History of Food

Resumo Este texto pretende analisar alguns livros de receitas manuscritos e publica-dos dos séculos XVII e XVIII nos quais se encontram preparados de culinária a par de outros dedicados a questões de higiene e beleza e mezinhas utilizadas na época, numa mistura comum neste tipo de documentos, em que se entrelaçam permanências e ruturas. Palavras-chave: Botica, Cozinha, Época Moderna, Portugal. Abstract This paper aims to examine manuscripts and published Portuguese recipe books of the seventeenth and eighteenth century, with cooking recipes and other ones about hygiene and beauty and also medicines used at the time. This mixture was very common at the time in this type of documents. "Curar as doenças é bom, mas evitá-las é ótimo. Ora quando este salutar intento se dirige à primeira infância, é sem dúvida, o melhor benefício que se pode prestar à humanidade. Velar pela vida e robustez da criança é uma necessidade imperiosa, tanto para as nações ameaçadas pelo perigo da despopulação (sic), como para aquelas que, como a nossa, se encontram na eminência dum outro talvez maior-o da degeneração da raça. Tudo quanto se faça para entravar a marcha deste vírus que rói pouco a pouco a mentalidade, a energia e o caráter da criança portuguesa, merece o aplau-so veemente e o auxílio inconcusso de todos os que amam sinceramente a sua pátria". Mário de Mesquita Lopes 1 A frase em epígrafe integra uma pequena brochura, publicada em 1915, que publicita o Lactogenol, um produto manipulado pelo farmacêutico Mário de Mes-quita Lopes, destinado às mães que amamentassem. Ao tomá-lo evitavam a falta 1 Mário de Mesquita Lopes, Lactogenol (registado), preparado por…, Lisboa: Tipografia da Cooperativa Mi-litar, 1915, pp. 5-6.

is awarded each year to an engaging, original piece of writing that delivers new research and/or new insights into any aspect of food history relating to any period, place, people or culture. We welcome innovative, well written entries of up to 10,000 words in length in the English language only. The Prize is £1,500 for the winning essay, article or book chapter. Authors may submit one entry only each, and they must be delivered to us by this year's closing date of Friday 22 nd April 2022.

Chapter 4 of Eiríks saga rauða has long drawn the attention of scholars due to its detailed description of a seiðr, a rare occurrence in Íslendinga sǫgur as well as in sagas of other genres. The protagonist of the scene, a Greenlandic seiðkona named Þorbjǫrg, is depicted as a social functionary who creates a relationship with the supernatural world and acquires a deeper knowledge and foreknowledge concerning the surrounding area, for the benefit of the local community. The performance takes place during a great famine at the beginning of the eleventh century, and the semi-public ritual had the purpose of predicting when the dearth would come to an end. It consisted – among other things-of a ritual meal: a porridge of kid's milk and of the cooked hearts of all the living creatures that inhabited the area. The present paper aims at casting light on this specific aspect of Þorbjǫrg's seiðr, and at contextualizing it within a wider literary and historical landscape. The intention is to integrate traditional interpretations with observations on the importance of sympathetic magic in ancient and medieval Europe, and particularly in medieval Scandinavia.

Restorancılık, zengin yemek kültürüne sahip bütün ülkelerde önem verilen bir konudur. Yiyecek-içecek kültürünün gelişmesiyle gastronomi turizmi, yerel değerler, gelenekler ve insan hayatında yemek gibi konulara eğilim artmaktadır. Bu gelişmeler dikkate alınarak, bu araştırmada restoran işletmeciliğine ilişkin kavramsal bir çalışma gerçekleştirilmiştir. Çalışmanın amacı, Türkiye’de restoranların gelişimini ortaya koymaktır. Bu sayede, Türk restoranlarının hangi evrelerden geçtiği ve dünyadaki gelişmelerin takibindeki eşzamanlılık konularında bilgi sahibi olunacaktır. Çalışmada öncelikle yemek kültüründeki gelişmeye değinilerek dünyada yemek kültürünün seyrine yönelik bilgiler aktarılmıştır. Restoranın doğuşuyla birlikte sektör olarak restorancılığın gelişimi açıklanmış ve restorancılıkta önemli tarihler, işletmeler ve kişilere ilişkin bilgilere yer verilmiştir. Bunun yanı sıra, işletmelerde hizmeti etkileyen akımlar ve hizmet şekilleri de açıklanmıştır. Sonuç olarak, dünyadaki ilerlemelerle paralel bir seyir izlemiş olan Türkiye’deki restorancılığın, gelişmelere açık bir sektör olduğu ifade edilmiştir.

