5~4
CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS
But it cannot always do so in the same manner. The ambiguity of
the roasted is intrinsic, that of the smoked and the boiled extrinsic, since
it does not derive from things themselves, but from the way one-- speaks
about them or behaves toward them. For here again a distinction becomes
necessary: the quality of naturalness which language confers upon boiled
food
is
purely metaphorical: the "boiled" is not the "spoiled"; it simply
resembles it. Inversely, the transfiguration of the smoked into a natural
entity does not result from the nonexistence of the buccan, the cultural
instrument, but from its voluntary destruction. This transfiguration is thus
on the order of metonymy, since it consists
in
acting as if the effect
were really the cause. Consequently, even when the structure is added to
or transformed to overcome a disequilibrium, it is only at the price of
a new disequilibrium which manifests itself in another domain. To
this
ineluctable dissymmetry the structure owes its ability to engender myth,
which is nothing other than an effort to correct or hide its inherent
dissymmetry.
To conclude, let us return to our culinary triangle. Within
it
we
traced another triangle representing recipes, at least the most elementary
ones: roasting, boiling and smoking. The smoked and the boiled are
opposed as to the nature of the intermediate element between fire and
food, which is either air or water. The smoked and the roasted are
opposed by the smaller or larger place given to the element air; and the
roasted and the boiled by the presence or absence of water. The bound–
ary between nature and culture, which one can imagine as parallel to
either the axis of air or the axis of water, puts the roasted and the
smoked on the side of nature, the boiled on the side of
cultur~
as to
means;
or,
as to results,
the smoked on the side of culture, the roasted
and the boiled on the side of natur:e:
RAW
roasted
(-)
(-)
Air
(+)
smoked
COOKED
Water
(+)
boiled
ROTTED
The operational value of our diagram would be very restricted did
it not lend itself to all the transformations necessary to admit other
categories of cooking. In a culinary system where the category of the
roasted is divided into roasted and grilled,
it
is the latter term (con–
noting the lesser distance of meat from fire) which will be situated at
the apex of the recipe triangle, the roasted then
being
pla~ed,
still on
