| Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History Volume 43 Contributor(s): Laudan, Rachel (Author) |
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ISBN: 0520286316 ISBN-13: 9780520286313 Publisher: University of California Press OUR PRICE: $28.45 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: April 2015 |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Cooking | Regional & Ethnic - General - History | World - General - Cooking | History |
| Dewey: 641.5 |
| Series: California Studies in Food and Culture |
| Physical Information: 1.1" H x 5.9" W x 9" (1.40 lbs) 488 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Rachel Laudan 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--in this superbly researched book. 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. Cuisine and Empire shows how merchants, missionaries, and the military took cuisines over mountains, oceans, deserts, and across political frontiers. Laudan'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. |