St. Gallen food historian Dominik Flammer and photographer Sylvan Müller have studied and compiled products from the Swiss Alps in a book. Marmot meat or mountain lentils, all bear witness to chapters of Swiss history.
Dominik Flammer has devoted more than ten years of research to the Swiss Alpine culinary heritage. He also traveled across the Alps with photographer Sylvan Müller to meet producers. The objective: to discover or rediscover culinary traditions and atypical products.
A journey recounted in his book “Das kulinarische Erbe der Alpen” published by AT, with portraits of the producers and dozens of historical sources. Marmot stew, forest chocolate, Alpine lentils, cat meat or poor people’s sausages, all dishes which were part of the Swiss plates for a long time before gradually disappearing.
>> To listen: the five episodes of the series of the show On en parole dedicated to the Alpine culinary heritage: “Alpine culinary heritage” series
The disappearance, then reappearance of legumes
Once flourishing in Switzerland – there were more than 200 types – lentil crops gradually gave way to potatoes and rice. “In the year 1800, the Swiss still consumed around thirty kilos per person of legumes. Twenty years ago, it was 300 grams, explains Dominik Flammer in the program On en talks on October 14. People started to eat almost too much meat and forgot that legumes also existed. I think it was because of industrialization and the increase in wages. At the end of the 19th century, few people ate vegetables. did not know about vitamins. Research on this subject only began at the beginning of the 20th century.
The arrival of the potato also contributed to the disappearance of legumes, but also to that of oats. More dense in calories, the potato was quickly adopted by the Swiss, who combined it with cheese.
With the rise of the vegetarian and vegan movements, legumes are coming back into fashion today. The specialist specifies that today, the Swiss consume two kilos of legumes per year. “Farmers in Graubünden have started growing lentils again. There are also some farmers in the Geneva region and in the canton of Schaffhausen,” adds Dominik Flammer.
Famines and atypical meats
Today absent from most Swiss restaurant menus, marmot has long been eaten in the Alps. “I wanted to dedicate a chapter of my book to the history of the animals that we eat in the Alpine region,” explains Dominik Flammer, “to show what people ate when there were great famines. We know that in Graubünden, families would go out in winter to look for marmots in their cellars for meat.”
Other meats were also eaten, some of which would be shocking today. “Nowadays, it is very difficult to find a single hunter who will give me badger, fox or marmot meat so that I can make a stew. But thirty years ago, this was the norm. In the 19th century century, most people knew the taste of dog or cat meat. In Basel in the 16th century, cat was the most important meat in the city: 30 to 40% of all meat consumed was cat meat. cat.”
Radio subject: Maya Chollet
Web adaptation: Myriam Semaani
Dominik Flammer and Sylvan Müller, “The culinary heritage of the Alps”, ed. AT Publishing.
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