The Elements of a Home | Amy Azzarito
The Elements of a Home: Curious Histories behind Everyday Household Objects, from Pillows to Forks.
By Amy Azzarito
Intro: Welcome to the number-one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book with Suzy Chase. She's just a home cook in New York City sitting at her dining room table talking to cookbook authors.
Amy Azzarito: My name is Amy Azzarito. I'm a design historian living in the Bay Area, and my new book is Elements of a Home: Curious Histories Behind Everyday Household Objects, from Pillows to Forks.
Suzy Chase: For more Cookery by the Book, you can follow me on Instagram. If you enjoy this podcast, please be sure to share it with a friend. I'm always looking for new people to enjoy Cookery by the Book.
Now on with the quarantine question round. Number one, where are you living?
Amy Azzarito: I'm in Marin County, which is in the Bay Area, just north of San Francisco.
Suzy Chase: What restaurant are you dreaming of going to after the quarantine?
Amy Azzarito: I picked two. One is an omakase restaurant in San Francisco. It's the special occasion restaurant for my husband and myself called Sasaki. 10 people sit at a bar and watch the sushi chef make everything. It's one of those restaurants where they don't let you put your own soy sauce on things. Then the other is a restaurant here in Marin County called Guesthouse. They make these amazing ribs on Thursday nights that I've been missing.
Suzy Chase: What dish is getting you through this that you're making at home?
Amy Azzarito: Yeah, so Cooking Light has a recipe for, they call it Instant Pot Vegetarian Cassoulet, that I have made more times than I can count. Our stay at home has coincided with my one-year-old daughter developing into a real eater, a person who eats real food, so I'm cooking more than ever, and she loves this dish. I'm making it once a week. I'm making something with cannellini beans for her once a week if I can find them.
Suzy Chase: Now on with the show. You are a sought-after expert on the topic of design history both past and present. We go through everyday life using napkins, forks, spoon, tablecloths, and even a punch bowl not even considering these items have a story and a history. My whole apartment here in New York City is filled with family heirlooms, and I love looking at history through the lens of objects. That is what this book is all about. Can you give us a short history of household objects?
Amy Azzarito: Sure. In the introduction to the book, I explain that most of the objects in our home were conceived to fill some sort of a need, something to lie on, something to drink from, to sit on, but that doesn't mean that, just because they filled a practical void, that there wasn't an aesthetic consideration. Human beings seem drawn to beauty.
When we consider the history of household objects prior to the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, which is fairly recent, some of the things that we today deem essential, or many of the things, rather, so pillows and chairs and forks, the things that you mentioned, all of those things were handmade and available to a very few. This book looks at objects through that lens. What were things like? What was it like to live in that time period? What were the stories of these objects?
Suzy Chase: The extensive bibliography in the back of the book is the roadmap of your journey, and it's extensive. Can you talk a little bit about the process of figuring out what items you wanted to include in the book and your research?
Amy Azzarito: I came up with the object list in a few ways. I did spend time just noting the things that are ubiquitous in all homes, so mattresses, for example, and pillows. Then I'd see what was available on the history of that object and if it seemed like an Avenue that I could explore or if it was a dead end.
Other times, I may have read something more general. I mention Joan DeJean's book on comfort. She writes about the history of the sofa in the context of a larger narrative. I thought the story of the sofa was so compelling that reading her take set me on a path to research more. With one hook like that, I would then look over those bibliographies, look for additional books, look for articles, dissertations, so just following the thread if I could.
Suzy Chase: Talk a little bit about how the French pops up over and over in this book.
Amy Azzarito: In the introduction, I was just trying to head off anyone complaining like, "Why is there so much French stuff here?" I do quote Edmund White who wrote that the French invented the idea of luxe and they have always been willing to pay for it.
Beginning in the 16th century, there's a lot of money from French colonies, and the French spend that money and they spend it on... not just the kings but the aristocracy, and they spend it on food and clothing and decorative objects, and they're fashion-forward and they start trends. As this consumer market evolves, people makers, artisans, are enticing them to spend more. I mean it's like our economy, really, so there's always something new, new clocks, new style of silver. You certainly don't want to be seen with the outmoded, whatever that was. Then everybody is just trying to catch up for the next even... You could argue, even now, we're still looking to catch up to their aesthetics.
