How the German Culinary Archives in Dresden preserve taste --- Culinary Archives: It's about more than just satisfying your appetite

 

“The German Culinary Archives have a mission: to catalog and preserve taste. It's about the art of cooking, table culture, and nutritional science. But how can enjoyment be preserved?

 

How did people eat at the Saxon court in the 18th century? What did the wild hare from Burgenland taste like when cooked royally in the 19th century? What does culinary arts teach us about the social life of an era?

 

In Dresden, culinary memories are specifically cataloged and preserved. "The enjoyment of an excellently prepared meal is a fleeting affair," says Katrin Stump, librarian and historian. "Unfortunately, from a historical perspective, we have little idea what food might have tasted like in the past."

 

The "German Culinary Archives" aims to fill this gap. Here, Michelin-starred chefs and foodies alike can embark on a culinary journey of discovery through the largest collection of cookbooks, recipes, menus, and wine lists in the German-speaking world.

 

Highlights of the collection include the estates of several prominent figures in the industry: Walter Putz, who fled Silesia after the Second World War, worked his entire life as a head waiter in leading grand hotels, including many years at Brenner's Park Hotel in Baden-Baden; he bequeathed, among other things, menus and cookbooks to the archive. Ernst Birsner, born in 1935, was maître de cuisine in the Burda publishing house's cooking studio, the Burda couple's personal chef, and a passionate collector of culinary documents; his personal collection includes tens of thousands of items. Herbert Schönberner, Germany's first three-star chef, has also already pledged his estate to the archive.

 

The Queen's Meal Requests

 

The archive also contains a number of curiosities, including a 1970 menu book of the English court, in which Queen Elizabeth II herself manually entered her meal requests. Kaiser Wilhelm II's menu book from his exile in Doorn, as well as the personal typewriter of Wolfram Siebeck, arguably Germany's best-known culinary expert and author for a good three decades from the 1970s onward.

 

The archive was founded in 2022 as a cooperation between the TU Dresden and the Saxon State and University Library (SLUB). The Saxon metropolis was not chosen as the location by chance: "Saxony in general, and Dresden in particular, have a long tradition of culinary art and culinary culture, which was reflected in the dining culture of the Dresden court and its surroundings," says Katrin Stump, the Director General of the SLUB. The fine tableware from Meissen and the delicate wine glasses from Lusatia demonstrate that Saxony and culinary delights belong together. Several historical standard works on culinary arts have a connection to the city on the Elbe: As early as 1611, "New Kunstreich und nützliches Kochbuch" (New Artful and Useful Cookbook), one of the first professional cookbooks in German, was published – printed in Leipzig.

 

Archive to continue growing

 

Over 40,000 items from menu and menu collections, as well as audiovisual media files, are now archived in Dresden. Stump explains: "The archive's holdings are continuously being expanded and are available to academics for research and the general public." Volunteers assist with the review and processing. And the archive is set to continue growing.

 

As extensive as the collection is, "The crystallization of culinary experiences as cultural assets cannot be experienced solely through recipes or menu cards," says Ursula Staudinger, Rector of the TU Dresden, who championed Dresden as a culinary hub shortly after taking office in 2020. Supported by local historian Josef Matzerath, Jürgen Dollase, arguably Germany's most well-known food critic today (and a regular author of the F.A.S. column "Hier spricht der Gast"), developed the idea of ​​precisely capturing a taste experience in pictures and words.

 

Excellent Cuisine to Recreate

 

Dollase plays a special role in preserving good taste: He meticulously documents top-class German cuisine and hands over the resulting "documentations" to the Dresden Archives annually. This should make it possible to recreate recipes from the culinary excellence field with precision in the future. "While it's a given in other art forms to preserve works, this has been neglected in the culinary arts," says Dollase. The dishes are selected based on their culinary excellence. "There are also sensationally good versions of Königsberger Klopsen and roast pork," he says.

 

Through extensive research, interviews, and, of course, tastings, Dollase not only sheds light on the cooking process but also provides a cultural-historical context of the dish and personal anecdotes from the chefs. "At the highest level of cooking, it's about more than just satisfying your appetite; it's also about creating an aesthetically pleasing, artistically sophisticated arrangement," adds Katrin Stump.

 

Developing a Vocabulary

 

Not least to ensure that the taste documentation is as detailed as possible, Dollase developed a vocabulary for describing and categorizing culinary delights: "This vocabulary ranges from product selection and product preparation to flavoring, texture, and the associative context." For example, he describes the flavors of the "Wild Hare from Burgenland, Royal Style," prepared by Torsten Michel, head chef at the "Schwarzwaldstube" restaurant, as a "spice room" in which the flavors are "deeply blended and complex." Once a year, the editions of "The Culinary Work – Documentation on the Genesis, Structure, and Reproduction of Culinary Excellence" are ceremoniously handed over to the archive.

 

Dollase hopes his documentaries can offer low-threshold access to culinary arts. He sees a need to catch up here: "The concept of good taste has been lost to us," he complains. "We need to learn to taste again, away from an industrialized image of taste. And we lack the language for it. I want to change that."

 

"Food is always connected to questions of power."

 

And what about contemporary cuisine? Ursula Staudinger describes it as a contradictory fusion of globalization and regionality. On the one hand, there is the presence of many world cuisines, and on the other, a return to sustainability and regionality. "In my opinion, the trend is moving back to the product, away from the sophistication of preparation as an end in itself," she says. This contradiction is an expression of our times. "The art of cooking, like other arts, is subject to constant change, dependent on trends, but of course also on the availability of food."

 

But the study of culinary arts goes beyond food: Questions of health, beauty ideals, and status are also inextricably linked to table culture and aesthetics. "Who is allowed to attend a meal, who sits where, who is served what quality of food? Eating is always associated with questions of power," says the Rector of the TU.

 

Interdisciplinary Culinary Research

 

Historical, artistic, and sociological questions can therefore also be connected to the topic of food. For this reason, an interdisciplinary research group is now affiliated with the archive, which examines the historical transformation of taste from the 18th century to the present day. Various disciplines are represented, from history and food chemistry to the history of garden design. "We want to boost the topic of culinary arts and help establish food studies," says Katrin Stump.

 

The aim, according to Staudinger, is to "measure the various dimensions of the culinary experience," from the actual dish to the tableware and the ambience. The quantification of taste profiles will also be scientifically processed. In the future, state-of-the-art technology will be used for this, including a virtual reality experience of a court dinner, which will allow immersion in the historical culinary experience."