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California Studies in Food and Culture #21
Yemek: Damak Tadının Tarihi
''Yemek, Damak Tadının Tarihi'' kitabında tarihöncesi damak tadının evrimi, Antik Yunan ve Roma dünyasının damak tatları, İmparatorluk Çin'inde damak tadı ve gastronomi, Ortaçağ İslam mutfağının doğuşu, Ortaçağ Avrupa'sında yemek ve damak tadı, Rönesans'tan sonra yemek modaları, 1800'den sonra yemek yenilikleri, 19. ve 20. yüzyıllarda Fransız mutfağı, restoranın gelişimi ve gastronominin önündeki yeni ufuklara kadar pek çok konu, uzman kalemlerin ilgi çekici yazıları ve 97'si renkli, 238 görsel malzemeyle anlatılıyor.
368 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2007
61 people are currently reading
2375 people want to read
About the author
Paul Freedman
37 books114 followersPaul H. Freedman is the Chester D. Tripp Professor of History at Yale University. He specializes in medieval social history, the history of Spain, the study of medieval peasantry, and medieval cuisine.
His 1999 book Images of the Medieval Peasant won the Medieval Academy's prestigious Haskins Medal.
~~
Professor Freedman specializes in medieval social history, the history of Spain, comparative studies of the peasantry, trade in luxury products, and history of cuisine.
Freedman earned his BA at the University of California at Santa Cruz and an MLS from the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. He earned a Ph.D. in History at the same institution in 1978. His doctoral work focused on medieval Catalonia and how the bishop and canons interacted with the powerful and weak elements of lay society in Vic, north of Barcelona. This resulted in the publication of The Diocese of Vic: Tradition and Regeneration in Medieval Catalonia (1983).
Freedman taught for eighteen years at Vanderbilt University before joining the Yale faculty in 1997. At Vanderbilt, he focused on the history of Catalan peasantry, papal correspondence with Catalonia and a comparative history of European seigneurial regimes. He was awarded Vanderbilt’s Nordhaus Teaching Prize in 1989 and was the Robert Penn Warren Humanities Center Fellow there in 1991-1992. During that time he published his second book, Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia (1991).
Since coming to Yale, Professor Freedman has served as Director of Undergraduate Studies in History, Director of the Medieval Studies Program and Chair of the History Department. He has offered graduate seminars on the social history of the Middle Ages, church, society and politics, and agrarian studies (as part of a team-taught course).
Freedman was a visiting fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte in Göttingen in 2000 and was directeur d’Études Associé at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris in 1995. He also published his third book, Images of the Medieval Peasant (1999) and two collections of essays: Church, Law and Society in Catalonia, 900-1500 and Assaigs d’historia de la pagesia catalana (writings on the history of the Catalan peasantry translated into Catalan).
More recently Freedman edited Food: The History of Taste, an illustrated collection of essays about food from prehistoric to contemporary times published by Thames & Hudson (London) and in the US by the University of California Press (2007). His book on the demand for spices in medieval Europe was published in 2008 by Yale University Press. It is entitled Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination. Freedman also edited two other collections with Caroline Walker Bynum, Last Things: Death and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (1999) and with Monique Bourin, Forms of Servitude in Northern and Central Europe (2005).
A Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, Freedman is also a corresponding fellow of the Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona and of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His honors include a 2008 cookbook award (reference and technical) from the International Association of Culinary Professionals (for Food: The History of Taste) and three awards for Images of the Medieval Peasant: the Haskins Medal of the Medieval Academy (2002), the 2001 Otto Gründler prize given by the Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, and the Eugene Kayden Award in the Humanities given by the University of Colorado. He won the American Historical Association’s Premio del Rey Prize in 1992 (for The Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia) and shared the Medieval Academy’s Van Courtlandt Elliott prize for the best first article on a medieval topic in 1981.
His 1999 book Images of the Medieval Peasant won the Medieval Academy's prestigious Haskins Medal.
~~
Professor Freedman specializes in medieval social history, the history of Spain, comparative studies of the peasantry, trade in luxury products, and history of cuisine.