Suzy Chase: Well, case in point, Versailles.
Amy Azzarito: Right?
Suzy Chase: Oh, my gosh.
Amy Azzarito: Yeah, yeah.
Suzy Chase: Over the top.
Amy Azzarito: I mean it's interesting because Versailles is not just a palace for one king like we think of it, the fairy stories, but it's actually like this giant sprawling apartment complex. All the nobility are living there. Everyone's there. In fact, a lot of them who have these amazing townhouses in Paris are called to be there at the behest of the French king. It's how he keeps an eye on them. They're crammed, sometimes, into small apartments, but it is crowded. They bring their servants and they bring their dogs, but they're all there together, so you have all these people with money all together all the time. They're bored. They're looking to spend their money. They're looking to outdo one another, and it just like... It's this explosion of style.
Suzy Chase: Let's start off with the good-old fork.
Amy Azzarito: Yeah.
Suzy Chase: It's actually the first thing you wrote about for Design Sponge, a popular, now-defunct design blog that we all miss so much. You wrote, in the book, it was once considered immoral, unhygienic, and a tool of the devil. Many people, even aristocrats, preferred to eat with their hands. Can you tell us about the fork?
Amy Azzarito: Yeah. Most people ate with their hands. Part of the reason that the fork is seen as this implement of the devil is the early fork looked like a pitchfork. It was a two-pronged implement. The idea was that God made your hands and your hands should bring the food to your body to feed your body, and that's what God intended and, by using something else, it's devilish. I mean it's hard to get back into a medieval mindset, but that was the logic.
To me, what's fascinating about the fork is that everyone was fine eating with their hands, that that was working really well. There was a lot of ritual around hand-washing, so everybody was very clean and there was a trumpet that would blow and call you to the table to hand wash, and they would pour the water over your hand not dip your hand in the basin. It was a nice ritualized thing. Well, all of the sudden, there's more sugar, again from the colonies. Chefs create this way to preserve fruit in this sugar, and they make this sticky, syrupy fruit dessert, and people just go gaga for this.
Suzy Chase: British food writer Bee Wilson pointed out that there are fork cultures and there are chopstick cultures, but all people around world use spoons. In the old days, people wouldn't leave their home without their spoon, and what it was made of said everything about your social standing. Can you give us a little history of the spoon?
Amy Azzarito: This time period, pre-Industrial Revolution, so anything before the 1850s, things, objects, everything, cloth, everything you wear, shoes, everything's made by hand, which means it's rather expensive. That's the reason you're carrying your own spoon around with you.
It's not until we have more manufacturing they can afford to buy spoons for everyone. This is where we get the idea of... The concept of being born with a silver spoon in your mouth comes about this time as the spoon is a popular... silver spoon, rather, is a popular baptismal gift. It's basically just because it was the least expensive item of silver one could get, so that's sort of how that started, although if you were really wealthy, you might give a baby, say, 13 spoons that would have a little apostle on the finial of the spoon.
Once we hit the 18th century, the problem isn't, "Do I have enough spoons?" Now that people can buy spoons, they want to have as many spoons as possible, and so, in the Victorian era, they have a spoon for everything.
Suzy Chase: I didn't know that bread used to be the plate. Tell us about the trencher in the Middle Ages.
Amy Azzarito: When you think about the medieval plate, we're thinking about a round slice of aged bread basically. That's what the early medieval plates were made of. There are recipes floating around online because these are aged, hard slices. They were aged for a few days so that they worked as a plate. We have these medieval plates, these trenchers, and the fork burst onto the scene, and people began eating all of their meals with this awesome new fork, and the fork pokes holes in the bread plate and the sauces run through, so bread doesn't really work as a plate.
Then, as a stop-gap measure, people put maybe wood or something underneath the bread plate, so you have the bread plate then a... Finally, they're just like, "Forget it," and we get rid of the bread and we just have the plate.
Suzy Chase: Can you talk about how, in ancient Rome, the wine glass was disposable?
Amy Azzarito: Yeah. I think that's probably one of my favorite facts about the wine glass. The blow pipe had... which was a technique, a way to make glass, had just been invented in Syria, which was, at that time, part of the Roman Empire. We're talking like 50 BCE. All of a sudden, there's a plethora of glass. There's a lot of glass, and so if a Roman housewife chipped a glass, it was cheaper to just throw it away and buy a new one. That that kind of disposable mentality also existed in ancient life is fascinating.
