The Chile Pepper in China: A Cultural Biography - Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History (Hardback)

Extensive source materials in both Chinese and English form the bedrock for this impressive study into how a relatively unassuming American import so radically changed one country’s cuisines and traditional pharmacopoeia. The history of the humble chile in China is a fascinating one, especially as viewed through Brian R. Dott’s affectionate yet scholarly lens. A learned as well as lively book with many surprises. How chile peppers came to China from the New World just starts a story involving taste, regionalism, adaptation, and folklore. Chiles were key to Chinese cuisine’s subtlety and variety, and not just in Sichuan and Hunan either. This is an absolutely wonderful book. It combines scholarship and good food writing—the enormous amount of effort in compiling the databases is duly and modestly cloaked in good prose. A valuable resource for anyone interested in Chinese culinary culture or the global history of the chilli as symbol — ‘vitamin, vegetable, preservative and spice’. Dott’s research is extensive, while his writing is entertaining, digestible and peppered with much fascinating information. It reminds us to look for culinary innovation not only where we often do, in the flashy kitchens of professional chefs, but also in the long-term historical processes of everyday life, the contributions to which, like the chile in China, may be ‘found everywhere.’ A book that can be easily understood and enjoyed by casual readers, something not all academic non-fiction books can say. There is much to praise about the book: its painstaking research, its sensitivity to the diversities of regional and historical contexts within China, and the top-notch storytelling. On the last point, Dott deserves special mention. The Chile Pepper in China will be one of the few books that will be read and savored by academics and civilians alike. With its lucid, lively style, copious illustrations, and recipes this book could be a model for studies of the assimilation of other New World ingredients, especially in India and China. It will be of great value to students and academics and anyone with an interest [in] Chinese cuisine and culture. A satisfying history to [chiles] origins as well as their cultural significance in China. The definitive English-language study of how the pepper arrived in China, how it became part of local cuisine and medical practice, and how it even established itself as a core part of identity formation in southwest China. But one of its most provocative contributions has little to do with China and everything do with the chili pepper's unique relationship to globalization. It all adds up to a compelling case for how a foreign plant became a national spice.