A01=Melitta Weiss Adamson
Author_Melitta Weiss Adamson
Category=WB
eq_bestseller
eq_food-drink
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
World History: Culture
Product details
- ISBN 9780313361760
- Weight: 454g
- Dimensions: 156 x 235mm
- Publication Date: 30 Oct 2004
- Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Students and other readers will learn about the common foodstuffs available, how and what they cooked, ate, and drank, what the regional cuisines were like, how the different classes entertained and celebrated, and what restrictions they followed for health and faith reasons. Fascinating information is provided, such as on imitation food, kitchen humor, and medical ideas. Many period recipes and quotations flesh out the narrative.
The book draws on a variety of period sources, including as literature, account books, cookbooks, religious texts, archaeology, and art. Food was a status symbol then, and sumptuary laws defined what a person of a certain class could eat—the ingredients and preparation of a dish and how it was eaten depended on a person's status, and most information is available on the upper crust rather than the masses. Equalizing factors might have been religious strictures and such diseases as the bubonic plague, all of which are detailed here.
MELITTA WEISS ADAMSON is Professor of Modern Languages and Literatures at the University of Western Ontario.