Freedman earned his BA at the University of California at Santa Cruz and an MLS from the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. He earned a Ph.D. in History at the same institution in 1978. His doctoral work focused on medieval Catalonia and how the bishop and canons interacted with the powerful and weak elements of lay society in Vic, north of Barcelona. This resulted in the publication of The Diocese of Vic: Tradition and Regeneration in Medieval Catalonia (1983).
Freedman taught for eighteen years at Vanderbilt University before joining the Yale faculty in 1997. At Vanderbilt, he focused on the history of Catalan peasantry, papal correspondence with Catalonia and a comparative history of European seigneurial regimes. He was awarded Vanderbilt’s Nordhaus Teaching Prize in 1989 and was the Robert Penn Warren Humanities Center Fellow there in 1991-1992. During that time he published his second book, Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia (1991).
Since coming to Yale, Professor Freedman has served as Director of Undergraduate Studies in History, Director of the Medieval Studies Program and Chair of the History Department. He has offered graduate seminars on the social history of the Middle Ages, church, society and politics, and agrarian studies (as part of a team-taught course).
Freedman was a visiting fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte in Göttingen in 2000 and was directeur d’Études Associé at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris in 1995. He also published his third book, Images of the Medieval Peasant (1999) and two collections of essays: Church, Law and Society in Catalonia, 900-1500 and Assaigs d’historia de la pagesia catalana (writings on the history of the Catalan peasantry translated into Catalan).
More recently Freedman edited Food: The History of Taste, an illustrated collection of essays about food from prehistoric to contemporary times published by Thames & Hudson (London) and in the US by the University of California Press (2007). His book on the demand for spices in medieval Europe was published in 2008 by Yale University Press. It is entitled Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination. Freedman also edited two other collections with Caroline Walker Bynum, Last Things: Death and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (1999) and with Monique Bourin, Forms of Servitude in Northern and Central Europe (2005).
A Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, Freedman is also a corresponding fellow of the Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona and of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His honors include a 2008 cookbook award (reference and technical) from the International Association of Culinary Professionals (for Food: The History of Taste) and three awards for Images of the Medieval Peasant: the Haskins Medal of the Medieval Academy (2002), the 2001 Otto Gründler prize given by the Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, and the Eugene Kayden Award in the Humanities given by the University of Colorado. He won the American Historical Association’s Premio del Rey Prize in 1992 (for The Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia) and shared the Medieval Academy’s Van Courtlandt Elliott prize for the best first article on a medieval topic in 1981.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 31 reviews
July 12, 2021
This book reads like it was put together by a committee. It is as if someone thought it would be a good idea to have an overarching theme - food history - and then commission various authors to write chapters, researchers to look for appropriate art and then get an editor to provide an overall voice. There is just no cohesion and the quality of the chapters varies wildly. Some were interesting and some were too obviously by an author more used to writing academic texts (actually all the authors were I think, just some were more reader-friendly than others).
I've read quite a lot of food history books, only a few of them really good, but two on my 10-star shelf, Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food which I never wrote a review for but delivers what the title promises, how food developed over history and it's importance and variety, and Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Meal where the history is part of the book, but not its entirety.
This book would make a nice gift, it's very beautiful but not one that I would recommend for reading enjoyment and knowledge. 3.5 stars, not rounded up.
I've read quite a lot of food history books, only a few of them really good, but two on my 10-star shelf, Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food which I never wrote a review for but delivers what the title promises, how food developed over history and it's importance and variety, and Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Meal where the history is part of the book, but not its entirety.
This book would make a nice gift, it's very beautiful but not one that I would recommend for reading enjoyment and knowledge. 3.5 stars, not rounded up.
June 26, 2023
I have a bone to pick with Food: The History of Taste (and yes, that pun’s intentional). The essays that make up this collection do not put forward the history of taste, but a history of it. And it often isn’t about just taste, but about many other factors governing the preparation, consumption, and enjoyment of food.
But what it is, is a very interesting book about many things culinary and gustatory. Barring an essay (by Joanna Waley-Cohen) on the food of Imperial China and one (by HD Miller) on medieval Islamic cuisine, most of the food and foodways discussed here are centred round Europe and America. The book, after an introduction by the editor Paul Freedman, begins with a fantastic eye-opener of an essay on what prehistoric humans might have eaten, and from there goes on, in roughly chronological order, right up to modern-day trends in food consumption.
