The Gourmand gives lemons their time in the limelight

The lemon holds an interesting place in the culinary world. The trusty zing that completes a dish, or an overly heavy hand that results in an unrelenting sourness. In recent popular culture it’s been used to evoke such contradictory feelings and complicated emotions. When life gave Beyoncé lemons, she made Lemonade. Kate Nash, famously, ate so many lemons that she became too bitter, and, in Scarface, Tony Montana unwittingly scoffed down the slice that was in the bowl for washing his hands. This is what The Gourmand’s new book on the lemon is trying to evoke; it’s much more than just the remnants of a drink, or the slice that comes with your fish and chips – it’s a fruit brimming with a long and lasting cultural legacy.

The Gourmand kicked off its series of ingredients-focused books published by Taschen last year, with its seminal work on the egg. “We had to start the series with the egg,” says David Lane, co-founder of the food and arts journal alongside Marina Tweed. “The egg was super metaphorical – people have used it to talk about big philosophical topics, things like religion, birth, life etc, as well as being inspired by its very alluring sculptural shape.” When it came to the second edition, David and Marina knew they wanted to lens in on an ingredient “with very different stories to tell”. The lemon felt a perfect follow up, its unique mood, allure, aesthetic, and interesting scientific angle.

Kickstarting the book begins with the feature ideas, ensuring a good spread of focus. “We want to explore the ingredients across multiple mediums to make sure we have a good spread of art, literature, science, design, and popular culture,” says David. Then, the image research begins. Though, if a story produces a particularly strong or intriguing image, the process will be flipped backwards, adjusting the editorial angle to accommodate.

The lemon ended up producing some pretty compelling stories. Some that stand out to David are a piece focussing on the Medici’s and how lemons become a status symbol of the Renaissance; one on the creation of the Jif Lemon packaging – the process of which “informed the creation of Action Man as well as various ‘scented’ dolls” – as well as stories on Matisse and the infamous Bloomsbury Group. Research also surfaced some surprising facts that David had never encountered before, namely that the artist Joseph Beuys was a Nazi pilot who then co-founded the German Green Party. “You’ll have to read the book to find out how that ties into lemons, but it does!” he says.

As the design of the book was set with the initial edition, most of the visual “heavy-lifting” has already happened – a minimalist approach that lets the ingredient and commissioned and found imagery take centre stage. Now, David explains that the main visual process is the imagery, editing them, commissioning them and ensuring they’ve got the presence they deserve. Its also integral, David says, to make sure that the narrative is clear, so the reader doesn’t have to “work too hard”. Throughout the book you’ll encounter contemporary works like Bobby Doherty’s classic surreal still lives used for recipe images, and Baker & Evans up-close-and-personal shots, alongside classic paintings from the Bloomsbury Group, Duncan Grant and ancient wall paintings from Egypt.

What’s next for The Gourmand’s ingredient series, you might ask? Well, it looks like all of you fungi-loving foragers are going to be in for a treat...