Culinary products have culinary value. That is, they have value qua culinary products. However, what is the nature of culinary value and what elements determine it? In the light of the central and universal role that culinary products play in our lives, offering a philosophical analysis of culinary value is a matter of interest. This paper attempts to do just this. It develops three different possible models of culinary value, two rather restricted ones and a third more encompassing one, rejects (...) the first two, and defends the third one. (shrink)

Do recipes and their instances, i.e. dishes, have any representational power? This is vexed question in the philosophy of food. In this paper, I take a fresh look on the issue by means of a theory of recipes. I argue that once a certain conception of recipes is in place, complemented by a certain conception of traditions, it becomes plausible that certain recipes, traditional ones, and their instances, traditional dishes, can be said to represent past living conditions. Hence, at some (...) some food items experiences could be said to genuinely possess a representational dimension. (shrink)

In the past years, food has found itself a central focus of creativity in contemporary culture and a pinnacle of this trend has been the kind of culinary creativity displayed at Noma in Copenhagen. But what is culinary creativity? And what is distinctive about the kind of culinary creativity displayed at places like Noma? In this paper, I attempt to answer these two questions. Building up on pioneering work on creativity by Margaret Boden, I argue that creativity is a matter (...) of adding new valuable things to the world. I then distinguish three different ways a recipe can be creative, building up on different culinary trends. I then focus on the specific case of Noma and argue that what is specific about the kind of culinary creativity displayed at Noma is that it emphasizes the role that recipes can play in mediating our relation to the environment. (shrink)

In a series of publications, Derek Matravers has challenged what he calls the “consensus view” of the nature of fiction. According to this consensus view, there is a conceptual route that starts with the notion of a prescription to imagine and that ends up with a systematic distinction between fiction and non-fictional representations. This paper engages in a systematic reconstruction of Matravers’ argument against the consensus view as well as a rebuttal of recent rejoinders offered by Gregory Currie and Kathleen (...) Stock. It concludes that the challenge against the consensus view, once properly understood, still stands. (shrink)