Are culinary judgments objective?

All animals eat, but only humans, as far as we know, make judgments on whether the food they eat is good. Dogs, monkeys and cats may have eating preferences but, as far as we know, they do not evaluate what they eat. Call this kind of evaluation culinary evaluation or, to be easier on the ears, culinary judgment. The sort of culinary judgment I have in mind is not grounded on the goodness of food for humans beings, that is, the nutritional value of food for humans beings. Nutrition may be connected to the sort of culinary goodness I am interested in, but it is not necessarily and may be perversely inversely related: the more nutritional the food, the worse the food. If culinary judgments were grounded solely on nutrition, then the culinary arts would be subsumed by the medical sciences. Since we frequently make culinary judgments quite independently of any knowledge or even belief regarding its nutritional value, there is a least a prima facie case for distinguishing the two.

A culinary judgment is a very complex judgment. We make one when, after taking a bite of sautéed foie gras, we deem it excellent or yummy. We make one when, after nibbling on some walnuts and mandarin orange with the foie gras, we say that that is a great pairing or that they go well together. We call a chef excellent or brilliant; oenophiles make judgments about when a wine is ready to drink or when it is too young; we sometimes make wide ranging judgments on the quality of an entire cuisine as compared to another type of cuisine, e.g. French vs. Italian. The question then is whether these types of judgments are objective? Can such judgments be true? Can someone be correct when making such judgments? If so, in what sense? To what extent does culture, upbringing, physiological make-up, education, or class influence or determine such judgments?

There is a great tension in our beliefs regarding this question. On the one hand, many have a great reluctance to tell others that they are wrong when they deem such and such food good (or bad). This would suggest the belief that culinary judgments are subjectively grounded, say, on someone’s subjective preferences. To say that caviar is good (or bad) is just to say that someone prefers it (or not). ‘To each according to his own tastes’ is often used to succinctly express this view. On the other hand, many consider food preparation an art, a craft. This would suggest, on the analogy with other crafts, that there is such a thing as excellence and fault with respect to how the craft is practiced. If a tailor cuts fabric in a certain way, the resulting suit can be judged excellent or shoddy. The judgment is grounded on standards of excellent tailoring. Mutatis mutandis excellent architecture, music and literary composition, carpentry, etc. If so, then to make a judgment contrary to the standards of culinary excellence is to make an incorrect judgment. On this view, someone who considers, for example, Sichuan cuisine bad can be simply incorrect.

There are many questions to be explored before we can make even a preliminary assessment of the relevant terrain. How deep is the dependency of culinary judgments on the senses? Is it possible to judge a dish good even though one despises its taste, smell and sight? What kind of objectivity is in question? Isn’t it absurd to claim that culinary judgments are objective in the same way scientific judgments are? Can convention and the history of a specific cuisine objectively ground judgments made about it in the way, one could argue, legal judgments are grounded in history and convention? How far can the craft analogy be taken? Is being a gourmand like being a tailor or an architect? Can the conflict of culinary judgments be adjudicated? Lastly: Who cares? Does the objectivity (or not) of culinary judgments matter?