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idea of the chronology in our heads and the peopl
e who were experts on it. So because we knew researchers doing work in various fields and archives, like John McCafferty, Danielle Clarke, Fionnán O’Connor, and then Maeve Sikora and Isabella Mulhall, who contributed the chapter on the history of Bog Butter, it was a matter of bringing them together and their brief then was to write it in an accessible way. With the pictures and the poems, this was to be three dimensional, but also very accurate, and we wanted people to go off on their own journey as well, so we decided to use footnotes which helped add a whole layer of knowledge underneath, almost like another dimension.” “We wanted their expertise, and we wanted it to be cutting edge, but also written without the jargon, because every discipline has its own,” Máirtín continues. “Then between myself and Dorothy we tried to work stuff out in the editing. Over the past number of years, I’ve been bringing students down to the Céide Fields to see Seamas Caulfield, and while Seamas is a great teacher and speaker, he hasn’t published all that widely. So it was brilliant to get him to write down all this stuff that he’s been telling us for years. I was also amazed when I wrote to J.P. Mallory, and he came back to me saying that he would do it. When you think that 31 people said yes and actually delivered, it’s brilliant.” Beautifully designed by Brenda Dermody, the multi-faceted book comes packed with rich illustrations, folklore, songs and recipes, and includes food-related poetry from Raiftearaí, Seamus Heaney, and Paula Meehan. A number of chapters trace the role of food and drink in the country’s rich literary heritage, including one on drinking and dining with Jonathan Swift by Tara McConnell, and a contribution by Grace Neville on food, feast, and famine in the correspondence of Daniel O’Connell. Undoubtedly though, one of the biggest surprises is just how far back the history of Irish food actually goes. “I thought we went back around 10,000 years, so it was lovely to find out that there were butchery marks on reindeer bones in 33,000 years BC,” says Máirtín. “The next bone, dating from around 13,500 years ago, was the patella of a brown bear, which fitted in perfectly with Paula Meehan’s poem, The Solace of Artemis. I love that deep thinking, and her saying that she thinks that every polar bear out there has some form of mitochondrial DNA, which stems back to this brown bear that lived in Ireland. We have Paula’s poetry throughout, and the fact that some of her poems speak literally through different chapters is just amazing.” Another surprise is how well fed Dubliners were back in the 1800s. In his forward to the book, James Kelly cites John James McGregor’s assertion in 1821 that the city’s Ormond Market was ‘well supplied with poultry, fresh and cured fish, bacon, butter, cheese, fruit, and vegetables’. Some analysts have suggested that there was more meat per capita being sold in Dublin at that time than there was in London. Máirtín observes, “Initially this seems surprising, but Louis Cullen’s economic history also mentioned that the average person here was actually better fed. This runs contrary to the narrow myths that have been pedalled because of the famine generally. You hear always about the extremes, about the banquets and the poverty, but very little about the middle ground where most people survive and exist.” One such area is cooking in the domestic sphere, which Dorothy covers in the book. “I was really conflicted when I was writing my chapter about the domestic economy instructors, because, obviously they were incredibly strong women, but the whole premise of the government who employed them was to teach women to stay at home. That’s fine if you chose to be in the home, but not if you didn’t. “We don’t have a long history of cookbooks, but you see them emerging in the late 1900s. I had seen one called Cookery Notes referenced, but no author was given for it. The cover just said ‘originally published by the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction’. Archives relating to cookbooks are very rare, the National Library has Maura Laverty’s one, but after a lot of investigation I eventually tracked down the author. Her name was Marion Laird and she was paid the sum of £50 for the rights to what was possibly the best selling Irish cook book ever, which was published from the early 1900s right up to the 1970s. She was a fascinating woman and I’m sure I would have enjoyed sitting down with her over a cup of coffee.” Such investigations are often the meat and potatoes of a historian’s work. “You have all these stories that you’re trying to unravel, and often you’re pulling at threads to get to the truth.” Máirtín remembers seeing a play called Improbable Frequency by Rough Magic as part of the Dublin Theatre Festival years ago. “It was set during the Second World War in the old Red Bank Restaurant in D’Olier Street, which people thought had been owned by a German and was a centre for Nazis in Dublin. When I did my homework I couldn’t find any German, but I knew the granddaughter of the guy who had owned the building, and when she interviewed her grandfather on his deathbed he told her that it had never been out of the family. It turned out that the German in the rumours was the general manager of the Solus Light Bulb factory in Bray and the minute the war broke out he went back to Berlin. So clearly that was just a mistake in one person’s research. Sometimes you get Chinese whispers about places, and Dublin is a bit like that.” “I love bringing my students on a walking tour every year, down O’Connell Street and around Dublin, to look at things that are hidden in plain sight. People pass by them every day and never notice them. Not far from Burger King, near the Savoy, used to be the Hammam Buildings, where they had Turkish baths. There were around three Turkish baths on O’Connell Street, and loads more around Dublin. There were vegetarian restaurants in the city over a hundred years ago, and in 1904 there was an Indian restaurant next to the Gresham Hotel for a while. So often we’re doing what our ancestors were doing years ago and we think we’re doing it for the first time! Back when Robert Emmet and his friends used to meet in Oyster Taverns, he said that sometimes he worried that they were more interested in oysters and drinking than in revolution. Even before that, there were the Coffee Houses, which were shut down by the authorities for fear of dissent. This is the thing about history that’s fascinating - everything we do in life, goes around sort of cyclically, and the subject of food is always about more than just simply eating and dining.” When it comes to future research, both Dorothy and Máirtín are more than happy for the generation currently undertaking the master’s programme and PhDs in TU Dublin to Irish Food History – A Companion, edited by Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire and Dorothy Cashman is available to order for €45 from the Royal Irish Academy (shop. ria.ie) and from bookshops nationwide. It is also available digitally open access from EUt+ Academic Press (arrow. tudublin.ie/irishfoodhist/1). keep this work going. Dorothy reckons that, “Whoever does it, it will have much more of an urban shape, because I think that’s where it’s moving, and obviously they’ll be dealing with different set of problems, climate change and agriculture and issues like that.” Máirtín concludes, “We hope that this book will serve as the inspiration to the next generation to go out and start digging because we’re only tipping the iceberg and guiding the path here, but I feel very confident that the future of Irish food history is bright.” About The Authors Dorothy Cashman is a culinary historian and independent researcher whose research interests include the history of the recipe in Ireland, and the configuration of national identity as it intersects with Irish food history. Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire is a senior lecturer in the School of Culinary Arts and Food Technology, Technological University Dublin and Chair of the Masters in Gastronomy and Food Studies in TU Dublin. In 2018, he presented ‘Blasta’, an eight-part television series for TG4 celebrating Ireland’s food heritage. 45