Cuisine and Empire

Rachel Laudan

Published by University of California Press 2013

Cuisine and Empire

Cooking in World History

Rachel Laudan

Volume 43 in the series California Studies in Food and Culture

https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520954915

Overview
Contents

About this book

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.

Author information

Laudan Rachel :

Rachel Laudan is the prize-winning author of The Food of Paradise: Exploring Hawaii’s Culinary Heritage and a coeditor of the Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science.

Topics

General Interest

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
List of Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	xi
List of Tables Publicly Available Download PDF	xiv
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	xv
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Mastering Grain Cookery, 20,000–300 B.C.E. Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	9
2. The Barley-Wheat Sacrificial Cuisines of the Ancient Empires, 500 B.C.E.–400 C.E. Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	56
3. Buddhism Transforms the Cuisines of South and East Asia, 260 B.C.E.–800 C.E. Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	102
4. Islam Transforms the Cuisines of Central and West Asia, 800–1650 C.E. Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	132
5. Christianity Transforms the Cuisines of Europe and the Americas, 100–1650 C.E. Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	166
6. Prelude to Modern Cuisines: Northern Europe, 1650–1800 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	207
7. Modern Cuisines: The Expansion of Middling Cuisines, 1810–1920 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	248
8. Modern Cuisines: The Globalization of Middling Cuisines, 1920–2000 Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	308
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	361
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	393
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	439