Pass the Caviar, Pass the Ketchup: Status, Food, and Dining Out

Food has always signified status. For most of history, and throughout most of the world, common folk consumed staple grains and vegetables – and the occasional piece of meat – while the ruling classes enjoyed a steady flow of rare and expensive delicacies. Early Roman banquets featured larks’ tongues, sterile sows’ wombs, and milk-fed snails, for example; Montezuma’s court served up mugs of frothy cacao alongside dozens of dishes of fowl, fish, and a variety of other species native to Central America. Over the centuries sugar, tea, and coffee made the journey from exotic and expensive, to familiar and ubiquitous, along with other foods of empire. As people could afford to eat like royalty, they did – and then the elites moved on to other high-status comestibles.

By the nineteenth century, industrialization and urbanization had ushered in new social classes and new forms of wealth. Those who controlled the means of production quickly figured out novel ways to spend their money and set themselves apart, including the newfangled trend of public dining. The first European restaurants – a word based on the “restorative” broths served at such establishments –originated in France in the 1780’s. French food went on to dominate the global culinary scene. Parisian chefs went to great lengths to make other cooks feel inferior, even inventing haute cuisine (“high cuisine”), a type of dining experience defined by hard-to-procure ingredients, cream sauces, champagne, caviar, impeccable service, pricey menus, and general snootiness. (I love baguettes and bubbly as much as the next girl, but non merci to the rest of this!)

Well-off Europeans were, therefore, a bit spoiled when it came to eating out. Charles Dickens traveled to the United States in 1842. Horrified by the lack of etiquette and dining options, he described the food he received in American boardinghouses and hotels as “piles of indigestible matter.” (“No more, sir, please.”) By the 1860’s, however, that had changed –at least in New York City where several restaurants began to gain acclaim. The most famous of these was Delmonico’s, meticulously run by a Swiss family. Lorenzo Delmonico arrived in 1842, just a few years after his uncles started the business. Lorenzo became renowned for selecting market-fresh produce every day at 4:00 am, then personally overseeing the kitchen in the afternoons whilst chain-smoking thirty Cuban cigars. (That’s an expensive habit, sir – and may help explain Delmonico’s prices.) Abraham Lincoln dined at Delmonico’s during the Civil War, setting a presidential precedent for the next several decades. And Mr. Dickens? He had to eat his words (and a lot more) in 1868 when he returned to the U.S. and feasted happily on no less than forty courses at Delmonico’s. Upon his return, a British publication described the restaurant as “an agency of civilization” in an otherwise uncouth land. Delmonico’s proved resilient and profitable until Prohibition and the Great Depression interrupted the culture of fine dining.

On June 11, 1939 President Roosevelt, the First Lady Eleanor, and the King and Queen of England sat down at Hyde Park to a humble meal that would become known as the “Hot Dog Summit” – a diplomatic success that some credit with saving the world from Nazi Germany. By 1938 relations between the United States and Great Britain were cool at best; the U.S. was still peeved at being dragged into WWI. No British monarchs had set foot on American soil. Roosevelt wanted to improve the friendship, however, and when he found out the royal couple planned to visit Canada in 1939 he immediately wrote to the King, inviting him to enjoy a few days of simple country life at Hyde Park. The President’s plan was to present royalty as common people, and how better to do this than a public luncheon where they dined with the presidential staff and had to decipher how to eat hot dogs and drink beer in front of the cameras? Queen Elizabeth ended up eating her frankfurter with a knife and fork while King George followed the Roosevelts and ate with his hands. Then he asked for seconds! The Hot Dog Summit seems to have been a turning point in how American politicians used food to try and identify with the masses. “Presidents – they are just like us!”

The U.S. emerged as an economic and cultural superpower after World War Two. Massive food aid to Europe and Asia bolstered American global influence, while on the home front the focus shifted from war production to infrastructure and domestic development. In 1956 President Eisenhower launched the Federal Interstate Highway system, which in turn encouraged the construction of suburbs, grocery stores, and increasing dependence on cars. McDonald’s and other fast food chains established in the 1950’s took advantage of the new “car culture” by opening franchises all over the nation.

Presidents continued to dine at fancy restaurants and hire excellent chefs for the White House kitchen, but when on the campaign trail they notoriously ate on the cheap and posed for pictures with regular folk as often as possible, preferably with beer or burgers in the frame. Presidents Bush and Clinton were the first to regularly visit fast food establishments in D.C., with Clinton famously – and ironically – jogging to McDonald’s on several occasions for his beloved Big Macs. (He later went plant-based after a quadruple bypass.)

Donald Trump has taken the relationship between politician and fast food connoisseur to dizzying new heights (or lows). According to the Washington Post, on Trump Force One there were “four major food groups: McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken, pizza and Diet Coke,” and even when served steak he insists on dousing it with ketchup. And he doesn’t just give lip service to his love of fast food – Trump celebrates it as quintessentially American cuisine, not food to be consumed as an occasional guilty pleasure but as often as possible. In January 2019 he became the first President to serve his guests, the Clemson Tigers, a meal “catered” by McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Burger King and set out on silver platters in the White House. Unprecedented! Could it be that fast food provides the president, born with a giant silver spoon in his mouth, with one of the only ways he can relate to regular Americans?

