Foreword

In a delicious twist on CuiZine’s staple pairing of food and culture, guest editors Marc Charron and Renée Desjardins add a third ingredient: language. Just as language is crucial to regional and national identities—ask any Québécois souverainiste—so too does food speak to our souls as well as our stomachs. What could be more natural, then, than this special issue on Food, Language, and Identity?

From photo elicitation to Québécois culinary identity, from Newfoundland and Labrador B&Bs to Nova Scotia lobster to the menus of the Château Frontenac, this issue is bursting with new research. We are very pleased to introduce original articles from Sonya Sharma and Gwen Chapman, Yvon Desloges, Holly Everett, Renée Desjardins, and Diane Tye.

Just as tantalizing are the creative pieces on offer. Jessica Mudry questions the calorie. Fiona Kinsella builds what seem to be beautiful wedding cakes, until a closer look reveals an eye looking back out of the icing. Paul Lisson highlights the magical qualities of Kinsella’s works. Jessica Miles recalls childhood and doughboys on Cape Breton Island, and Fiona Lam jams on raspberries. A panel discussion about capturing food in writing has James Chatto, Lesley Chesterman, Marcy Goldman, and Catherine Turgeon-Gouin pondering The Taste of Words; we’re very lucky to have not only written highlights, but also photographs and a full audio recording of their conversation.

As always, our reviews section is also in good taste. In a new Event Reviews feature that we hope will lead to many more, Gwendolyn Owens describes a recent MoMA exhibition on design and the modern kitchen, and wonders about its implications for Canadian museums. Alexia Moyer reviews Diane Tye’s Baking as Biography, while Allan Hepburn weighs the merits of foraging and “fancy-pants” herbs in a review of seasonal cookbooks from Lucy Waverman, Jeff Crump, and Bettina Schormann.

We’d like to extend our warm thanks to Marc Charron and Renée Desjardins—translation studies scholars with impeccable palates for foodways research—for their work as guest editors of this exciting special issue. Thanks also to Renaud Roussel for his translation and editorial assistance.

Canadians speak many tongues, and the language of food—although universal—is inflected with countless dialects. We hope this issue will provide a welcome sampling of intersections between Canadian languages, identities, and foods.