Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Praise
Introduction: - ON SIN, SEX, AND FOR BIDDEN FOOD
LUST
First Bite
Enveloped in Sweet Odor
Likeness of a Roasted Crab
Love Apple
The Ketchup with a Thousand Faces
Venomous Green
Tulsi Ki Chai
The Ecstasy of Being Eaten
The King’s Chocolate
Haquetzalli
Gay Gourmand
Beijing Libido
The Rainbow Egg
GLUTTONY
Original Sin
Porcus Troianu
Ovis Apalis
Cocktails with the Devil
The Sultan’s Date
Angel Food Cake
Saints and Supermodels
Bitter Herbs
Red Lady
The Joy of Fat
Mitterrand’s Last Supper
PRIDE
The Egotist at Dinner
The Dirt Eaters
A Dinner Party in Kishan Garhi
The Last Supper
Humble Pie
A Prophetic Chicken
Impure Indian Corn
The Butterfly People
Sky Blue Corn Flakes
Ghost at the Dinner Table!
King’s Cake
SLOTH
The Job of Eating Well
The Wonderful World of English Cookery
Toast
The Incredibly Sad Tale of Philippe the Shoemaker
The Virgin’s Nipples
The Root of Laziness
Potato Wars
The Last Drop
In the Green Hour
GREED
The Greedy Diner
Lazy Luscious Land
The Magic Cannibal
Smoked Green Makaku
The Laughing Man
Thou Shalt Not Eat Thy Mother
Got Milk?
American Pigs
BLASPHEMY
The Sacred Act of Eating
The Jewish Pig
Dinner with the Spanish Inquisition
The Kosher Question
The Lawyer in Us
Lent Egg
A Well-Risen Messiah
For What We Are About to Receive
O, Dog
Holy Cow
You and Your Beautiful Hide
ANGER
The Civilized Sauce
The Sadistic Chef
Deep-Fried Murder
Only if It Has a Face
Hitler’s Last Meal
Little Nigoda
The French Connection
Vicious Little Red Man
Insanity Popcorn
Stinking Infidels
Five Angry Vegetables
Feasting to the Death
THE EIGHTH SIN
When Everything Is Allowed and Nothing Has Flavor
BIBLIOGRAPHY
END NOTES
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Stewart Lee Allen
Copyright Page
TO NINA J.
“The serpent poured upon the fruit the poison of his wickedness, which is Lust, for it is the beginning of every sin—and he bent the branch to the earth and I took of the fruit and I ate.”
—Eve as an old woman describing humanity’s last day in Eden The Apocalypse of Moses First century A.D.
“Too long, too late, I lost the taste for my own pleasure.”
—Marguerite Duras The Lover 1978
Praise for The Devil’s Cup by Stewart Lee Allen
“Who knew that the story of coffee was such a fascinating saga of cruelty, madness, obsession, and death? The Devil’s Cup is absolutely riveting, alternating between the informative and the hilarious. Essential reading for foodies, java-junkies, anthropologists, and anyone else interested in funny, sardonically told adventure stories.”
—ANTHONY BOURDAIN
Author of Kitchen Confidential
“Stewart Lee Allen is the Hunter S. Thompson of coffee, offering a wild, caffeinated, gonzo tour of the World of the Magic Bean. His wry, adventurous prose delights, astonishes, amuses, and informs.”
—MARK PENDERGRAST
Author of Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World
“Funny as hell. [The Devil’s Cup] whisks the amused reader past Ethiopian bandits, around Parisian waiters, and into aromatic dens from Turkey to Brazil. Good to the last drop.”
—MARK ROSENBLUM
Author of Olives and Secret Life of the Seine
“Delicious … A highly stimulating read … Allen has created a cracking piece of investigative journalism mixed with entertaining travelogue.”
—The List
“A terrific read … Great fun … Allen has as many words for coffee as the Eskimos have for snow. The Devil’s Cup does for coffee what Shogun did for Japan, Geek Love did for freak shows, and Accordion Crimes did for accordions. I’ll never look at my morning brew the same way again.”
