5 – 7 July at St Catz/Oxford & 8 – 28 July online
A few words about 2024…
2024’s symposium took us from the usual Arne Jacobsen buildings at St Catz into newly erected pavilions that rather fittingly put us right in the middle of the College gardens. Two hundred weekend symposiasts were welcomed by a wall of jasmine blossom that greeted us onto our new campus.
The topic of ‘Gardens Flowers & Fruit was explored most extensively through three highly original keynotes, and 46 papers and presentations, then experienced through curriculum- based meals and inspiring after-dinner activities.
An additional 100 symposiasts joined the online conference for more discussion by all symposiasts on the papers and the chance to engage further with the guest chefs, keynote speakers and special editions of our other regular online events The Kitchen Lab, the Sifter’s The Ask, and Wiki Club. We changed the conversation, expanded the table, and improved the plate with renewed vigour and joy.
Zoom in for a bee’s eye view of Jake Tilson’s wonderful poster for the 2024 Oxford Food Symposium
Cathy Kaufman’s Report
Steely-hued skies and chilly temperatures greeted the 220 symposiasts who traveled to St Catherine’s College for the July 5-7 opening weekend of the 2024 Symposium. Not only was the cool summer weather atypical, sending many symposiasts sweater shopping on High Street Friday morning, but symposiasts faced a new campus geography when essential repairs closed the Arne Jacobsen lecture and dining halls, disrupting the year-round functioning of the College. While the ability to host the symposium had been in doubt until mid-January, the resourceful St Catz crew rallied to the challenge, erecting temporary lecture, seminar, field kitchen and dining spaces in the under-explored St Catz gardens. And the rainy summer had its rewards: the high wall of jasmine that scented our path to the dining hall and the luxuriously verdant vistas from those classrooms and dining hall serendipitously made the perfect setting for Gardens, Flowers, and Fruits.
Friday afternoon opened with Carolyn Steel’s keynote address, introduced by Chair Emerita Elisabeth Luard. Steel’s talk, ‘Gardens: How our modification of nature expresses our evolving sense of our place in the world,’ was a tour de force of lavishly illustrated garden history, dashing through millennia of environmental manipulations in a never-ending quest to make nature conform to our whims and needs. Her expanded recorded version of the keynote is well worth watching. Her overview of garden history flowed seamlessly into the framing of our Friday night dinner, A Rhapsody of Greens: From the Gardens of Oxford, devised by guest chef Arthur Potts Dawson and executed by St Catz’s Chef Tim Kelsey and his team. The intellectual Potts Dawson anchored our dinner around the impeccable local bounty of greens, fruits, and dairy products, nearly all sourced within a few miles of St Catz. His framing talk emphasized the importance of local foods for gastronomic and environmental reasons.
Plenary sessions
Keynotes
Carolyn Steel
‘Gardens: how our modification of nature expresses our evolving sense of our place in the world
Annalisa Marzano
Rome’s Horticultural ‘Revolution’: Ideology, Display, and the Economy
Cristina Mazzoni
Love, Magic, and the Bittersweet Flavor of Oranges in Italian Culture
Richard Shepro
Summing up our garden’s harvest
OFS Young Chefs
Pheobe Boatwright, Sarah Cremona and Jines Råmark
Tools
The OFS Wiki-Club
Wiki-editing session with Roberta Wedge
The Sifter
The cyberworld of cookbooks in a searchable database
Meals & Receptions
Friday Dinner
Rhapsody of Greens – From The Gardens of Oxford
Devised by – Chef Arthur Potts Dawson and Chef Tim Kelsey and the St Catz team
Welcome drinks – Homemade cordials (elderflower; tomato cucumber olive oil shots) by Gerhardus Geldenhuis, Hundred Hills Signature Sparkling Rose 2018
To start – Platters of warm bread rolls with salted butter, smashed broad bean, pea, and mint bruschetta, stuffed baby courgettes with golden beetroot, beetroot cress and courgette flowers. Iced crisp radishes and kohlrabi, bowls of shaved fennel, white cabbage and white currants with fennel seeds and fronds
