Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History (California

Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History (California Studies in Food and Culture Book 43)

Rachel Laudan tells the remarkable story of the rise and fall of the worldâ€™s great cuisinesâ€”from the mastery of grain cooking some twenty thousand years ago, to the presentâ€”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"â€”beliefs about health, the economy, politics, society and the godsâ€”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. Laudanâ€™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.
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Country USA
Manufacturer University of California Press
Binding Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate 2013-11-21
Format Kindle eBook

Country	USA
Manufacturer	University of California Press
Binding	Kindle Edition
ReleaseDate	2013-11-21
Format	Kindle eBook

Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History (California Studies in Food and Culture Book 43)