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Book: Food Rules and Rituals

Chapter: Eat Your Riddles: Puzzling Practices and Dining Diversions

DOI: 10.1558/equinox.46057

Blurb:

How do adults play with their food? This presentation explores ways intricate rule-based food practices give rise to play. It begins with two particularly curious and little-known historical examples of rule-driven dining rituals (enigmatical menus and conundrum socials), and continues by exploring three more puzzle-inspired foodways (speakeasies, scripture cakes, and assiettes parlantes or talking plates). There are other examples of


course, and I hope some will emerge in discussion. But these five offer strong evidence of ways adults have relied on rule-based rituals as thematic prompts for recipe and menu development, as well as to script conversations over food and to make meaning of their meals.

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