Food & Culinary History

A culinary history of the United States from colonial times to the present includes traditional recipes adapted to today's kitchens and tastes.

Forson examines the complexity of black women's legacies using food as a form of cultural work. Exploring material ranging from personal interviews to the comedy of Chris Rock, from commercial advertisements to the art of Kara Walker, and from cookbooks to literature, Williams-Forson considers how black women arrive at degrees of self-definition and self-reliance using certain foods.

Ranging from the eating habits of our prehistoric ancestors to food-related policy issues we face today, this work covers the full spectrum of foods that have been hunted, gathered, cultivated, and domesticated.

Equal parts American and culinary history, Fashionable Food examines our collective past from the kitchen counter. Delightfully illustrated, this collection of faddish recipes from the 1920s to the 1990s is a decade-by-decade tour of a hungry American century.

Over 350 illustrations of different foods, people eating, utensils, banquets, menus, wine lists, and much more.

It presents a highly informative and entertaining overview of the cultural development of food and food availability throughout human history - from the Australopithecine diet of roots, berries, nuts, termites, and bone marrow to the new Dunkin' Donuts dark-roast coffee. The text is enhanced by extensive cross-references and nearly 200 remarkable illustrations and photographs."

An enthralling world history of food from prehistoric times to the present, packed with intriguing information, and startling insights.

Drawing on historical and contemporary visual material, Linda Roodenburg shows how the designer's language conforms to the spirit of the times, uses stereotypes and prejudices or anticipates social changes.

Explores the vast range of dietary habits around the world and examines the development of these differences.

Deliciously organized by the Seven Deadly Sins, here is a scintillating history of forbidden foods through the ages--and how these mouth-watering taboos have defined cultures around the world.

A sweeping social history of food and eating in America, exploring the economic, political, and cultural factors that have shaped the American diet from 1930 to the present.

The origin of agriculture -- Seeds, sex, and sacrifice -- We are what we eat -- Meat: the luxury food -- Grasses: the staff of life -- Poor man's meat: the legumes -- The starchy staples -- Man's most useful tree: the coconut -- Other plants for food, beverage, and spice -- Evolution and breeding of man's domesticates -- Let them eat cake?

A stunning look at food and its visual representations throughout time. Exploring the historical progression of cookery, the global food journey, the development of food branding, and the culture of celebrity chefs.

In this lively and informative history of the world as seen from a gourment's table, Sokolov explains how all of us - Europeans, Americans and Asians - came to eat what we eat today.

In this delightfully surprising history, Laura Shapiro recounts the prepackaged dreams that bombarded American kitchens during the fifties.

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Edible Ideologies moves from the construction of the nineteenth-century English gentleman to the creation of two of today s iconic figures in food culture, Julia Child and Martha Stewart. Along the way, readers will encounter World War I propaganda, holocaust and Sephardic cookbooks, the Rosenbergs, German tour guides, fast food advertising, food packaging, and chocolate, and will find food for thought on the meanings of everything.

A captivating history of feasts throughout the ages. From a humble meal of potatoes, to the extravagance of the high medieval and Renaissance tables, to the exquisite refinement of the Japanese tea ceremony, Charlemagne’s Tablecloth covers them all, in a gustatory exploration of history’s great feasting tables.

How Western Christianity and Eastern philosophy merged to spawn a political movement that had the prohibition of meat at its core.

One day we woke up and realized that our “macaroni” had become “pasta,” that our Wonder Bread had been replaced by organic whole wheat, that sushi was fast food, and that our tomatoes were heirlooms. How did all this happen, and who made it happen?

Americans love their breakfast cereal, which is second only to milk and soda in supermarket spending. Cereals and their cartoon spokescharacters are some of the most enduring pop-culture icons of the 20th century. The Great American Cereal Book is the definitive compendium of breakfast cereal history and lore, celebrating the most recognizable brands and packaging.

Uncommon Grounds tells the story of coffee from its discovery on a hill in Abyssinia to its role in intrigue in the American colonies to its rise as a national consumer product in the twentieth century and its rediscovery with the advent of Starbucks at the end of the century.

A cultural history and drinking guide.

An exploration of the centuries-old desire for spice in food, in medicine, in magic, in religion, and in sex. It follows spices back through time, history, myth, archaeology, and literature.

It began with pepper and other spices, like cinnamon and nutmeg, some eight hundred years ago. Then came coffee, tea, and chocolate, followed by alcohol and opium--all articles of pleasure people in the Western world craved in order to escape from their humdrum lives and heighten their daily enjoyment.

It provides a knife's-edge view of what it was like to be behind the scenes at some of the turning points of the last century.