ABSTRACT
The “Matchmaker” was a mini-individual wedding cake produced by the MSc in Innovation in Culinary Arts and Sciences (ESHTE), class of 2017-2018. This experimental culinary object was anchored in the students’ literary analysis of Mr. Woodhouse, a central character of Austen’s novel Emma (1816), and seemed to privilege his narcissistic traits of valetudinarian and whiner about marriage and food. As an object designed by the students the “Matchmaker” upholds their reading of Mr. Woodhouse’s temperance under a scientific concern about food choices and what these imply. By combining literary analysis, archival research, and a nutrition’s approach to foodways and food systems, the students were able to produce an act of reception which amplified the boundaries of conventional food genres - namely, recipe books. The fact is that, through Mr. Woodhouse, Austen seems to be engaged in remembering the rhetoric of gluttony and temperance.
