drink”). That is thereason why it is now possible to eat “in the right spirit”: from sensory perceptionof food, pure at last, – free of any knowledge and subsequent linguistic verba-lization – the rightness of eating emerges. Aesthetics leads to ethics.

6 Conclusions

Having defined the distinction between tasty and flavorful, it is now possible tooutline some of its theoretical consequences as well as the research paths itopens. Such a distinction, for example, allows scholars to create a methodolo-gical model with the aim of analyzing and even of producing, taste ekphrasis,that is to say a way of describing the text experience stage by stage, accountingboth for the syntagmatic stages (foretaste/aftertaste) and the paradigmatic ones(taste/disgust), and for all other co-textual expansions (from mouthful to plate,from plate to meal, from meal to environment, etc.).

Food meaning 13


What does not change, however, is the direction of the taste process: fromtasty to flavorful. So the usual reasoning is inverted: first comes cognition andthen sensation. Cognition is already there and shapes the semantic and cul-tural schemes of perception; sensation can surface if and when it succeeds inavoiding those schemes so that aesthetics comes out as such. But, since it isunspeakable, it can be categorized only aprés coup, in a nostalgic and imper-fect way. The sensory process is, in fact, a process: it is not just a seriesof isolated feelings, but a syntagmatic succession of events, both sensoryand non-sensory, which acquire meaning thanks to syntagmatic rules ofchaining. Sensoriality surfaces when the figurativity veil is broken; it “keepsin memory” what it had eluded, and then it feels the influence of the culture ithad refused by competing with it.

As Mangiapane (2013) noticed, in Babette’s Feast there is a misunderstand-ing of two different ways of tasting embedded in an inter-ethnic conflict that isdeeper and subtler at the same time. Behind the religious clash between fleshand spirit, there is the anthropological clash between France and Norway,between Paris haute gourmandize and traditional Norse cuisine – ready tobecome haute cuisine itself, with a new identity pride. This means flavorfulnever lasts, but it seeks new codes to bring it back to tasty.

References

Appelbaum, Robert. 2011. Dishing it out. London: Reaktion.Axel, Gabriel (dir.). 1987. Babette’s Feast [Motion Picture]. Denmark.Barthes, Roland. 1978. Leçon. Paris: Seuil.Blixen, Karen (= Isak Dinesen). 1958. Babette’s feast. In Anecdotes of destiny, 23–70.

London: Random House.Boutaud, Jean-Jacques. 2005. Le sens gourmand. Paris: Rocher.Cavalieri, Rosalia. 2011. Gusto. L’intelligenza del palato. Rome & Bari: Laterza.Fabbri, Paolo. 2001. Catharsis. Again? In Isabella Pezzini (ed.), Semiotic efficacity and the

effectiveness of the text, 289–300. Turnhout: Brepols.Floch, Jean-Marie. 1995. Identités visuelles. Paris: Puf.Greimas, Algirdas Julien. 1984. Sémiotique plastique et sémiotique figurative.

Actes sémiotiques, Documents VI. 60.Greimas, Algirdas Julien. 1987. De l’imperfection. Périguex: P. Fanlac.Landowski, Eric. 1997. Presences de l’autre. Paris: Puf.Leroi-Gourhan, A. 1964. Le geste et la parole. Paris: Colin.Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1962a. La Pensée sauvage. Paris: Plon.Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1962b. Le totemisme aujourd’hui. Paris: Plon.Lévi-Strauss, Claude. 1968. Mythologiques III: L’origines de manières de table.

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Mangano, Dario & Gianfranco Marrone (eds.). 2013. Dietetica e semiotica. Milan: Mimesis.Mangiapane, Francesco. 2013. Il pranzo di Babele. In Dario Mangano & Gianfranco Marrone

(eds.) Dietetica e semiotica, 227–260. Milan: Mimesis.Marrone, Gianfranco & Alice Giannitrapani (eds.). 2012. La cucina del senso. Milan: Mimesis.Marrone, Gianfranco & Alice Giannitrapani (eds.). 2013. Mangiare: Istruzioni per l’uso. E/C 14.Perullo, Nicola. 2006. Per un’estetica del cibo. Palermo: Aesthetica Preprint.Perullo, Nicola. 2008. L’altro gusto. Saggi di estetica gastronomica. Pisa: Ets.Perullo, Nicola. 2010. Filosofia della gastronomia laica. Rome: Meltemi.Perullo, Nicola. 2011. Esperienza estetica, cucina, gastronomia. Estetica 1. 227–235.Perullo, Nicola (ed.). 2012a. Wineworld: New essays on wine, taste, philosophy and aesthetics.

Rivista di estetica 51.Perullo, Nicola. 2012b. Il gusto come esperienza. Bra: Slow Food.Pozzato, Maria Pia. 2012. Paesaggi al cucchiaio. In Gianfranco Marrone (ed.), Semiotica della

natura (natura della semiotica), 169–181. Milan: Mimesis.Sangiorgi, Sandro. 2010. L’invenzione della gioia. Rome: Porthos.

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