Historical Culinary Women

"I am love," said the maiden. "I am a strength giver, I am the nourisher, I am the provider of men and animals. They all love me." -Penobscot Corn Mother Myth

I am a woman and I love to cook. Is that enough to say? I don’t think so.

There is an assumption, a stereotype, a social construction about females and food. One might think that this stereotype should have died away after the 1950s, or the second wave feminist movement of the 80s, or certainly by the late 90s, and definitely by the start of the 21st century. I, however, have found otherwise.

Often, when talking about my life, my childhood, and my home, people are a little surprised to find that my dad cooked just as many if not more of the meals in my childhood than did my mom. Looking back, I know that my mom also cooked dinner quite often. But for some reason it is the image of my dad standing in front of the stove that stands out in my mind. Now I am sure there are many factors that contributed to this memory and the past reality. Yet, I still wonder why this image is so striking within my memory, and more generally, why gender and the act of cooking is so engrained in our culture.

I have recently begun reading A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove, a book that studies, through historical relations, memoirs, stories, and recipes, the history of women and cooking, discussing these issues for a large portion of the writing. In addition, as an anthropology student, I hear a lot about different cultures and societies around the world, past and present. With this background, I wonder if women have been obligated to fulfill the position of food provider since the days of prehistoric hunter-gatherer societies. If so, how has this idea of obligation changed, yet stuck with us through the millennia? How did this idea become so trivial, passed over in recognition, but admired as a true necessity at the same time?

In the study of these hunting and gathering societies, I want to point out that women are often grouped into the gatherers without any question or discussion. The men hunted. The women gathered. Simple enough. Yet, when I hear this, I can’t help but picture in my head- strong brave men venturing forth to kill the beast. The women, in the meantime, frail and weak, surrounded by many children, (picture: damsel in distress) wandering aimlessly through forests picking berries and nuts. Not all that impressive when you compare the women to the brave men who conquered and killed a mammoth in order to feed the group, right?
Let us pause for a moment and ponder the reality of this situation.

The men, without armor, and equipped only with handmade spears of wood and shapes stones must attempt to bring down a wild animal. This animal would also likely have to be pretty large in size in order to feed the whole group. So, unless the men happened upon a large enough brood of rabbits or squirrels, we can imagine the men would have had to go after larger animals: deer, buffalo, or mammoth. That couldn’t have been easy. Nor could it have been likely that they would always bring food back after the hunt.

On the other hand, we have the women gatherers. The ones on whom the entire community depended when the men could not provide. These women were forced to find food to sustain her people. On their shoulders were the weight, expectations and dependency of an entire society. She had to find food, to begin with, but also investigate whether her findings were safe to eat, insure there was enough provisions for the whole, and learn how to prepare what she found to make the most out of it. So, yes, the woman easily became the one on whom everyone relied, the one who might be destined to hold the fuel for and survival of the people. But it was not because her purpose and worth was somehow valued less because of her sex. It was because she truly held the power. Without her, the people could not eat; without eating, the people could not survive. Therefore, there is a strongly misconstructed idea of women and food. Women were not originally confined to the kitchen because they could do no better. They went to the kitchen to claim their power and authority. It was then society that determined that women were best suited to reside in the kitchen. After all, it was the only place where they might have any power.

I think, perhaps, the reason that women have been so misrepresented and so confined to this single role is that men, who originally could not guarantee support and provisions for his people, wanted that power out of jealousy. And so, with the invention of better weapons and tools for hunting, men stole a title that was not rightfully theirs, forever labeling as women as domestics who clung to their only remaining power source.