"authentic" is a fictional point on a curve
Today’s piece is the debut from Sweet Chamomile in the Hour of War. I started writing this about a year ago, and it’s gone through many evolutions. Thank you to Rachel Jepsen for your help reading earlier versions. There are some sweet sonic elements here! (If you find them, pls tell me in the comments!).
When we say food is authentic, what do we mean?
Are we talking about technique? The choreography our fingers follow, transforming raw flesh into platters bursting with life? Or are we speaking about ingredients? Is my meal authentic if the plate is piled high with the same starches and grains my grandmother ate?
Does it have something to do with posture? Holding reverence for Italian nonnas who shaped thousands of little ravioli in their palms—gently stuffing flour balls with packets of love—and trusting the wisdom of their toil?
Maybe it’s about refusing modern conveniences. Rejecting sheets of supermarket pasta for the soul they lack. Waving red flags at stainless steel machines strutting out sheets of cookie-cutter spaghetti, and reaching for uneven, handcrafted dumplings. Maybe the imperfection is intentional. Maybe we ought to cherish the fingerprints imprinted on our food.
Is authenticity about honoring our forgotten artisans? Poor fishermen who toiled all day and night, slinging nets into seas with nothing in sight, who tossed their seafood scraps into pots swimming in onions and life-giving garlic. What they did to survive—fish the value from bony bits and lesser-loved limbs—birthed bouillabassé in Marseille and chopped up cioppino in San Francisco.
Does it matter how the food reaches your mouth? In Lagos, we hold our pounded yam (iyan) with bare fingers and skin chicken bones of all their meat. We break and we dislodge every fiber and every sinew unfortunate to reside within grip. We leave no evidence at the crime scene. Because when you cook with so much flavor—when the walls of your house sweat buckets— when iru takes over the room—the real felony is leaving chicken bones uncracked.
Meals rise to a higher dimension when you eat with your hands. Take suya for example. It’s spiced meat with a smoky, nutty flavor that’s grilled over red hot coals on the buzzing streets of Lagos. You technically could eat it with cutlery (in the privacy of your home). But suya isn’t meant to be eaten in a sanitized environment. You need the noise, the pollution, and the men shooing flies away. The city ruckus is the aioli that slicks it up. If you walk into a suya shop and nobody is laughing, you better run away. Suya comes gift-wrapped in old pages of newspapers. If you feel the urge to read the headlines, something has gone awfully wrong. You pick each chunk of meat by hand, and with each bite, you contemplate how poor life would be without suya.
Eating this way draws you closer to your food. You learn the Western obsession with “melt in your mouth” meat is mistaken. You’ve salivated over shaki. You’ve eaten barbecued gizzards. You know chew is good for you. You no longer see meat as independent supermarket markets like breasts and thighs. You know a competent chef will make all parts sing.
But I didn’t grow up eating iyan with my hands. My father and all four kids ate ours with cutlery. Mum ate hers with her hands because that’s how she grew up. We lived under the same roof chopping our iyan in harmony. But I remember one day, while eating with friends in public, some strangers muttered oyinbo (”foreigner”) at us for not eating the “traditional” way. And they were right. I should’ve used one hand to eat, the other to throw rocks at them. I kid, but this story illustrates the fog of authenticity. If I’ve done something all my life one way, who gets to say it’s not authentic?
It’s funnier when you know this little secret: every Nigerian kitchen around the world houses a Swiss ingredient. Whether its inhabitants live in a fellow tropical country or frosty winterland, every Naija cupboard holds Maggi bouillon cubes. Those little, yellow cubes concentrate all the umami, salty, and glutamate goodness that make our food so flavorful. It’s used in jollof rice, egusi, efo riro, ogbono, all the dishes Nigerians would kill for. But how can a central element of our cuisine come from a place drenched in snow?
The answer goes back to the nonnas making those raviolis. If we peel back the layers of time, we see there was a time before nonnas. Roman reports1 describe an early lasagna from the 5th century using pancakes instead of pasta, and a mish-mash of meats, including the belly of an adult female pig. This begs the question: which lasagna is authentic? The pancake or the pasta? Or the one your mother made you when you came home from running outside all day? Even with her forbidden sprinkles of curry powder?
There’s always an earlier time, a BC to your AD, and when we call food authentic, our gaze is fixed in time. The modern meals we consider authentic are local maxima, single points in time, where the curves of commerce, colonialism, culinary invention, and intermarriage stopped for a drink of water.
“Authentic” is an illusion. Every generation, a cook collides with her mother’s wisdom and resets the baseline. We move thousands of miles away from home, finding local plant species capable of imitating our native flora. We adapt to the local economy. When times are tough, we simmer our beef in water, and when our cellars overflow, we stew in vino. We realize our ancestors cooked hearty meals for laborers with bigger biceps than our heads, who lifted heavy slabs of concrete all day, and we sit at home finger-clicking our fake internet jobs. Surely, we don’t need as many calories as them?
Cooking is all about adaptation. There is no opening scene and no finale. It’s improvisation all the way down. Recipes are fossils showing how we invaded, married, and traded with our neighbors. Many of the best dishes come from unexpected places. Mexican Al Pastor traces its roots to Lebanese immigrants in Puebla cooking lamb shawarmas. Thai Massaman curry is a 17th century fusion dish blending Persian and Indian spices with local Thai ingredients. These dishes evolve through collective imagination over thousands of years. What they draw out for us are rough guides, and we should remember that those curves are drawn in pencil.
Because once you’ve made a dish for your child, and she falls in love with it, isn’t it authentic to her?
You can find details of early lasagna here: Lasagna through the ages. The 5th century cookbook, COOKERY AND DINING IN IMPERIAL ROME is the primary resource.
The word 'authentic', when used in connection with food, is nothing more than a marketing trend. It means as much as 'all natural'...arsenic is all natural.
You raise tasty points about the history of various dishes, but there is no such thing as 'authentic'...unless it's me making you dinner and then it is authentically made by me. And I''l take some jollof rice when it's ready.
Tobi, this is so good. I already know you writing is excellent and this essay took it to the next level. I related to so many parts (obvs) and the question of "what is authentic" when ones culture is becoming a mix of what was and what is. So funny too, I was chuckling along with your little jokes. Such a wonderful read and perspective.