Almost all of these essays were fascinating, deeply engrossing insights into how people have eaten through the ages, what food has meant in terms of health, morality, class and status, and so much more. Reproductions of delightfully intricate paintings showing banquets and other meals (or glimpses of kitchens) bring the book to life. In several of the essays, there are quotations from old manuscripts, journals, books (even novels) and more that shine a light on the food of that period: the essay on restaurants, for instance, is replete with these and all the better for it.
If there was one essay I didn’t much care for, it was the last one, which was rather dry in an academic sort of way. This (Novelty and Tradition: The New Landscape for Gastronomy, by Peter Scholliers), has lots of statistics, but was not enough to hold my attention. Furthermore, there were statements here that weren’t backed up by explanations: I got the impression of an essay that didn’t really fit with the tone and possibly the target audience of the rest of the book.
But, despite that (and, really, I know I am being a bit harsh on Scholliers’s essay; it’s not bad, just a mismatch, I thought), a good book. Much recommended if you are at all interested in the history of food.
But what it is, is a very interesting book about many things culinary and gustatory. Barring an essay (by Joanna Waley-Cohen) on the food of Imperial China and one (by HD Miller) on medieval Islamic cuisine, most of the food and foodways discussed here are centred round Europe and America. The book, after an introduction by the editor Paul Freedman, begins with a fantastic eye-opener of an essay on what prehistoric humans might have eaten, and from there goes on, in roughly chronological order, right up to modern-day trends in food consumption.
Almost all of these essays were fascinating, deeply engrossing insights into how people have eaten through the ages, what food has meant in terms of health, morality, class and status, and so much more. Reproductions of delightfully intricate paintings showing banquets and other meals (or glimpses of kitchens) bring the book to life. In several of the essays, there are quotations from old manuscripts, journals, books (even novels) and more that shine a light on the food of that period: the essay on restaurants, for instance, is replete with these and all the better for it.
If there was one essay I didn’t much care for, it was the last one, which was rather dry in an academic sort of way. This (Novelty and Tradition: The New Landscape for Gastronomy, by Peter Scholliers), has lots of statistics, but was not enough to hold my attention. Furthermore, there were statements here that weren’t backed up by explanations: I got the impression of an essay that didn’t really fit with the tone and possibly the target audience of the rest of the book.
But, despite that (and, really, I know I am being a bit harsh on Scholliers’s essay; it’s not bad, just a mismatch, I thought), a good book. Much recommended if you are at all interested in the history of food.
July 10, 2015
This lavishly illustrated book on food through the ages is a fairly scholarly account. Each of the ten sections is written by a different author, a specialist in the era and area. The editor himself is a history professor, one of whose specialties is medieval cuisine. Starting with hunter-gatherers and early farming, the book takes us through Greece and Rome, Imperial Chine, medieval Islamic foods and customs, the European Middle Ages, post Renaissance and the foods from the new world, the changes that occurred in the 1800s, French cuisine and the changes it has gone through (a LOT of changes) and the rise of the celebrity chef, the development of the restaurant, and the changing face of food in the modern age.
It’s a very interesting read if one is into social history. Because of the multiple authors, there is a bit of a lack of flow between chapters, but this is actually good: the authors come from a variety of countries, so we get to see the international side of things. This is not a cookbook; this is a book about food itself and how it fit into the society, with all its relations to status, religion, and wealth. I found it fascinating, although it did drag in a places. It reminds me of a really good college text book, the kind you find yourself reading ahead in while neglected one’s other classwork.
It’s a very interesting read if one is into social history. Because of the multiple authors, there is a bit of a lack of flow between chapters, but this is actually good: the authors come from a variety of countries, so we get to see the international side of things. This is not a cookbook; this is a book about food itself and how it fit into the society, with all its relations to status, religion, and wealth. I found it fascinating, although it did drag in a places. It reminds me of a really good college text book, the kind you find yourself reading ahead in while neglected one’s other classwork.
