History of visual language of food

The visual language of food in the way that I will present is the presentation of the plating. Cooks have their way of plating. It could be contemporary or traditional, which depend on how they want to present their dishes. Plating food is not just putting food on the plate, but there are many things that need to be considered for example the color of the food, the dimension and the flow of the food. The bottom line of this is the visual of the whole dish needs to be appealing.

The history of food presentation goes back to ancient time. Since BC. food has been presenting in different way, but no one really give much awareness to it. During ancient Greek in 3rd century, in the lavish feast they just piled their food on the silver plates and during their service, they will carry out large pig with fishes and birds stuff in the belly. Guests would be able to keep silver plates, spoons of gold and ivory basket.

In 15th century, people started to have tablecloths, more customs, and meals started to serve in courses. They started to have many more components in plating such as garnishes, vegetables, protein, carbohydrate and using different color in the plate.

In early 19th century, this was the period of time that conversation was prevented from each other while dining, due to the huge centerpiece in the middle of the table. The way to garnish the plate was by using vegetables and fruits craving. Also, sauces were poured over proteins for decoration and to prevent the food for not looking too plain.

In 1930s, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published a cookbook, “the Futurist Cookbook”. In his book he introduced new level of food to people by turning food into art. He believed that form and color are just important as taste.

During 1970s, silver platters were gone. Food was more geometric and they used 1/3 larger plate. Cooks started to plate less amount of food and gave more color to the dishes. The plating was somewhat similar to the Japanese look. As the years gone by, during 20th century was one of the biggest changed in the food industrial. Cooks and chefs were introduced to many more way of cooking and presentation and knowing more about science behind cooking. The trend of plating is to imitate nature by using different texture of food. Cooks are now trying to create unexpected texture of food. These days, some restaurant plates only a bite of food on a big plate.