Cuisine and empire : cooking in world history / Rachel Laudan.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Laudan, Rachel, 1944- author.

Series:

California studies in food and culture ; 43.

California studies in food and culture ; 43

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Cooking--History.

Cooking.

Food habits--History.

Food habits.

Food--Social aspects.

Food.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xiv, 464 pages : illustrations (black and white), maps (black and white) ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, 2015.

Summary:

Here the author tells the remarkable story of the rise and fall of the world's great cuisines from the mastery of grain cooking some twenty thousand years ago, to the present. Probing beneath the apparent confusion of dozens of cuisines to reveal the underlying simplicity of the culinary family tree, she shows how periodic seismic shifts in 'culinary philosophy', beliefs about health, the economy, politics, society and the gods, prompted the construction of new cuisines, a handful of which, chosen as the cuisines of empires, came to dominate the globe. This book shows how merchants, missionaries, and the military took cuisines over mountains, oceans, deserts, and across political frontiers. The author's innovative narrative treats cuisine, like language, clothing, or architecture, as something constructed by humans. By emphasizing how cooking turns farm products into food and by taking the globe rather than the nation as the stage, she challenges the agrarian, romantic, and nationalistic myths that underlie the contemporary food movement.--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Mastering grain cookery, 20,000-300 B.C.E

The barley-wheat sacrificial cuisines of the ancient empires, 500 B.C.E.-400 C.E

Buddhism transforms the cuisines of south and east Asia, 260 B.C.E.-800 C.E

Islam transforms the cuisines of central and west Asia, 800-1650 C.E

Christianity transforms the cuisines of Europe and the Americas, 100-1650 C.E

Prelude to modern cuisines: Europe, 1650-1800

Modern cuisines: the expansion of middling cuisines, 1810-1920

Modern cuisines: The globalization of middling cuisines, 1920-2000.

Notes:

Originally published: 2013.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780520286313

0520286316

OCLC:

908967505