January 21, 2023
O trecere bine documentată prin istoria alimentației și cum a evoluat gustul populației la nivel macro.
May 9, 2021
Interesting book about the history and evolution of food and taste preferences through time and nations.
October 11, 2015
With plenty of beautiful images, each chapter by a different author paints a picture of a unique period in food history. We begin with hunter-gatherers; proceed through geographically-specific historical foodways accounts of ancient Greece, Rome, China and the Middle East, focusing more so on the cuisines of Europe from the Middle Ages through the 19th Century; and end with discussions of gastronomy, dining out, and the future of food.
While I appreciated the many works of art, material culture, and consumer culture throughout the book, I think I preferred Fernandez-Armesto's Near a Thousand Tables : A History of Food for a thematic overview of food history. As a collection of chapters from different scholars, this work lacks the cohesion and delightfully linear quality of Fernandez-Armesto's work.
While I appreciated the many works of art, material culture, and consumer culture throughout the book, I think I preferred Fernandez-Armesto's Near a Thousand Tables : A History of Food for a thematic overview of food history. As a collection of chapters from different scholars, this work lacks the cohesion and delightfully linear quality of Fernandez-Armesto's work.
October 8, 2009
A good book with many interesting perspectives. I certainly learned some very interesting things and now have some ancient cookbooks to hunt down. I was hoping for more insight into the how and why of taste and not just the what.. but I suppose that may be a difficult thing to research. My one complaint about this book (especially in the chapters that focus on French Cuisine) is regarding the relatively large number of French words and phrases that were not translated. I found it distracting and a bit difficult to get through those parts of the book.
December 17, 2020
One of those great books about food and its history!
English: https://elifthereader.com/books/food-...
Türkçe: http://kitaplikkedisi.com/kitaplar/ye...
English: https://elifthereader.com/books/food-...
Türkçe: http://kitaplikkedisi.com/kitaplar/ye...
December 30, 2020
History and food are among my favorite subjects, so I really enjoyed reading this book.
September 6, 2025
#Binge Reviewing my previous Reads #Food History
Paul Freedman’s Food: The History of Taste feels like the heavyweight anthology of food history—the kind of book that could double as both a reference work and a coffee table centrepiece.
It’s not a quirky single-ingredient narrative (Vanilla, Salt) or a witty romp (How Carrots Won the Trojan War). Instead, it’s a sweeping, scholarly feast: centuries of food culture laid out course by course, continent by continent.
The structure is almost like a relay race through time. Different historians contribute chapters, each tackling an era—from ancient banquets and mediaeval feasts to Renaissance dining, Enlightenment shifts, and the modern explosion of industrial and globalised food. Freedman, as editor, curates the flow so it feels like you’re moving steadily through the evolution of taste itself—how luxury, necessity, trade, religion, and science shaped what people thought was worth eating.
What really grabbed me was how taste is treated not as a fixed thing but as a cultural performance. The mediaeval elite prized spice-heavy, extravagant dishes not because they tasted “good” to us now but because they signalled wealth and power. Fast forward, and the 20th century champions purity, freshness, and speed—hello, canned goods, frozen food, and TV dinners. Taste becomes as much about identity as flavour.
Because it’s multi-authored, the book is rich in detail. You get anecdotes about Roman garum (that fermented fish sauce Romans put on everything), mediaeval sugar sculptures at banquets, the Columbian exchange reconfiguring diets forever, and the rise of haute cuisine in France that still echoes in Michelin stars today.
Reading it alongside something like Sitwell’s A History of Food in 100 Recipes is fun: Sitwell gives you snapshots; Freedman gives you the whole documentary series. The former you might read curled up on the couch; the latter you might keep on the desk for long, satisfying dives.
It’s not breezy, but it’s rewarding. A kind of Michelin three-star read: you don’t devour it quickly—you savour it, course by course.
Paul Freedman’s Food: The History of Taste feels like the heavyweight anthology of food history—the kind of book that could double as both a reference work and a coffee table centrepiece.
It’s not a quirky single-ingredient narrative (Vanilla, Salt) or a witty romp (How Carrots Won the Trojan War). Instead, it’s a sweeping, scholarly feast: centuries of food culture laid out course by course, continent by continent.
