Food and Sherlock Holmes Stories
Sherlock Holmes series is one of the reasons my study abroad in the United Kingdom. The series is famous and popular all over the world and it was translated into Japanese in 1894 first time. In my childhood, I had read the series again and again. However, I could not imagine “London”, and “foods” in the stories. European cities and culture are different from my country, Japan. Even “Pub”, I could not understand and imagine when I was a child who never been to outside of Japan.
Actually, Doyle writes not much about the foods in Holmes’s stories and Holme often skips meals.
Holmes explains that “Because the faculties become refined when you starve them. Why, surely, as a doctor, my dear Watson, you must admit that what your digestion gains in the way of blood supply is so much lost to the brain. I am a brain, Watson. The rest of me is a mere appendix. Therefore, it is the brain I must consider.” (Doyle, “The Adventure of Mazarin Stone”).
It seems that he is not interested in eating but the cases. However, the readers seem to be interested in Holmes and eating and I am one of the readers who is interested in Holmes and foods. There are some derivative restaurants and cookbooks of Sherlock Holmes stories. For instance, there are cookbooks, like Sherlock Holmes Cookbook by Sean Wright and John Farrell, The Sherlock Holmes Victorian Cookbook: Favourite Recipes of the Great Detective and Dr. Watson by William Bonnell, and Dining With Sherlock Holmes: A Baker Street Cookbook byJulia Carlson Rosenblatt and Frederic H. Sonnenschmidt. I attached the photo of the restaurant which is named Sherlock Holmes. I think it is interesting because people enjoy Holmes and foods even there are not much description of Holmes eating habit or foods in the stories.
 |
| The restaurant named Sherlock Holmes near the Sherlock Holmes Museum |
I found there is a pub named "Sherlock Holmes" in Charing Cross.
It is an interesting place. There is no food menu which is showed in the stories, but you can enjoy the room of recreating of Holmes's flat which is related some popular cases. I think the most interesting point is the menu. I associate derivative restaurants have some kind of menu which relate to original stories. However, there is no that kind of menu in the pub.
I would like to explore the representations of foods from a Japanese girl point of view in the stories and some derivative works of Sherlock Holmes stories relate to food.
