Paper short abstract:

Food is central to human life and society, and has thus served as a useful source for historians. Focused on East Africa, this paper demonstrates how moments of food production open unexpected channels of communication through which non-culinary information can be shared and knowledge created.

Paper long abstract:

Food, a central aspect of cultural heritage, has long offered useful fodder for historians across the geographic, temporal, and thematic spectrums. The process of food preparation, meanwhile, has been considered at various times and places as menial labor and, in contrast, as a kind of high art. In this paper, I focus on a series of anecdotes about baking cakes and other instances of food preparation in Lamu, Kenya and its environs in the early decades of the twentieth century. Participants included residents of the coastal city, visiting European researchers, men and women, Muslims and Christians. And while sweet baked goods or elaborate meals were one result of such exchanges, I hope to demonstrate how the communication, the material requirements, and the social structures embedded within the act of cooking and baking required the sharing of knowledge between parties who might, in other contexts, be kept studiously apart.