Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>This volume examines the various ways that sauces create and reflect identity. The sauces that one eats evoke emotions, define meals and the conversations over those meals, and the way one thinks about oneself and others. The chapters of this volume ask the reader to reconsider how they define sauces, avoiding the temptation to confine sauce by the rules of the modern kitchen, and instead allowing those who ate or eat particular sauces to create that definition. The chapters examine sauces from Europe and North and Central America, beginning in the ancient Roman world and ending in the kitchens of modern homes, restaurants, and culinary schools. Readers will learn about garum, ketchup, and mole, but will also read essays on less traditional sauces, including olive oil, maple syrup, and even human sweat. All of these were considered sauces by the cultures that produced and consumed them, and each one informs our understanding of those cultures. The chapters examine the relationship between sauces and identity in four ways. The book opens with a conversation about the development of sauces in Europe for the past two thousand years. It then geographically broadens and turns to the relationship of sauces to the self, and what a study of sauce reveals about that sauce’s consumer. The next set of chapters examine sauces and the other: how outsiders view a people’s sauce speaks volumes for how they understand that particular culture. The concluding chapters suggest new directions for thinking about and studying sauce.</jats:p>