Main course – White butter bean puree, asparagus, samphire, Jersey Royals, candy beetroot, pea pods and shoots, seaweed caviar, stinging nettle emulsion, English pecorino
Dessert – Elderflower and lemon posset with gooseberry compote
Ciders – KATJA (Martinotti Style Cider 8%) Sandford Orchards, Y.D.B Cider 7% Sandford Orchards, Rare ‘Lost Varieties’ Apples Cider Sandford Orchards
Saturday Lunch
From the Caribbean to North London a Tincture of Culinary Resilience
Devised by – Paulette Henry, Chef Debbie Peters with Chef Tim Kelsey and the St Catz team
To start – Spiced plantains, Wolves Lane summer vegetable soup
Main course – Cod cakes with Chayote slaw, Black Rootz summer greens and flowers with tahini dressing, jerk portobella mushrooms with seasonal vegetable quinoa
Dessert – Mango apple crumble with coconut cream
To drink – Homemade hibiscus ginger iced tea
Saturday Dinner
Forest As The Garden: Chef Thomas Zacharias
Cooked by – Tim Kelsey and the St Catz team
Welcome drinks – Homemade cordials (ginger pineapple) by Gerhardus Geldenhuis, Roohafza Spritz
To start – Summer millet and vegetable “curd rice”, venison cutlets / raw banana and banana blossom cutlets
Main course – Ammini’s duck curry, Ammini’s wild mushroom curry, Wild greens Thoran salad, matta rice, pappadum, and wild bamboo shoot pickle
Dessert – Black rice payasam with mahua and summer berries
Drinks – False Economy Lager 4.8% Tap Social Brewery
Time Better Spent IPA 5.1% Tap Social Brewery
Sunday Lunch
Root to Bloom, guest mentor Cordula Peters
Devised by – Young Chefs: Phoebe Boatwright, Sarah Cremona, Jines Råmark with Tim Kelsey and the St Catz team
Welcome drinks – Homemade cordials (rhubarb and lemon; blackcurrant) by Gerhardus Geldenhuis
To start – Foccacia, wild garlic salt, bay infused oil, beetroot, raspberries, rose Vinaigrette, cobnuts
Main course – Heritage lentils, rainbow chard, lemon, nasturtium. Roasted hispi cabbage, pearl barley, buttermilk and begonia dressing. Smashed cucumber, gooseberry salad with elderflower vinaigrette. Interactive garden salad, carlin pea hummus, rye soil
Dessert – Semolina blackberry upside down cake, lilac honey, chamomille, clotted cream. British Cheeses, berries, biscuits, floral condiments
To drink – Homemade summer stone fruit sangria
After dinner events
Elisabeth Luard and Birgette Kampmann
‘Fandango’, painting your botanically-inspired fan,
Nader Mehravari
Saffron: From Cultivation, to Harvesting, and Steeping
Gerhardus Geldenhuis
Cordially Yours
Linda Roodenberg
An evening stroll through the Botanical Gardens of the FoodMuseum
Parallel sessions & papers
Panel 1 – Symbiosis: Plants are Actors, too (Riverside Lecture theatre)
— Floating Garden Geopoetics: More-than-Human Collaborations in Xochimilca Foodways
— On Gardens, Flowers, and (Possibly) Fruit in Cheese – Three Cheeses as Three Versions of Tending the Large Gardens that Carefully Managed Pastures Really Are
— If This Field Could Talk: Considering Soil as a Site of Hospitality and Diplomacy between Humans and Non-Humans
Panel 2 – Ideal and Idealized Gardens (Riverside Room 1)
— How Does Your Justice Grow: Gardens and Gardening in Agatha Christie’s Fiction
— Roman Edens – Vergil’s Tarentum and Pompeiian Garden Painting (Re)Considered
— Ancestral Mores (mos maiorum) and Ancestral Fruits: Ancient Roman Attitudes to Fruit in General and Certain Fruits in Particular
— The Rebellious Heart: Food and Flowers in the Chinese Classical Garden
Panel 3 – Even the Elite Need to Eat (Riverside Room 2)
— More Than Wine: Vineyards and Grapes in Medieval and Early Modern Dutch Gardens
— The Sensual Pleasures of Persian Gardens
— Le Potager du Roi: The ‘King’s Kitchen Garden’ at Versailles as Political Metaphor and Gastronomic Laboratory
Panel 4 – Unlikely Communities, Born from Adversity (Riverside Lecture theatre)
— Cultivating Liberation: Gardens as Agents of Connection and Empowerment in Havana, Cuba
— Growing Rice, Growing Taste
— Culinary Infrastructure of Migrant Gardens and Marketplaces
Panel 5 – Women as Agent, Women as Object (Riverside Room 1)
— Unsweetened Temperaments: Fruit, Desire, and the Wickedness of Women in Malaysian Magazines
— Bringing the Kitchen Garden into the Kitchen: The Research and Writing of Three Inspirational Women
— Welcome to Utopia! Hungry?
