Food historians have spent great portions of their lives studying
one subject—Charles Perry’s astounding knowledge of medieval Arab
and Mongolian cuisine, and twentieth-century California cuisine; Clifford Wright on the Mediterranean; Claudia Roden on Arab food; Najmieh Batmangli’s beautiful books and sentiments on Persian food;
Betty Fussell on corn. This book cannot go into that kind of depth,
but I hope it will whet your appetite to look further into other works.
Please use the notes and the bibliography at the end of the book to
find out more. This entire book is an appetizer, a broad overview to
put food in historical, political, social, economic, anthropological, and
linguistic context.
WHAT’S NEW IN THE SECOND EDITION
Throughout the book, a new feature, Crossing Cultures, has been added.
This gives thumbnail sketches of foods and customs across cultures, like
New Year celebrations and filled dumplings. There are more holiday histories (Selametan, Halloween/Dia de los Muertos, etc.), food fables (Spices
and Rotten Meat, etc.), food chronologies (wine, tea, etc.), recipes/ingredients, kitchen technology, and more cuisines and cultures, especially
of Asia. Empires have been added: Byzantine, Portuguese, Turkish/
Ottoman, Austro-Hungarian. There are period maps and more photographs.
The First Course has more information about ancient Mesopotamia,
including a touching memorial holiday called Kispu. The Third Course
adds Vikings, and the Byzantine Empire and its customs, including books
for the wealthy that prescribed what to eat and do throughout the year
to guarantee health. The first European explorers, the Portuguese, appear in the Fifth Course, in their fifteenth century search for “Christians
and spices,” which led them to India, Indonesia, and Japan. The Sixth
Course goes more deeply into the West African–American South female
rice culture connection and also adds the Scandinavian countries and
their festivals, including the native people, the Sami (formerly Laplanders). There is more of Napoleon in the Seventh Course, and Florence
Nightingale begins to reclaim her rightful place in food history and military cooking in the Eighth Course. Information on modern scientific genetic modification of food begins in the Ninth Course with Mendel and
the Austro-Hungarian Empire of his time, and the American Luther Burbank, and culminates with a chronology in the Twelfth Course. The expanded Tenth Course has more information on Polish-Americans and
new information on Greek-Americans. It also includes more about food
adulteration and the origins of the U.S.