By Joe Ortiz
Editor’s note: This is the eighth in an ongoing series.
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Having been in the food business for more than 60 years, I see striking similarities between the creation of art and the making of soup.
Joe Ortiz
The soup analogy isn’t far-fetched at all, because some of the processes are so similar. Just listing one of the primary compositional techniques of drawing, painting, and writing—condensation—makes me think of stirring a big kettle of minestrone.
Condensation can help reduce a work of art or a soup down to its essence.
For example, in drawing and painting, visual artists sometimes squint while observing a subject in order to eliminate unnecessary details. By combining and reducing elements of an image, artists can make it more visually dramatic.
Similarly, writers revise a story by reducing for efficiency and expanding for clarity. They condense passages to avoid needless repetition; and offer new facts and anecdotes to improve clarity. In soup making we condense a broth to deepen flavor and add extra ingredients to improve texture.
Recipe instructions reveal still other similarities in technique. Just as an artist looks at an object and draws a visual representation but creates something new, we cooks might follow the essential outline of a recipe yet tweak it, using our own personal touch, sensibilities, and seasonings.
What We Can Learn
In writing, altering the syntax—the order in which words and phrases are placed in a sentence—helps create a convincing narrative argument. Likewise, following a recipe requires a logical order of adding ingredients to the bowl, frying pan, or soup kettle. As Julia Child once said: “A recipe is like a story: it has a beginning, a middle, and an end.”
Specifically, in writing, the task of fixing an unwieldy sentence often comes down to placing the most important phrase in a more meaningful position, usually at the end for emphasis. This also applies to cooking when an experienced cook changes the traditional sequence of adding ingredients to the preparation. As Julia might have agreed, a careful reordering of adding ingredients can boost the flavor of the finished product.
I learned this adjustment firsthand in a Louisiana Jambalaya cooking class, when the “holy trinity” of diced onion, celery, and bell pepper—a variation on the French mirepoix mixture of onion, celery, and carrot—was the third ingredient added to the preparation instead of the first, which is traditional in many dishes. Because the instructor encouraged students to add the mirepoix after the sausage was sauteed—and give it a good, strong browning to concentrate the mixture—the result helped to achieve the earthy flavor of the Jambalaya.
What Can We Do
I think we’d all admit that creative home cooks are often compelled to give a recipe their own stylistic interpretation, the cook’s turn of hand that can achieve unique flavors. But many of us might also agree that, in our consumption of literature, a “great read” is so much more than a listing of the facts, details, and argument. In fact, it’s the writer’s personal style that makes a story come to life.
By adding, subtracting, and letting the “flavors” meld, both artist and cook fashion a unique concoction. The results may resemble the original subject (for the artist) or recipe (for the cook), but during the “cooking,” we add that unique twist, depending on how much we reduce the broth or the narrative, concentrate the flavors or meaning, or alter the order of ingredients as we place them in the kettle or on the page.
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