—JEFF GREENWALD
Author of The Size of the World
“A thoroughly entertaining, absorbing, and often hilarious jaunt through the history and geography of coffee… . A must have both for Java junkies and travel lovers.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Introduction:
ON SIN, SEX, AND FOR BIDDEN FOOD
Jackson was lying on the kitchen counter allowing his father to change his diapers when a mysterious silver fountain rose up from between his thighs. Jackson’s eyes popped open in amazement—did I do that? What a splendid effect! What a glorious sensation! The eighteen-inch geyser hung glittering for an instant. Then it collapsed, to break directly over his father’s head and splash down his back. The crowd of relatives burst into applause. Jackson’s mother, Paula, rushed over to give her boy a congratulatory kiss. Even Troy (his father) shook his hand. I mention all this because, while flapping his little arms in triumph Jackson came upon a pale green grape bouncing across the blue tile countertop. He immediately popped the fruit into his mouth. Paula’s coo changed to a gasp of horror. No, Jackson! she screeched, No, no, no! You don’t want to eat that! Bad! She yanked the forbidden fruit out of Jackson’s maw and his jubilation was turned to grief.
The lesson my nephew learned that day was simple. Piss on your father, spit at your mother, but don’t eat that. And that is the topic of this book, forbidden foods and their meaning, from chocolate to foie gras to the potato chip, from the Garden of Eden until today. It took Jackson’s little adventure to bring home to me how profound our feelings are on this matter. Life, after all, is at heart an act of eating and so when we make a dish taboo, there is usually an interesting story to tell. The Bible used a tale of forbidden food to define all of human nature, and since then our religious and political leaders have been manipulating the notion so vigorously it has come to flavor every emotion we have about what we eat. We now judge a dish largely by how guilty we feel about eating it—at least judging from today’s advertising—and if it is not considered “sinful” we find it less pleasant.
It’s a situation that has led to the criminalizing of hundreds of common dishes throughout history, and, since we ban things because of their association with a particular sin, I’ve organized this book into sections corresponding with the famous Seven Deadly Sins: lust, gluttony, pride, sloth, greed, blasphemy, and anger. Within each section are the stories of delicacies tabooed for the
ir association with a vice that the society in question found particularly abhorrent. The first chapter deals with lust, in honor of Eve’s illicit snack and the ensuing roll in the hay. Food and sex are a heady combination; a quarter of all people who lose the ability to taste dinner also lose their sex drive, and Freud believed all humans experience their first sexual and culinary thrill simultaneously when they begin suckling on their mother’s nipple. Our lust for aphrodisiac foods has led to the extermination of entire species and the fall of empires, per the curious tale of how hot chocolate became a risqué player in the French Revolution.
The book continues sin by sin to cover everything from how the first recorded image of God relates to certain taboos in Asia and the West, to how modern corporations manipulate our subliminal hunting/violent urges to make junk food more appealing. Since whom we invite for dinner can be as important as what we serve, there are stories on how these rules have played a part in events like the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Disputes between “chefs,” like the one that split Europe in half, make an appearance. There are also recipes. A plate of Joël Robuchon’s famously sensual mashed potatoes should give the flavor of the sloth-like ecstasy that led the English to try to ban the root in the 1800s. The ancient Roman dish gives a taste of the gluttonous decadence that Caesar tried to stamp out when overindulgence was threatening the world’s mightiest empire.
These food taboos were so important to our ancestors that they often starved to death rather than violate them, and at least half of the world’s current population—from cow-crazy Hindus to kosher Jews to young Western vegetarians—still live with severe dietary restrictions on a daily basis. For many, these laws are crucial in defining themselves in relationship both to God and to their fellow humans, and fundamentally shape the societies in which they live. Even in the West, where outright bans are rare, food taboos still operate below the surface. Many scholars believe that psychological diseases like anorexia, which kills tens of thousands of people a year, stem in part from the complicated social psychosis left by ancient dietary laws. And sometimes when we ignore these rules, catastrophe has resulted; at least one of the greatest calamities of the twenty-first century is directly related to our violating deeply held taboos against cannibalistic activities.
