Collegiate Life: Feed Them and They Will Come
Posted by R. J. O’Hara for the Collegiate Way
5 October 2001 (collegiateway.org) — People who have browsed some of the pages on the Collegiate Way website will know that I believe food plays an extremely important role in residential college life—not just in dining halls, but at formal and informal events of all kinds. One of my oft-repeated slogans is “food is the currency of all social transactions in a residential college.” So, why not consider developing some special recipes distinctive of your college and publish them in a special newsletter, booklet, or on the web? Give each item a special college-related name, perhaps. This particular suggestion is occasioned by my recent pleasure at discovering a book edited by Ursula Aylmer called Oxford Food: An Anthology, with Recipes from the Colleges (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum Publications, 1995). The blurb claims that the book includes recipes from 1282 to the present. (Perhaps some are drawn from specimens in the Ashmolean’s collections?) Any residential college can easily start such a project—why not give it a try in yours.