Panel 6 – Floral Cuisines: Flavor, Health, Culture (Riverside Room 2)
— Orange Blossoms and the Holy Grail of Persian Jams
— Flowers and Fruit in Early Modern Mesoamerica: Chocolate as a Case Study
— Ayurvedic Renaissance: Exploring Fruits, Flowers, and Well-Being in Nineteenth-Century Colonial India
Panel 7 – The Literary Aesthetics of the East: Chinese Stone Fruits (Riverside Lecture theatre)
— Gustatory Metonymy: Sensorial Interplay of Cherry Consumption in Medieval China
— From Plums to Olives: Exploring Harmony and Mildness in Traditional China
Panel 8 – The Cultural Politics of Preservation (Riverside Room 1)
— Waste Not Want Not: A History of Fruit Preservation in England
— Preserving Fruit at the Nexus of Lay and Expert Knowledge
Panel 9 – Empowered by Ancient Wisdom (Riverside Lecture theatre)
— The Forest Is Only Strange to Strangers: The Forest as a Food Garden in Turtle Island
— Resilience of Indigenous Food Systems: A Study of Cacao Grown in Chakras in the Ecuadorian Amazon
— Common Gardens to Forbidden Forests: Food Procurement Pollution and Policy on Tokunoshima
Panel 10 – Upsetting the Conventional Apple Cart (Riverside Room 1)
— Spoons in the Garden
— Towards a Gastronomic Taxonomy for Fruits and Flowers: Beyond Linnaeus’s Garden
— Postnatural Apple: Re-Defining Fruit and Re-Thinking Food Systems through Design
Panel 11 – Alternative Realities (Riverside Room 2)
— The Blight of #Cottagecore: Past and Present S/Place-Making in the Garden and Home
— Syl Anagist Was a Garden: Food and Vitalism in The Broken Earth
— Doomsday Plots: The High-Stakes Gardens of America’s Preppers
Panel 12 – Stories of Resilience (Riverside Lecture theatre)
— Gardens and Ghosts: Arts of Living in a Contemporary Bulgarian Village
— Seeds of Resistance: Urban Food Forests and Traditional Experiences
— The Emperor, the Major, and the Jackfruit Tree Disaster
Panel 13 – Wild Things. . . You Make my Palate Sing (Riverside Room 1)
— The Seven Sisters and South Downs: A Culinary Exploration of Southern England’s Wild Edibles
— Opening the Garden Gate: Wild Gardens and Indigenous Culinary Knowledge
Panel 14 – Marketplace Case Studies: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Fruits (Riverside Room 2)
— The Petit Fruit that Could: How the Camerise Captivated Québec
— The Fall of the Acadian Belliveau: Genetics, Genealogy, and Recovery of Pomological Matrimoine
Pre-recorded presentations on: Symbiosis: Plants are Actors, too
— Floating Garden Geopoetics: More-than-Human Collaborations in Xochimilca Foodways
— On Gardens, Flowers, and (Possibly) Fruit in Cheese – Three Cheeses as Three Versions of Tending the Large Gardens that Carefully Managed Pastures Really Are
— If This Field Could Talk: Considering Soil as a Site of Hospitality and Diplomacy between Humans and Non-Humans
Pre-recorded presentations on: Ideal and Idealized Gardens
— How Does Your Justice Grow: Gardens and Gardening in Agatha Christie’s Fiction
— Roman Edens – Vergil’s Tarentum and Pompeiian Garden Painting (Re)Considered
— Ancestral Mores (mos maiorum) and Ancestral Fruits: Ancient Roman Attitudes to Fruit in General and Certain Fruits in Particular
— The Rebellious Heart: Food and Flowers in the Chinese Classical Garden
Pre-recorded presentations on: Alternative Realities
— The Blight of #Cottagecore: Past and Present S/Place-Making in the Garden and Home
— Syl Anagist Was a Garden: Food and Vitalism in The Broken Earth
— Doomsday Plots: The High-Stakes Gardens of America’s Preppers
Pre-recorded presentations on: Unlikely Communities, Born from Adversity
