Der Beginn der kulinarischen Moderne. New volume, edited by Prof. Dr Andreas Rutz

With the dawn of the nineteenth century, a new era also began in European cuisine. At the highest culinary levels, practitioners increasingly oriented themselves towards the intrinsic flavours of the central ingredients in a dish — a trend that has continued to shape the culinary arts to the present day.

Carl Friedrich von Rumohr, who engaged with culinary matters alongside his activities as an art historian and writer, took up this reorientation of the exquisite cuisnie in his 1822 work »Geist der Kochkunst« (engl. »The Essence of Cookery«). The work of von Rumohr, who died in Dresden in 1843, is still regarded today as the first systematic theory of the culinary art.

The volume »Der Beginn der kulinarischen Moderne. Carl Friedrich von Rumohrs ›Geist der Kochkunst‹ im frühen 19. Jahrhundert«, edited by Prof. Dr. Andreas Rutz and recently published by transcript, brings together scholars from a range of disciplines to examine the phenomenon of culinary transformation from their respective specialist perspectives. While some contributions to the volume focus in the narrower sense on von Rumohr and his work, others range across topics including the production of food and luxury goods, everyday cooking, the history of wine, the art of haute cuisine, and dining culture in the early nineteenth century. A dedicated contribution also introduces the German Archive of Culinary History (»Deutsches Archiv der Kulinarik«), which was founded jointly in October 2022 — two hundred years after the publication of »Geist der Kochkunst« — by the Saxon State and University Library Dresden (Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden, SLUB) and TU Dresden. Coinciding with the archive's establishment, a scholarly conference was organised by the SLUB and the Chair of Saxon Regional History under the title »Der Beginn der kulinarischen Moderne. 200 Jahre ›Geist der Kochkunst‹ von Carl Friedrich von Rumohr«. The conference papers form the basis for many of the contributions in the edited volume now published by Prof. Dr. Rutz.

Digital flyer for the volume
Link to the publisher's website (transcript) with open-access to the edited volume (in German only)