In the Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Foods (Hardcover)

by Stewart Lee Allen (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Lust, gluttony, pride, sloth, greed, blasphemy, and anger--the seven deadly sins have all been linked to food. Matching the food to the sin, Stewart Lee Allen's In the Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Foods offers a high-spirited look at the way foods over time have been forbidden, even criminalized, for their "evil" effects. Food has often been, shockingly, morally weighted, from the tomato, originally called the love apple and thought to excite lust; to the potato, whose popularity in Ireland led British Protestants to associate it with sloth; to foods like corn or bread whose use was once believed to delineate "lowness," thus inflaming class pride. Allen's approach to this incredible history also includes tales of personal journeys to, for example, a Mount Athos monastery, where a monk reveals the sign of Satan in an apple, and to San Francisco to investigate dog eating. If his history is sometimes too glancing and facetious, even beyond the sensible need to entertain, it is always fascinating.

The book also features "forbidden" menus--such as the one devoted to gluttony that includes an entire steer stuffed with a whole lamb, stuffed with a pig, stuffed with a chicken, and served with sausages--and quite doable and delicious recipes, such as a dynamite hot and sweet banana ketchup and Lo Han Jai, a mushroom-replete vegetarian feast. But the real focus is on the human response to a primal pleasure--eating--and the way people have sought to control it, in every society and every culture, through prohibition. It's quite a tale. --Arthur Boehm

From Publishers Weekly
"When I pluck a few leaves [from my little basil bush] for my tagliatelle, I make sure to scream obscenities at its fuzzy little head just like the Italians used to." Unaware of basil's complicated past, some cooks might use the herb with carefree abandon, but Allen, author of The Devil's Cup: A History of the World According to Coffee, knows better. When it arrived in Europe from India around the fourth century B.C., basil came wrapped in a tale of fatal passion, which eventually morphed into the belief that a person who smelled the herb would go mad and curse up a storm. Allen's conceit is to take dozens of such tales and categorize them as one of the seven deadly sins: the section on "Lust," for instance, looks at the forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden; the section on "Sloth" covers the potato and its supposed tendency to turn the Irish into lazy fornicators; the section on "Blasphemy" recounts how 16th-century Catholic priests roamed the streets of Madrid sniffing for Jewish cookery. While the historical and cultural links between food, sex and religion make for fascinating reading, Allen's structure is forced at times: it is difficult to understand why Allen places France's obsession with bread and class in the section on "Sloth." The book's tone flip and entertaining seems geared to the casual foodie, but its breeziness is often frustrating: Allen devotes only three pages, for example, to the potent trio of food, lust and homosexuality. Cooks may find Allen's unusual assortment of recipes from around the world as well as his recommendation on where to find the world's best potatoes (and it's not Idaho) to be the best part of the book.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1st edition (February 26, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345440153
• ISBN-13: 978-0345440150
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,112,607 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars best book on food, April 12, 2002

By	joun (wisconsin) - See all my reviews

What I have found so interesting about this book is the way people's feeling about eating have been used in political and religous ways. I had no idea of the role eating has played in so many conflicts - even the division of Europe between East and West was caused by an argument over how to bake the communion wafer. AIDS came from violating a food taboo, and even Jesus Last supper was all about the rules of eating. It's an amazing book and very, very well written - you would think with all this information it would be dry but Alan is a very funny man. While I thought the idea of organizing it around the Seven Sins was a good one, its not always completely clear why a particualr food is in a particular sin.
Not that it matters that much - by the way, my favorite was the sin of sloth "a victimless crime if ever there was one" as Allen says -a man after my own heart!
I thought the "menus" were cute and the recipes (there are about 12) looked interesting but I haven't tried any.
THis is the best book on food in history I have ever read

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Couldn't put it down, May 31, 2004

By	L. P. Wenger "ohtobeinmt" (Mesa, AZ USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: In the Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food (Paperback)

Lately, I haven't had a lot of spare time, so books tend to take a while for me to get through unless I'm on a plane. In the Devil's Garden, however, wouldn't let me put it down and I "devoured" it in one delicious sitting. The book great fun to read -- the author obviously is well traveled and definitely did his homework. There's not too much science, history, religion or sociology to be overpowering -- just the right amount of each. HIGHLY recommended!

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A romp through food taboos, September 13, 2004

By	Erika Mitchell (E. Calais, VT USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: In the Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food (Paperback)

This book is an informal exploration of food taboos, from apples to potatoes, pig flesh to human flesh. The book is organized into chapters featuring the seven deadly sins: lust, gluttony, pride, sloth, greed, blasphemy, and anger. Each chapter is comprised of short informative articles related to the relevant sinful theme that describe the social history of a food taboo. For example, in the chapter called "Lust," we learn how the apple came to be associated with Eve's forbidden fruit in the Garden of Eden. Allen points out that apples were hardly common Middle Eastern fruit during Biblical times. They were, however, sacred to the Celts, and when Christians came into Celtic territory, they demonized the sacred fruit of the Celts by translating the Biblical word for the forbidden fruit, one whose botanical identify is not known for sure, as "apple." Allen states: "The Celts had associated apples with the glorious wisdom from the sun. By the time the Christians were done, scholars had assigned it to `the jurisdiction of Venus' and lust." Each chapter also includes several recipes featuring the foods under description. Some of the recipes are historical rather than in contemporary usage, but virtual all have been updated for modern kitchens and cooks. Sources are cited in extensive textual endnotes. There is also a bibliography and index.

Taboos of all kinds are often closely related with religious beliefs. Allen describes some common religious taboos relating to food, such as Jewish and Muslim avoidance of pork, and Hindu extreme reverence for cattle. One interesting point that Allen makes is that Christ was blatant in his practice of disregarding Jewish food laws, establishing a religion that is remarkably free of food taboos. Allen pokes fun at our modern diet practices, but he also makes some serious points, noting that "convenience foods are so unpleasant they make even work look good. They're also immensely profitable for the corporations who produce them...American workers now pay more money for worse food so they can hurry back to jobs they hate." In his conclusion, Allen observes "The point is that these archaic food taboos and rules, however preposterous and evil they may have at times been, also deepened our lives by imbuing our most common social gathering with meaning."

Occasionally, Allen plays fast and loose with details. For example, he has European peasants munching Macintoshes, but the Macintosh variety of apples was developed only in 1870 in New England. He also misses some major taboos- -of course in a book of this nature, we can't expect him to cover everything related to the topic. But when he describes garlic and religious injunctions against it, he never mentions avoidance by some Hindus of garlic and onions on the grounds that they are "intoxicating" or "over-stimulating". Such an omission is surprising, given the other information he provides both about Indian traditions and garlic. Allen's style of writing is informal--he writes to entertain as well as inform, making the book appeal to general readers rather than academic food historians. Since this is a book about breaking taboos, readers shouldn't be too taken aback at the kinds of topics Allen choose to delve into, but they might not want to consider this a read-aloud book for the whole family if small children are to participate.