The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe

The Food Series

by Ken Albala

The importance of the banquet in the late Renaissance is impossible to overlook. Banquets showcased a host’s wealth and power, provided an occasion for nobles from distant places to gather together, and even served as a form of political propaganda. But what was it really like to cater to the tastes and habits of high society at the banquets of nobles, royalty, and popes? What did they eat and how did they eat it? In The Banquet, Ken Albala covers the transitional period between the heavily spiced and colored cuisine of the Middle Ages and classical French haute cuisine. This development involved increasing use of dairy products, a move toward lighter meats such as veal and chicken, increasing identification of national food customs, more sweetness and aromatics, and a refined aesthetic sense, surprisingly in line with the late-Renaissance styles found in other arts.

Genres: History, Food, Nonfiction, Cookbooks, Food History, Renaissance

248 pages, Hardcover

First published March 19, 2007

About the author

Ken Albala, Professor of History at the University of the Pacific in Stockton, CA and Director of Food Studies in San Francisco, is the author or editor of 25 books on food. These include academic monographs, cookbooks, reference works and translations. He is also series editor of Rowman and Littlefield Studies in Food and Gastronomy. His current project is about Walking with Wine.

Reviews

[Redsteve · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author starts out with an interesting conceit: that development of renaissance banquets (in the case appx. 1520-1660) paralleled and reflected the changes in art from the mannerist to baroque movements. I'm not 100% sold on this, but he does make a compelling case. Further, banquets from that period were less about eating than they were about what image a host wished to project to his guests - and, in fact, to non-guests (sometimes even in foreign countries) through the publication of menus after the fact. For this reason, the principle figure in a banquet was the "scalco", essentially a stage manager for the production, rather than the actual cook. He was both producer and director for the event, combined with accountant and doctor (in the sense that he had to take into account his patron's humors when choosing the dishes). In addition, Albala deals with many of the changes in upper-class foods between the medieval period and the late 17th Century (e.g. the shift from game to farmed animals- especially "white" meats such as capon and veal -, wild plants to garden vegetables, the increase in the use of sugar, distilled alcohol, and dairy products, as well as changes in spices used) and the rise of "national cuisines". Interestingly, even though this period begins a quarter century after Columbus' voyage, based on published accounts and cookbooks. there is still little use of "New World" foods by the upper classes. The author also includes a section of recipes, a chapter on carving (a much more physical pursuit than I had previously considered), as well as one of publications condemning the luxuriousness of these extravaganzas. Overall, the Banquet is an excellent book of food history.

[Elizabeth Loupas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great research book. I do wish it had a chapter on the elaborate sweets of the period but I'll happily take all the lovely sensuous details it did have.