What struck me while writing this book was the surprising extent to which people have judged, fought, and slaughtered others because of what they had for dinner. These laws about forbidden food give more than a unique perspective on history. They tell us quite a lot about the nature of pleasure and can turn the daily meal into a meditation on humanity’s relationship to the delicious and the revolting, the sacred and the profane.
But getting back to that first apple …
LUST
“And when Eve saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eye, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband, and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked… .”
Genesis, 3:8–12
LUST MENU
APÉRITIF
Blue Chocolate
SALADE
Salade de Jardin
Late-harvest Eden apples tossed with fig leaves.
Served with Paradise vinaigrette.
ENTRÉE
Fruits des Homme
Cold, poached sea cucumber served with Sambian
mayonnaise.
PLAT PRINCIPAUX
Pâté aux Mon Petit Chou
Homemade lingamini smothered in
love apple and screaming basil.
DESSERT
Chocolat du Barry
Louis XV pastry topped with well-whipped cream.
Eaten with the left hand.
THREE PENIS LIQUEUR WILL BE SERVED IN THE LIBRARY.
First Bite
It was still dark out when we left the monastery. Dawn was breaking a midnight blue etched with icy rain. Ocean waves crashed against the cliffs below. To the left and farther up the trail loomed the solitary Mount Athos.
“Some Christmas,” I grumbled when George and I finally found a sheltering cave. I handed him a soggy cracker. “It is the twenty-fifth, right?”
“Yes,” he said. George was a Greek fellow I’d met in a refuge run by an exceptionally grumpy monk. “But don’t wish any of the monks here a good Christmas! The people of Mount Athos believe Christmas doesn’t come until January, and they don’t like to be reminded that the rest of the world is celebrating it on the wrong day.”
Mount Athos is a six-thousand-foot-tall mountain that stands at the tip of a peninsula near the Greek-Turkish border. Surrounded on three sides by the Aegean Sea and on the fourth by roadless forests, it’s controlled and run by the Greek Orthodox Church, which has kept out almost all foreign and modern influences since the eleventh century. Military patrols search all visitors. Non-Greek males are allowed in on a strictly limited basis, and there have been no females, human or animal, allowed on the mountain for a thousand years. The only inhabitants are hundreds of robed monks who live in cliff-hugging monasteries exactly as their predecessors did twelve hundred years ago. There’s no electricity, no roads, no cars. Foods not specifically mentioned in Christian writings are avoided. Even time is different on Mount Athos because the monks follow the ancient Julian calendar, which, among other things, places the birth of Christ in mid-January instead of on December 25. Aside from farming, which is done by hand, the main activities are chanting, prayer, and creating illuminated manuscripts.
It’s a perfectly preserved slice of medieval Europe, the ideal place to find out how the apple came to grow in the Garden of Eden. The Old Testament does not reveal the exact identity of the Fruit of Forbidden Knowledge, and how the apple came to be identified with the evil fruit remains a mystery. George and I were trying to reach a monastery on the other side of the mountain where I’d been told there was a monk with opinions on the subject.
After our breakfast, George and I continued up and over the sea cliff, then headed toward the mountain. The rain turned to snow, and soon we found ourselves hiking through a landscape covered in silver ermine. Bunches of crimson holly berries encased in ice glittered on the leafless trees. It was like walking into a Noël fairy tale, so perfect and clean and clear, Christmas before all the lies. But as morning progressed, the snowfall turned into a blizzard. The trail disappeared, then the trees, then the mountain. All I could see were whirling flakes of snow, and even they dissolved into a surreal void as my glasses became encased in inch-thick ice. The snow was up to our knees. Then my head bumped into something. It was George. He was clawing at his face and shouting. It took awhile for me to realize he was saying that his eyes had frozen shut.