The structure is almost like a relay race through time. Different historians contribute chapters, each tackling an era—from ancient banquets and mediaeval feasts to Renaissance dining, Enlightenment shifts, and the modern explosion of industrial and globalised food. Freedman, as editor, curates the flow so it feels like you’re moving steadily through the evolution of taste itself—how luxury, necessity, trade, religion, and science shaped what people thought was worth eating.
What really grabbed me was how taste is treated not as a fixed thing but as a cultural performance. The mediaeval elite prized spice-heavy, extravagant dishes not because they tasted “good” to us now but because they signalled wealth and power. Fast forward, and the 20th century champions purity, freshness, and speed—hello, canned goods, frozen food, and TV dinners. Taste becomes as much about identity as flavour.
Because it’s multi-authored, the book is rich in detail. You get anecdotes about Roman garum (that fermented fish sauce Romans put on everything), mediaeval sugar sculptures at banquets, the Columbian exchange reconfiguring diets forever, and the rise of haute cuisine in France that still echoes in Michelin stars today.
Reading it alongside something like Sitwell’s A History of Food in 100 Recipes is fun: Sitwell gives you snapshots; Freedman gives you the whole documentary series. The former you might read curled up on the couch; the latter you might keep on the desk for long, satisfying dives.
It’s not breezy, but it’s rewarding. A kind of Michelin three-star read: you don’t devour it quickly—you savour it, course by course.
August 17, 2021
Saya nyaris lupa pernah membaca buku ini! Jika bukan karena meminjam lagi di kantor untuk membuat anotasi informatif koleksi. Seingat saya, buku ini dulu saya beli di BBW untuk Evyta. Harap maklum, saat itu BBW baru pertama diselenggarakan.
Dalam 368 halaman, pembaca akan disuguhi aneka informasi seputar makanan. Mulai dari asal mula kebudayaan makan, munculmya aneka rasa, adaptasi aneka makanan, serta bagaimana kemunculan restoran untuk pertama kali.
Ada anggapan bahwa kita dijajah bangasa Eropa karena mereka sangat ingin mendapatkan rempah-rempah dengan lebih murah. Namun, memasuki abad 19, rasa kertarikan tersebut menguap, berganti pada kopi dan coklat. Kenapa?
Aneka gambar yang ada sangat membantu pembaca untuk memahami informasi. Selain itu, dari sisi estetika, ilustrasi membuat buku makin menarik.
Dalam 368 halaman, pembaca akan disuguhi aneka informasi seputar makanan. Mulai dari asal mula kebudayaan makan, munculmya aneka rasa, adaptasi aneka makanan, serta bagaimana kemunculan restoran untuk pertama kali.
Ada anggapan bahwa kita dijajah bangasa Eropa karena mereka sangat ingin mendapatkan rempah-rempah dengan lebih murah. Namun, memasuki abad 19, rasa kertarikan tersebut menguap, berganti pada kopi dan coklat. Kenapa?
Aneka gambar yang ada sangat membantu pembaca untuk memahami informasi. Selain itu, dari sisi estetika, ilustrasi membuat buku makin menarik.
December 26, 2020
Large and comprehensive. This is good and bad.
I liked the approach of choosing 'moments' of taste changes, but the articles were not particularly accessible. They were scholarly, and that made reading through this a lot less fun than it should have been. I loved the illustrations, pictures and artwork, but they didn't really get the attention they deserved. All in all, a VERY large book, that could have delivered its content in half the space, and ina much more enjoyable way.
I liked the approach of choosing 'moments' of taste changes, but the articles were not particularly accessible. They were scholarly, and that made reading through this a lot less fun than it should have been. I loved the illustrations, pictures and artwork, but they didn't really get the attention they deserved. All in all, a VERY large book, that could have delivered its content in half the space, and ina much more enjoyable way.
December 27, 2021
Surprisingly good! I don't have a huge interest in food so I wasn't sure what to expect, but the author balanced the cuisine of nobility with the food of the common-person well. Interesting to see how French cuisine became so highly-regarded. Some lists of courses or dishes for specific meals either require more interest than I have or skim-reading, but in general I think many people would find this interesting and learn something.
