From basic to bougie

One aspect of food history that fascinates me is how certain items can be considered trash food in one era only to be exhorted as gourmet in the next. This holds true for many items: lobster, ribs, chicken wings, pork belly, and even caviar. Why do these items climb from peasant food to high dining fare?

Sometimes the driving force for this transformation is basic supply and demand. For instance, a food travels to a new place thanks to innovations in preservation and/or transportation, and a new market is created. When something is new, people tend to seek it out, causing a rush which results in a price spike. Once the price goes up, the food ceases to be available for poor people while well-to-do folks buy the items as a display of their wealth. A story as old as money.

The Daily Dish provides more reasons in their article of foods that have been elevated above their humble origins. To distill their take, chefs learn how to transform something by using different techniques or adding ingredients, taking the dish from hum-ho to hubba-hubba. Since the restaurant business is concerned with the bottom line, zhushing up inexpensive ingredients keeps costs down while offering customers something familiar that also seems special. Taking tough oxtails and giving them an unctuous texture through long and slow cooking is one example of this.

The downside to all of these glow-ups is that many of the people who used to enjoy a particular food are sometimes priced out of it at a later date. Sometimes, however, elevating a food is a godsend to people who are sick and tired of eating it, as happened in the 1800s with lobster. Indentured servants would negotiate clauses in their contracts that they wouldn’t have to eat lobster more than three times a week. It’s amazing how the tables have turned on that one.