I defrosted them by cupping my hands over his sockets, but it was clear that the mountain did not want any visitors that day, and so we turned around and started back the way we had come. We were, of course, hopelessly lost, and it was only by chance that after some more wandering we discovered a rundown shack with a plume of smoke rising from its chimney. In a few minutes we were warming ourselves by a little coal stove and being clucked over by two grandpa monks with their beards tucked into their belts. They were hermits—the so-called “crazy of God”—who refuse the comfort of monastic life and live alone in the crudest of conditions. These two had “married” when they had grown too old to survive alone. I’ve never met a cuter couple. The quiet one prepared us a meal of raw onions, bread, and a homemade sherry while George explained our quest. The other monk pulled out a tiny red apple.
All of nature, he said in Greek (George translating), reflects the intent of the Creator: the shape of the clouds, the sound of the leaves, the flavors of the fruit on the trees. The monk thrust a knife into the apple. He pointed to the green opalescent drops dotting the tarnished steel. Come, he said, please taste. George and I dabbed our fingers into the liquor and placed it on our tongues. The first flavor was a scintillating, honeylike sweetness, followed by a tongue-curling tartness. Sweet flav
ors are lures meant to distract the faithful from the word of God, said George. That’s why every meal in Mount Athos is accompanied by a reading from the Bible, to keep the brothers from dwelling on the pleasures of the food before them, and treats like chocolate are avoided. So the apple’s initial sweetness was a sign of seductive intent. The tart aftertaste indicated diabolic influence, because bitter flavors indicate poison, and all poisons were thought by medieval scholars to be the work of the Devil. Some view the apple’s bittersweet savor as a literal allegory of the temptation of Eve; the sweet first bite represents the Serpent’s “honeyed tongue” while the astringent aftertaste foreshadows humanity’s ejection from paradise.
The monk sliced two thin wedges from the apple and handed them to George and myself. See how the skin is red like a woman’s lips? he said. And the flesh, how white it is, like teeth and skin. He told us to take a bite. Crisp and delicious. This, too, was considered an evil sign, because most fruits soften as they grow ripe. The apple, however, actually grows harder, an “unnatural” behavior that alchemists like Vincent de Beauvais claimed was “a sign of great deviltry … and of an immoral, cruel and misleading nature.” Our friend sliced the apple in half, vertically, and pointed to the seeds. You see? he said: There, within the heart of the fruit, is the sign of Eve. There was no doubt that from this angle the apple’s core looked vaguely like female genitalia. Hardly compelling, I thought. But the monk was not finished. He pulled out another apple and cut it in half, this time horizontally. Do you see the star? he asked. Sliced this way, the seeds that had looked like a vagina now outlined a five-pointed star, the pentagram, the ultimate symbol of Satan. The design was no larger than a dime but unmistakable. Even more alarming, at least to a religious fanatic, was how the seed design was highlighted by minute cavities of browned, charred fruit surrounding each pip. This is simply the result of iron-containing chemicals reacting with the air, but it really did look as if someone had magically burned the sign of Lucifer into the apple’s heart.
“In the fruit trees are hidden certain of God’s secrets,” wrote the famous medieval mystic St. Hildegard von Bingen, “which only the blessed among men can perceive.” Hildegard was describing the scientific philosophy of the Dark Ages, a discipline derived from the Platonic belief that all earthly objects are shadows cast by the true beings in the World of Ideas. Plato had been speaking in abstractions when he laid out this scenario, but medieval Christians had assumed his World of Ideas referred to their Heaven. They reasoned, therefore, that all earthly objects were symbols sent by God to communicate His intent. The priests’ job was similar to that of a Jungian psychiatrist: they interpreted God’s hidden “messages” and explained them to the unenlightened masses. The apple’s seductive colors, its two-faced flavor, its suggestively feminine core, and, above all, the hidden pentagram, were interpreted as signs that it was the fruit that had grown on the Tree of Forbidden Knowledge.
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