Alimentary Tectonics

All agriculture is at its heart a business of capturing free solar energy in a food product that can be turned into high-value human energy. A carrot pulled from the garden is a direct transfer of solar energy to human energy.

Before we made food the business, the fancy and the status choice, it was a discoverer’s arena. In this, the cultivated edible root should be counted among the first revolutionary human innovations for contributing to “food”. It would not be wrong to compare this to using the underground not as mere foundation but as a usable space.

The earliest vegetable definitely known to be a carrot dates from the 10th century in Persia and Asia, and was quite unlike today’s orange root. Carrots were originally purple or white with a thin root; a mutant then removed the purple pigment, producing yellow carrots, from which orange carrots were developed. Carrots appear in many great artworks and even helped plant biologists identify old species when paintings were the only records. They are evidence that the Dutch developed the orange-rooted carrot. Today it is the second most popular vegetable in the world after the potato, and the most important root vegetable of temperate regions.

Dioscorides wrote: “Ye root ye thickness of a finger, a span long, sweet-smelling, edible being sodden.” The Greek Herbal of Dioscorides, illustrated in Byzantium in A.D. 512, already refers to the orange carrot.

Be it the Eastern carrot with purple or yellow roots, or the Western carotene carrot with orange, red or white roots, chefs and households have explored this ingredient for juices, salads, soups and sweet dishes. Each market segment of the global carrot industry has its own requirements, and coloured varieties are gaining popularity again.

The kitchen, or the backstage pass: everyone now knows it is the epitome of cool. Being allowed backstage is the hallmark of intimacy and equality.

Staying out of the kitchen feels both overly entitled and overly restrictive. Meanwhile the hosts keep pushing guests to the living room, insisting they sit back and enjoy the show, wondering why anyone would prefer the recycling and leftovers to the seasonal flowers and ambient lighting.

At a public discussion on the kitchen, one theme kept arising in many guises, hidden in every question and comment: the kitchen has a much bigger role to play within a campus, be it domestic, institutional or an office canteen. As one speaker said, “Someone open the door of the kitchen and take a look what’s happening there.” The role of the kitchen, and how we recognise it, has changed dramatically.

Over the years the kitchen has become the core of the house for snacking, eating, gathering and talking. Its format has moved from small, basic kitchens to large ones with islands, multiple sinks, fancy lighting and beautiful appliances. What remains is its role as a constant source of energy. But what is convincing is its political role, from Cold War propaganda to gender politics, now explored by social activists, authors and researchers in economy, politics, religion, kinship, sexuality, gender identity and age.