The historic lines between food and status have thus been a bit blurred – or at least redefined – in recent years. It still takes a certain amount of resources to be thin and healthy in America, however, and the elite continue to set themselves apart – or try to seem approachable — through their food choices.

To Eat or Not to Eat? Food Taboos

I often discuss with my students the fascinating history of food prohibitions. Why do people in one culture find a food appealing, while in another part of the world the same food is considered repulsive? Why are certain foods banned in holy texts?

Taboo. Forbidden; set apart. This word comes to us from Polynesia. In Tongan it is tabu, in the Cook Islands tapu, and in Hawai’i – kapu. When Captain Cook encountered Pacific Islanders on his eighteenth-century voyages he introduced the word to English speakers as taboo. Before European contact, laws of tapu structured all social relationships in the Cook Islands. Not only were many foods considered tapu, or off-limits to various people (usually women or those of lower social rank), but objects and spaces associated with the ariki – or chiefs – were also sacred and therefore forbidden. In Hawai’i until 1819 women could not partake of coconuts, bananas, pork, or turtles — all sacred foods reserved for men. In one of the first encounters between Europeans and Rarotongans in 1814, two seamen stole coconuts and pigs from the sacred lands of one of the three chiefs of the island, the final straw in an already contentious visit. Neither lived long enough to load the ill-gotten foods into their ship.

European settlement in the nineteenth-century weakened these laws in many Pacific Island societies, but they remained an important way of organizing society, allocating resources, and honoring sacred beliefs.

The injunction against eating pork – which Judaic and Islamic traditions share – actually has environmental, cultural, and economic roots in addition to the religious ones. Remember how Moses brought the Israelites out of Egypt after several hundred years of enslavement? As it turns out, ancient Egyptians did not celebrate the pig. Unlike a variety of animals and meat products found in the tombs – both in wall paintings and mummified (yes, that was a thing!)- the pig was noticeably absent. Egyptians clearly did not want to consume pork in the hereafter and their ideas surely influenced the development of Judaic thought on what foods were clean and unclean. But why were pigs porcine non grata in Egypt and the Middle East?

Have you ever insulted someone by telling them they “sweat like a pig,” “eat like a pig,” or that their room is a “pig-sty”? (First of all, you’re a jerk – stop it!) In truth, pigs literally cannot sweat, so they are unable to cool themselves off in hot climates without covering themselves in mud or whatever cooling muck is at hoof – even if it’s their own waste. (So, yes, telling someone they sweat like a pig is a… compliment.) Without the ability to cool off pigs die in temperatures of 98 degrees or higher. Their ideal habitat is forested, shady riverbanks where they can forage for tubers and nuts, although they will eat whatever is available. And so, pigs are no more disease-ridden or dirty than other animals and actually keep their living areas cleaner than most unless they get too hot.

Judaism and Islam are monotheistic traditions born in the Middle East. The first Jews and Muslims were traders, shepherds, travelers. Their cultures and societies celebrated animals that could be herded, gave them dairy products, could be sacrificed in holy rituals, and helped with agricultural cycles by eating grass, walking over freshly-planted seeds, providing fertilizer through their waste, and used for transportation. Pigs were none of these things. They competed with humans for resources, they could not be herded or milked or ridden, they could not cool themselves in the hot dry desert sun. In short, pigs made no economic sense in this environment. But people found them delicious, and so – at least by some historians’ interpretation – the best thing to do was to remove the temptation entirely by taking pork off the menu.

Christianity was born out of Judaism, too, so why do Christians generally eat pork? Pigs mainly have Peter and Paul (not Mary) to blame. Several reasons explain why the early church left Judaic food taboos in the dust. First of all, they wanted to welcome Gentiles as well as Jews into the new faith, and they believed that food restrictions might be a stumbling block for new converts. During centuries of persecution they met in people’s homes, often over dinner, so eating together was significant. In the New Testament Jesus is credited with saying “What goes into someone’s mouth does not defile them, but what comes out of their mouth, that is what defiles them” (Matthew 15:11), which his followers interpreted as a free ticket to an all-you-can-eat meat buffet. Finally, Peter’s dream seemed to convey the message that the old dietary laws had ended: 

“In it were all kinds of four-footed animals of the earth, wild beasts, creeping things, and birds of the air And a voice came to him, ‘Rise, Peter; kill and eat.’ But Peter said, ‘Not so, Lord! For I have never eaten anything common or unclean.’ And a voice spoke to him again the second time, ‘What God has cleansed you must not call common.’ This was done three times. And the object was taken up into heaven again.” (Acts 10:9-16)

And so, although Jesus, the “Lamb of God,” removed the need for animal sacrifice, his death also recast perceptions of what foods were acceptable. It would not be until the nineteenth century that a Christian sect, the Seventh-day Adventists of Battle Creek, Michigan, would recommit to Judaic dietary laws and take them even further by shunning all meat.

We of course have plenty of food taboos in the modern world, but today these usually relate to personal nutrition — not the health of our souls. Saturated fat, sodium, gluten, sugar… take your pick, we are still trying to avoid certain foods and follow proscriptions for a healthy, happy life.