A Cultural History of Food in the Early Modern Age (The Cultural Histories Series, 4) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0857850261 ISBN 13: 9780857850263

Publisher: Berg Publishers, 2014

Synopsis

The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries form a very distinctive period in European food history. This was a time when enduring feudal constraints in some areas contrasted with widening geographical horizons and the emergence of a consumer society.While cereal based diets and small scale trade continued to be the mainstay of the general population, elite tastes shifted from Renaissance opulence toward the greater simplicity and elegance of dining à la française. At the same time, growing spatial mobility and urbanization boosted the demand for professional cooking and commercial catering. An unprecedented wealth of artistic, literary and medical discourses on food and drink allows fascinating insights into contemporary responses to these transformations.

A Cultural History of Food in the Early Modern Age presents an overview of the period with essays on food production, food systems, food security, safety and crises, food and politics, eating out, professional cooking, kitchens and service work, family and domesticity, body and soul, representations of food, and developments in food production and consumption globally.

About this title

About the Author:

Beat Kümin is Professor of Early Modern European History at the University of Warwick, UK. He is the author of Drinking Matters: Public Houses and Social Exchange in Early Modern Central Europe and the editor of The European World: An Introduction to Early Modern History.

Review:

“[T]he six volumes of A Cultural History of Food provide an enlightening and fascinating insight into the history of food and its development throughout history in an authoritative and accessible style.” ―Louise Ellis-Barrett, Social Sciences

About this edition

• Publisher: Berg Publishers
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0857850261
• ISBN 13: 9780857850263
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 272
• Editor: Kümin Beat