Dough as Primal Form

Abstract

The cookbook The Essence of Cookery (1822) by Rumohr is certainly one of the great philosophical works in cookbook literature. It is a book which has no lesser aspiration than to be the only one that those practicing the art of cooking need to read. Rumohr is German and has traveled a lot in his time — a time in which the art of cooking has only slowly made its way into the traditional inns. His book describes a world of cooking which still today, almost 200 years later, makes for an exciting read. All sorts of philosophical ideas on cooking and eating are presented in this book aspiring to be part of an independent genre of art. The home-made soups described by Rumohr, however, no longer belong to standard everyday cuisine, as the preparation of dough is slowly disappearing. While in the old kitchen cabinets the largest receptacle for staple items used to be the one in which flour was stored, today finished products based on flour fill a number of drawers used for storing staples. It is, of course, a highly poetic act to pour the flour onto a pastry board — almost an introduction to the art of cooking. The poured cone of flour is shaped so that it assumes the shape of a volcano in which eggs and water and fat boil. With the handle of a cooking spoon the cook begins to carefully stir all of this. Once you notice that you can’t get any further you begin to knead the flour with your hands until you end up with a shapeless ball of flour. There it lies before us as the beginning of further design possibilities. As Rumohr already insinuated: how things continue depends on the culture in which we live and which we renew and thus consolidate with the form that we give the dough.