The University of Southern Mississippi The Aquila Digital Community Honors Theses Honors College Fall 12-2015 You Are What You Eat: Gastronomy and Geography of Southern Spain Katherine F. Perry University of Southern Mississippi Follow this and additional works at: https://aquila.usm.edu/honors_theses Part of the Archaeological Anthropology Commons Recommended Citation Perry, Katherine F., "You Are What You Eat: Gastronomy and Geography of Southern Spain" (2015). Honors Theses. 346. https://aquila.usm.edu/honors_theses/346 This Honors College Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Honors College at The Aquila Digital Community. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of The Aquila Digital Community. For more information, please contact [email protected]. The University of Southern Mississippi YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT: GASTRONOMY AND GEOGRAPHY OF SOUTHERN SPAIN by Katherine Perry A Thesis Submitted to the Honors College of The University of Southern Mississippi in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Science in the Department of Geography & Geology December 2015 ii Approved by _________________________________ David Cochran, Jr., Ph.D., Thesis Adviser Associate Professor of Geography _________________________________ Andy Reese, Ph.D., Chair Department of Geography and Geology ________________________________ Ellen Weinauer, Ph.D., Dean Honors College iii Abstract Using empirical and numeric data, this study explores the use of food as a proxy to understand the cultural-historical geography of southern Spain. After spending three months in Granada, Spain, I compiled the most commonly used thirty-five ingredients from a selection of Spanish cookbooks and contextualized them within the broader history of Spain. The elements of traditional Andalucían cooking fit into three primary chapters of Iberian history: Roman occupation, the Moorish invasion beginning in the 8th century, and the Columbian exchange, or the exchange of goods that took place between the Americas and Old World following European discovery of the New World. Globalization adds an additional and incredibly complex layer to the Andalucían kitchen, making contemporary food in the region a reflection of many outside influences. The wider implication of this study lies in the fact that it sheds light on the character of Andalucían cuisine and demonstrates that what is often perceived as purely Spanish or Andalucían is actually an amalgamation of internal and external forces that have shaped Spain since the settlement of the Iberian Peninsula. Key words: food, food geography, Spain, Andalucía, cultural geography iv Dedication NiAnna Balzli, Courtney McMullan, Joshua Von Herrmann, and my family: A million thanks for your warm friendship, endless patience, and wonderful wit. v Acknowledgements I offer sincerest thanks to my academic and thesis advisor, Dr. David Cochran, for his mentorship, guidance, and encouragement from the first moment I stepped into his classroom. I am forever grateful for his kindness and endless patience, as he helped me enormously to grow as a person and as a student. He sets an outstanding example for what an educator should be. Muchas gracias. I would also like to thank the Honors College at the University of Southern Mississippi for offering me such a unique opportunity to conduct research as an undergraduate student, and on a topic that I care a lot about. Finally, I offer thanks to the NASA Space Grant program, whose support helped fund the purchase of the Spanish cookbooks and history books I used for this research. vi Table of Contents List of Figures .................................................................................................................. viii List of Tables ..................................................................................................................... ix Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................1 Chapter 2: Literature Review ...............................................................................................5 Chapter 3: Methodology ....................................................................................................11 Chapter 4: Geography of Spain & Andalucía ....................................................................14 Chapter 5: History of Spain ...............................................................................................20 Chapter 6: The Globalized Andalucían Kitchen ................................................................35 Chapter 7: Conclusions ......................................................................................................42 References ..........................................................................................................................44 vii List of Figures Figure 1: Political territory of Spain and the boundaries of Andalucía .............................18 Figure 2: Major land use and land cover zones of Spain ...................................................18 Figure 3: Shaded relief map of Spain ................................................................................19 Figure 4: Major rivers of Spain ..........................................................................................19 Figure 5: Jamón Asado ......................................................................................................37 Figure 6: Paella..................................................................................................................38 Figure 7: Gazpacho ............................................................................................................38 viii List of Tables Table 1: Overall inventory of ingredients ..........................................................................41 Table 2: Inventory of ingredients from Cuisines of Spain (Barrenchea) ..........................41 Table 3: Inventory of ingredients from Rustica (Camorra & Cornish) ............................41 Table 4: Inventory of ingredients from Spain (Koehler) ..................................................41 ix CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION An exploration of food as a means to study history and culture is an underused tool that can provide us with a fuller understanding of place. Consider some of the most basic ingredients in a bowl of gumbo: chicken, bell pepper, okra, and bay leaves. This classic New Orleans staple of creole cuisine incorporates vegetables and meats from all over the world (Florio 2014): chickens domesticated in Eurasia; bell peppers from South America; okra, which originated in Africa; and bay leaves from the Mediterranean. With a little background knowledge of commonly consumed vegetables and animals, a pot of gumbo gives us a look into the cultural and economic history of New Orleans, and allows us to better understand the place: a coastal city whose origins in the colonial Atlantic world gave it a unique mix of European, African, and Native American character. Food plays a large, though often overlooked, role in how we describe and perceive other cultures. By studying the gastronomy of a region, one can come to understand its history and its geography. My thesis explores the culture of food in southern Spain as it relates to the surrounding physical landscapes, the history of the region, and more recent impacts of globalization. It demonstrates that studying regional dishes offers a unique insight into the cultural history and geography of a place. Andalucía, the southernmost autonomous department in Spain, dominates the southern Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula (see Map 1, page 18). Along its shore, Andalucía possesses a lovely maritime landscape dotted with olive groves and marked by dramatic mountains hugging the coastline while the interior is characterized 1 by a notably dry climate. Its fertile lands make Andalucía a prosperous producer of fruits and vegetables and a pastoral center for cattle and pork. In addition, its location along the southern coast of Spain makes it well situated to be outwardly oriented. Historically, Andalucía was an important center of trade, not only with the Mediterranean world, but also with the Americas and other overseas colonial possessions of the Spanish Empire. Such geographic elements have had a huge impact on the internal production and consumption of food in Andalucía, as well as in the globalized food market of Spain as a whole. The impacts of historical events, such as the Roman occupation of the Iberian Peninsula, the Moorish invasion in 711 CE, and the Columbian exchange of goods and crops with the Americas after the late fifteenth century are still apparent in the food culture of Spain. Potatoes, a common ingredient in Andalucía, are native to South America and would have no place in the Andalucían diet had Columbus not reached the Americas, nor would bacalao, a cod preserved in salt, be such a pervasive source of protein had the Basque fishermen of northern Spain not traveled to the Atlantic waters off North America to fish. The Moorish influence, however, remains the most significant in Andalucía and is reflected deeply in the food and vocabulary of the region. According to the Real Academía Española, Andalucía, saffron, oil, marzipan and at least one word for olive (i.e. Andalucía, azafrán, aceite, mazapán and aceituna respectively) are Arabic rather than Latin in terms of their linguistic origin. The Moors