— Cultivating Liberation: Gardens as Agents of Connection and Empowerment in Havana, Cuba
— Growing Rice, Growing Taste
— Culinary Infrastructure of Migrant Gardens and Marketplaces
Pre-recorded presentations on: Stories of Resilience
— Gardens and Ghosts: Arts of Living in a Contemporary Bulgarian Village
— Gardening in Redlined Neighbourhoods
— Seeds of Resistance: Urban Food Forests and Traditional Experiences
— The Emperor, the Major, and the Jackfruit Tree Disaster
Pre-recorded presentations on: Even the Elite Need to Eat
— More Than Wine: Vineyards and Grapes in Medieval and Early Modern Dutch Gardens
— The Sensual Pleasures of Persian Gardens
— Le Potager du Roi: The ‘King’s Kitchen Garden’ at Versailles as Political Metaphor and Gastronomic Laboratory
Pre-recorded presentations on: Women as Agent, Women as Object
— Unsweetened Temperaments: Fruit, Desire, and the Wickedness of Women in Malaysian Magazines
— Bringing the Kitchen Garden into the Kitchen: The Research and Writing of Three Inspirational Women
— Welcome to Utopia! Hungry?
Pre-recorded presentations on: Floral Cuisines: Flavor, Health, Culture
— Orange Blossoms and the Holy Grail of Persian Jams
— Flowers and Fruit in Early Modern Mesoamerica: Chocolate as a Case Study
— Ayurvedic Renaissance: Exploring Fruits, Flowers, and Well-Being in Nineteenth-Century Colonial India
Pre-recorded presentations on: The Literary Aesthetics of the East: Chinese Stone Fruits and Śiva’s Garden
— Gustatory Metonymy: Sensorial Interplay of Cherry Consumption in Medieval China
— Śiva’s Flora
— From Plums to Olives: Exploring Harmony and Mildness in Traditional China
Pre-recorded presentations on: The Cultural Politics of Preservation
— Waste Not Want Not: A History of Fruit Preservation in England
— Preserving Fruit at the Nexus of Lay and Expert Knowledge
Pre-recorded presentations on: Empowered by Ancient Wisdom
— The Forest Is Only Strange to Strangers: The Forest as a Food Garden in Turtle Island
— Resilience of Indigenous Food Systems: A Study of Cacao Grown in Chakras in the Ecuadorian Amazon
— Common Gardens to Forbidden Forests: Food Procurement Pollution and Policy on Tokunoshima
Pre-recorded presentations on: Upsetting the Conventional Apple Cart
— Spoons in the Garden
— Towards a Gastronomic Taxonomy for Fruits and Flowers: Beyond Linnaeus’s Garden
— Postnatural Apple: Re-Defining Fruit and Re-Thinking Food Systems through Design
Pre-recorded presentations on: Wild Things. . . You Make my Palate Sing
— The Seven Sisters and South Downs: A Culinary Exploration of Southern England’s Wild Edibles
— Opening the Garden Gate: Wild Gardens and Indigenous Culinary Knowledge
Pre-recorded presentations on: Marketplace Case Studies: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Fruits
— The Petit Fruit that Could: How the Camerise Captivated Québec
— #mangowars: Why Are Some Varieties of Fruit More Popular than Others?
— The Fall of the Acadian Belliveau: Genetics, Genealogy, and Recovery of Pomological Matrimoine
Pre-recorded presentations on: Gardens as Commercial Enterprises: Expressions of Power
— The ‘Apple Isle’: Tasmanian Apples as a Weapon of Ecological Colonization and Icon of Botanic Imperialism
— English Commercial and Private Garden Production from the Sixteenth Century until the Coming of the Railways
Pre-recorded presentations on: Location Matters: The Uses and Shifting Meanings of Fruits and Flowers
— Some Mediterranean Culinary Isoglosses: Perry’s ‘Olive Line’ in the Broader Context of the Umami-Enhancer Isogloss Bundle
— The Crimson Trumpet: Hibiscus Sabdariffa L. in Representation of Christmas in Caribbean Cultural Identity
