Translating sensations with objectivity is a challenge for gastronomy writing

In the chronicle “Almoço Mineiro”, published for the first time in the magazine Manchete in July 1955, the writer Rubem Braga focuses his narration on an exceptional pork loin with tutu of beans served to a group of diners formed by diplomats, journalists and officials of the army.

“The loin was the essential, and its essence was sublime. On the outside it was dark, with shades of gold. The knife penetrated it as sweetly as the soul of a pure virgin enters the sky (…). The taste was of a distant saltiness and an almost musical tenderness”, he describes.

Braga also follows with the definition that, due to its “indefinable and very pure” flavor, the loin looked like it came from an angel’s ear. And while few may have ever tasted a morsel of heavenly creatures, the author makes it easy to know the quality of such a lunch.

Writing about food is a challenge because it proposes to transport what is fundamentally sensorial to paper. The ordeal is part of the routine of journalists and critics of the gastronomic universe, and of those who are more and more interested in the subject who venture to approach it on social networks.

“There is a huge limitation when translating something that is pre-textual into language’, says Luiza Fecarotta, a journalist specializing in gastronomy, who teaches in March, in São Paulo, the course “Language & Language – Food and Creative Writing” .

Known today in France and Italy as a saint, and regarded as the patron saint of chefs, Venancio Fortunato — or simply Fortunato — was a French clergyman and poet whose platonic passion for Radegund, a former queen, became famous in his country. source.

After breaking free from a marriage she detested, Radegunda embraced the religious life serving at the abbey Sainte-Croix in Poitiers. There, she received letters from Fortunato, in which he praised both his beloved’s existence and her culinary skills.

“Then, a gigantic pile of slices of meat appeared / a mountain, with side hills, surrounded by fish and ragu / forming a small garden for dinner inside”, wrote the poet in one of his correspondences, revealed in the book ” The Delicious History of France”, by Jeni Mitchell and Stéphane Hénaut (Seoman Publishing).

In Brazil, in addition to chroniclers such as Rubem Braga and his angelic lunch, one of the biggest names in the field of translation of gustatory sensations is Nina Horta, from Minas Gerais, author of “Não É Sopa” (Companhia das Letras) among many gastronomy books. Nina, who died in 2019, wrote about the matter in leaf between 1987 and 2016.

They are written as “the Viagra of the cake” to speak of the “Royal powder”, and descriptions of light masses “like the cloud”.

Since he started publishing restaurant reviews in the 1990s, the columnist for leaf Josimar Melo says that he always sought objectivity to the detriment of subjectivity.

“Nina Horta was a chronicler and she could use whatever adjectives she wanted. I think the chronicle can have an impressionistic aspect, but in the criticism it gets in the way. Like when people say that the ‘shrimp had the delicacy of my mother when she caught me in the school’, you know?”, compares Melo.

“And between criticism and chronicle there is reporting, where the crazy analytical rigor of criticism is not necessary, nor is the impressionistic freedom of the chronicle desirable. In reporting, less is more.”

With more than 45,000 followers on its Instagram profile, and a portal created more than a decade ago to talk about food, Gastronomium has anonymous reviewers. Marcus, one of the team members, says he prefers the path of “references and emotions” to describe the dishes he tastes.

“Adjectives related to flavor help, but using them in excess can make an evaluation sound too technical and less accessible. As my idea is to bring people closer to good gastronomy, I try to write in a more casual way”, he explains.

He cites a published review of the Fat Duck restaurant. “I described how it reminded me of my childhood, the sound of frying that filled the morning, the aroma of sugar and cinnamon in contact with the muffin still warm.”

In one of his classes, Fecarotta deals with food in the construction of characters and the concept of food as culture. To this end, he cites works by authors such as Rachel de Queiroz, Graciliano Ramos, João Cabral de Melo Neto and Itamar Vieira Junior, with his award-winning “Torto Arado” (However).

“I think that food, or the lack of it, is of great importance because of the choices I made to report the daily lives of peasant families. Working in the countryside necessarily takes us back to life and to what keeps us alive”, says Vieira Junior.

“Food is not just a genre in the landscape. It is substance, essence, core, everything that fills us with life. Hence the role that its presence, and also scarcity, can play in the movement of the world, in the movement of characters. say that in this story not only humans, but the landscape, the land, the rivers, the rain, the forest are characters. Food can tell us a lot about a person, about society.”