December 15, 2024
This is hard one. It's a neat historical survey covering an ambitious range of societies and periods. But it meanders without rhyme or reason, even between paragraphs.
It's at its best when it can hold onto a thread for a few pages, like how archeologists reconstruct prehistoric diets or how French cuisine represented a rebellion to Medieval spices. In-between, however, is a sea of self-indulgent tangents that can be safely skipped.
It's at its best when it can hold onto a thread for a few pages, like how archeologists reconstruct prehistoric diets or how French cuisine represented a rebellion to Medieval spices. In-between, however, is a sea of self-indulgent tangents that can be safely skipped.
January 3, 2019
Very nice fairly comprehensive survey of food throughout the world and throughout the ages, with lots of beautiful, mostly colored, illustrations. Much more than a coffee-table book, but the illustrations alone are worth paging through the book. I am happy to have it on my food and cooking bookshelves and recommend it to others with similar curiosities about food in our world.
July 12, 2023
More like 4.5 stars but I can't do the perfect 5 because of how slow a lot of it reads. I learned so much from this and have a plethora of questions I want answered now! I'm excited to find more to read to learn even more!
July 4, 2024
The essays are overall fascinating, but they do vary by author. I think this would have benefitted from a conclusion as well, to pull the findings on taste especially together in the end. It was still super interesting and I'm already eyeing the "further reading" list.
October 9, 2020
A fascinating and ambitious look at why we eat what we eat, I couldn't put it down.
Ruth Reichl
This book reminds us that taste is an essential part of civilization.
Alice Waters
April 4, 2023
Chapters are written by different people and it shows.
Especially the early ones about the food in the past are very good.
Later chapters are worse.
Especially the early ones about the food in the past are very good.
Later chapters are worse.
June 15, 2024
For those asking - yes, it mentions Bovril.
December 4, 2024
Read for my Food in World History class. Was very informative for the class and each chapter was interesting and entertaining. Wouldn’t pick it up normally but glad I read it
xx-dnf-skim-reference
March 19, 2017Large book - no way am I interested enough to read every page. I did 'heavily skim' though and I do think it might be interesting to ppl who have more curiosity for something in depth than I do.
December 1, 2008
What is taste? Is it that those who eat raw meat are commonly called barbarians? Or that British and American cuisine is considered bland by most of the rest of the world? That Hindus won’t eat meat, but Mohammed called it “the lordliest food of the people.” What makes rotten milk a delicacy in one part of the world and revolting in another? And why was chili an important condiment in Central America, but failed to impress the tribes of the north?
“[T]he idea that a society’s soul is revealed by its cooking has, in fact, been with us since earliest times,” Paul Freedman writes in his introduction to this fascinating and beautiful volume. But this is not a book about the history of cooking—although there is plenty of that too—it’s a study of how people in different cultures have thought about food, and how they have treated it in daily life. After all, civilization’s triumvirate of glories include painting, poetry…and gastronomy.
But life wasn’t always so rich. In prehistory, humans most likely scavenged to fill their bellies, and the concept of “rotten” is a relative one. As soon as tribes began to settle, however, a connection between social status and food arose. Fresh food was a luxury in the Middle Ages, and although wine, oil, and grain were the gods’ most cherished gifts to Greeks, cheese and salt were rare.
In Imperial China, the choice of food was both practical and symbolic. Although not quite one of the Seven Deadly Sins, excessive eating was strongly discouraged in moral literature and practice. Moderation and balance were the rule: fan, for the rice, meaning “to fill,” and cai meaning “to flavor.” Ying signified the cooling aspect of an ingredient, and yang the heating. Classical Greece had a similar philosophy of cuisine (probably imported from China), and named four humors (blood, black bile, yellow bile, phlegm) and their essences (heat, cold, dry, moist). Medieval Europe resurrected the idea and ran with it, suggesting that the universe consisted of only four elements and that digestion was a form of cooking.
