McWilliams/Food Rules, 2. Shrouding the Caucasus: Georgian Hospitality Rituals through the French Gaze

In 1858 the French writer Alexandre Dumas undertook a voyage to the Caucasus and a concurrent memoir of the trip. Much of this travelogue is devoted to descriptions of his reception in various regions of Georgia, in lodgings ranging from palaces to embassies to mountain hovels. His detailed commentary on Georgian rules of hospitality is particularly relevant to an understanding of alimentary ritual – with a twist, however: Dumas' Voyage au Caucase is a better source for what it reflects about presuppositions and projections of French gastronomic laws than for what it reveals – and simultaneously veils – about Georgian culinary rites.