Suzy Chase: I've never put much thought into the napkin that I use at any given meal. In the book, you say this essential domestic item has surprising origins. Can you talk a little bit about that?
Amy Azzarito: Yeah. This is one of my favorite facts from the book is that the earliest napkins were actually made of lumps of dough that were used by the Spartans. They would have a dough ball, and they would just kind of roll it and clean their oily fingers during the meal. Then, at the end of the meal, they would just, again, throw the dough to dogs or the poor people, and then that became a slice of bread that they would use as a napkin. Using a piece of dough would have been much less expensive than getting someone to weave and sew and make cloth to then use for napkins just to wipe your hands with.
Suzy Chase: Why do you think medieval diners would be horrified by our casual attitude toward table linens?
Amy Azzarito: Dinner and meal time and these dinner objects are so interesting because they are so ritualized, and they're symbolic, and they mean a lot to us, so having a bare table when you could afford to have cloth would have just not made any sense to them. It would have been behavior like a peasant.
Suzy Chase: Tell us about Charlemagne's tablecloth party trick.
Amy Azzarito: Charlemagne, just to remind everybody, he was the first emperor to rule over western Europe. We're talking about the year 755. He had tablecloths woven with asbestos and would throw it in the fire after a dinner, and the crumbs would burn off, but the tablecloth would remain intact.
Suzy Chase: Oh, my God.
Amy Azzarito: There are stories of Romans doing this, and so it's like there are... Is it true or not? Asbestos is apparently fireproof, and so the Greeks and Romans would use it as shrouds, and so it was used as a material, a cloth. They also knew that people who had the job of weaving it seemed to get really ill and die, but they kept using it.
Suzy Chase: Yeah. Hello, lung cancer.
Amy Azzarito: I know, right?
Suzy Chase: But we don't care.
Amy Azzarito: It was not a great time to be a human, quite possibly, because even if you're wealthy, you don't have air conditioning, you don't have electricity. Then, if you're not, you're a slave or you’re a peasant. Life was about survival.
Suzy Chase: When I think about the punch bowl, I think about a cold beverage, but in the book you wrote, "The first versions of punch were always served hot." Can you talk a little bit about that?
Amy Azzarito: When I think of punch, I think of something cold with sherbet in the middle, but yeah, the first punch comes from India, and it was served hot. You want to think about a mulled wine sort of thing. It was made to be drunk communally, but it was usually made with a liquor that needed a lot of spice and sugar to be palatable. It's initially drunk by sailors, but it just becomes the thing to drink in Britain in the 17th century because it's just cold, and so warming from the inside, and then getting a little tipsy or more and forgetting about your troubles was the thing to do.
Suzy Chase: We just talked about a bunch of food-related objects, but there are many more types of objects in this book. Do you have a favorite?
Amy Azzarito: I write about the mattress and about Henry VIII would have his attendant stab the mattress through every night to make sure there wasn't an assassin lying in there. We talk about the sofa and the chandelier and the jewelry box and the pillow. I don't know that I could pick a favorite, Suzy.
Suzy Chase: Now to my segment, putting you on the spot again, called My Favorite Cookbook. What is your all-time favorite cookbook and why?
Amy Azzarito: I am a digital subscriber of The New York Times and subscriber of the cooking section also. They had the amazing Melissa Clark, who's been a guest on your podcast.
Suzy Chase: Yes.
Amy Azzarito: She has a recipe I used to use years ago, how to make maraschino cherries. I learned how to do that via her column. I just have love for our papers right now. It's a hard time for them. I might have to just pick the paper. I know.
Suzy Chase: That's fine.
Suzy Chase: Where can we find you on the web and social media?
Amy Azzarito: I am everywhere. Amy Azzarito, my first and last name, A-M-Y, A-Z-Z-A-R-I-T-O on Instagram. That's where I am most often.
Suzy Chase: Well, thanks, Amy-
Amy Azzarito: Thank you.
Suzy Chase: ... for coming on Cookery by the Book Podcast.
Amy Azzarito: Thank you.
Outro: Subscribe over on cookerybythebook.com, and thanks for listening to the number-one cookbook podcast, Cookery by the Book.
