The late editor of a prestigious science journal once remarked to me that “being a journalist in Washington [DC] was like trying to take a sip from a firehose. Possibly not original, it applies in spades to life on the internet. There are massive torrents of information, and you can get hosed. Dabbling around for information on couscous brought me to two articles on a site I didn’t know about before, The art and mystery of food. There I found two items on couscous, British Couscous and The Curious Case of SE-Asian Couscous.
Read them there, I urge you, for insights into the ways foods are absorbed, embraced and ultimately in some cases abandoned. I mention them here for two particular reasons. The first is that the British sometimes made their couscous with rice, which rather neatly subverts Vavilov’s notion that couscous was rice made with wheat. The second article turns Vavilov’s reasoning on its head, and wonders about how the words and techniques associated with kuskus in SE Asian got there. Fascinating stuff.
{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
My first exposure to couscous was at a middle eastern restaurant in Athens, Georgia in the mid- or late 1980s. And if memory serves me, not long after that we could buy an instant couscous in the grocery store; no lookng back after that. It is actually hard to remember a time when couscous did not exist in my world! It is quite interesting to see the glimpses into the different possible origins of couscous and the spread of the concept if not the real thing.