New World exploration brought the miracle of the potato about the same time as Europeans settled on table manners (“It is boorish to plunge your hands into sauced dishes,” Erasmus said). But it was industrialization that really changed the world, as it hugely affected the way poor people ate. Prior to the 1800s, food for the majority was scarce, diluted, and poorly prepared. Industrialization brought life-saving advances in processing, preservation, and transportation. For the first time in history, people could fill themselves without emptying their pockets.
Color plates and captions delight and illustrate the informed and absorbing essays in Food: The History of Taste, making this an excellent book for the reference shelf, for the cook, for the gift-giver. (ForeWord Magazine)
“[T]he idea that a society’s soul is revealed by its cooking has, in fact, been with us since earliest times,” Paul Freedman writes in his introduction to this fascinating and beautiful volume. But this is not a book about the history of cooking—although there is plenty of that too—it’s a study of how people in different cultures have thought about food, and how they have treated it in daily life. After all, civilization’s triumvirate of glories include painting, poetry…and gastronomy.
But life wasn’t always so rich. In prehistory, humans most likely scavenged to fill their bellies, and the concept of “rotten” is a relative one. As soon as tribes began to settle, however, a connection between social status and food arose. Fresh food was a luxury in the Middle Ages, and although wine, oil, and grain were the gods’ most cherished gifts to Greeks, cheese and salt were rare.
In Imperial China, the choice of food was both practical and symbolic. Although not quite one of the Seven Deadly Sins, excessive eating was strongly discouraged in moral literature and practice. Moderation and balance were the rule: fan, for the rice, meaning “to fill,” and cai meaning “to flavor.” Ying signified the cooling aspect of an ingredient, and yang the heating. Classical Greece had a similar philosophy of cuisine (probably imported from China), and named four humors (blood, black bile, yellow bile, phlegm) and their essences (heat, cold, dry, moist). Medieval Europe resurrected the idea and ran with it, suggesting that the universe consisted of only four elements and that digestion was a form of cooking.
New World exploration brought the miracle of the potato about the same time as Europeans settled on table manners (“It is boorish to plunge your hands into sauced dishes,” Erasmus said). But it was industrialization that really changed the world, as it hugely affected the way poor people ate. Prior to the 1800s, food for the majority was scarce, diluted, and poorly prepared. Industrialization brought life-saving advances in processing, preservation, and transportation. For the first time in history, people could fill themselves without emptying their pockets.
Color plates and captions delight and illustrate the informed and absorbing essays in Food: The History of Taste, making this an excellent book for the reference shelf, for the cook, for the gift-giver. (ForeWord Magazine)
April 6, 2014
Un periplu interesant ce porneste de la bucataria antichitatii si sfarseste analizand efectele globalizarii asupra artei culinare.
Un singur rand face referire la bucataria romaneasca: "Mouzakkas-urile din bucatariile lui (restaurantului Romano's din Londra) sunt cele mai bune pe care le-am mancat in afara Bucurestiului."
O recomand oricarui gurmand. Vei descoperi cu siguranta foarte multe lucruri noi despre evolutia bucatariei.
Un singur rand face referire la bucataria romaneasca: "Mouzakkas-urile din bucatariile lui (restaurantului Romano's din Londra) sunt cele mai bune pe care le-am mancat in afara Bucurestiului."
O recomand oricarui gurmand. Vei descoperi cu siguranta foarte multe lucruri noi despre evolutia bucatariei.
February 8, 2012
Not terribly coherent as a collection, but very informative. I would not describe it as entertaining, but each chapter was interesting, well-researched, and deliciously detailed. Suitable for long reading but less useful as impromptu reference.
December 19, 2008
This was a birthday present, and I gotta say, I LERVE it! The essays are fantastic, and the thing itself is gorgeous. My foodie heart rejoices.
January 8, 2013
Only at the start of this one (we're still in prehistoric times) but already I am finding it fascinating.
August 24, 2009
Essays about taste from various cultures including prehistorical, Classical Greek, Belle Epoch Europe, etc.
January 6, 2012
A big and beautiful book of essays and photos, chronicling the history of food and taste. The essays are written by various authors so some are more interesting than others.
November 25, 2013
Reading this for one of my classes. Thought it would be boring but in essence it actually ties everything together about how and why we cook the way we do today. Great book.
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