In this essay, I examine the relationships among blood, sap, and wine in seventeenth-century English agricultural treatises.  The associations among blood, sap, and wine provoke unease about English reliance on imported wines.  If blood and wine are analogous, even fungible, then what does it mean that English people drink “outlandish” wine?  Fueled by the association between blood and wine, concerns about strengthening English bloodlines and preserving their purity contributed to the promotion of English (and colonial) grape growing and wine making.  In turn, the pre-modern belief in the vitality and dynamism of wine persists in some modern-day celebrations of wine’s spiritual powers and health benefits.  This essay ultimately reflects on the practical consequences and material manifestations of figuration, the complex entanglements of past and present, and the complexities of “drinking local.”

Актуальні питання суспільних наук та історії медицини. Спільний українсько-румунський науковий журнал. (АПСНІМ), 2020, № 2 (26), P. 74-78

The paper aims to analize hand-written and printed cookery books published in Ukraine from the mid- 18 to the early 20 centuries as a source for studying gastronomic traditions, methods of preparation and consumption of dishes, rations, festive and everyday food as well as interrelations of different European gastronomic practices. Research methods. The research is based on the cultural- historical approach. It involves the descriptive method for identifying pecul- iarities of each cookery book that is analized. Comparative method and content analyses were used to reveal both continuity of tradition and innov- ations in nutrition practices of the Ukraine’s population. Systematization method allowed to classify cookery editions according to some strict crite- ria. Scientific novelty. By analising the cookery books the author demon- strates the continuity of the Ukraine’s population nutrition practices. The paper reveals how different gastronomic cultures, religious beliefes, econo- my and medical science influenced on the cookery books’ content. Concl- usions. It is stated that the mid-18 – early 20 centuries cookery books are reflecting the tendency of modernization and globalization of the nutrition practices. Cookery books influenced significantly shaping of the gastr- onomic practices of the Ukraine’s population. Among the various types of cookery editions there were guides and companions for young women that were not enough experienced in preparing food, examples of dinner menue- s, works on vegetarianism, childhood nutrition, healthy eating etc. Such books were based on the up-to-date achievements in the fields of physiolog- y and dietology. By the end of the 19th century the quantity of cookbooks rised noticeably. One of the popular types of the cookbooks were editions aimed at young housewives. At the same time, a lot of cookbooks, espec- ially those involving medical aspects of nutrition, were unable to pass thr- ough the censorship institutions in the Russian empire.

Exploring Serbian medieval gastronomy within the project Living the Past since 2010, Artis Center multidisciplinary team introduced new scientific method denominated gastroheritology that incorporates experimental reconstructions as an added value that gives a better insight to the food preparation, consumption, rituals and symbolism processes in the past. Facing the number of challenges, Artis project team managed to revive many dishes from the table of Serbian medieval people as well as their eating habits, beliefs and even food taboos.

Key words: gastronomy, heritage, art, gastroheritology, medieval Serbia

What is a truffle? Is it the über-shroom, the highest order of fungal foods? Does it arrive, as some cultures feel, in the moment of a thunderclap? One thing is for sure: despite its unappetizing appearance, the truffle is without a doubt one of the most prized ingredients in the world’s pantry. In this book, Zachary Nowak digs deep into the history and fame of this unlikeliest of luxury items, exploring the truffle’s intoxicating hold on our senses how its distinctive flavor has become an instant indication of haute cuisine.
           
Nowak traces the truffle’s journey from the kitchens of East Asia to those of Europe and the Americas. Balancing cultural, historical, and scientific perspectives, he offers a thorough and complete portrait of this many-sided mushroom. By comparing the truffle’s history in the Old World with its growing prominence in the New World, he tells a larger story of the growth and dynamism of modern Western cuisine and food cultures. Featuring many instructive and surprising illustrations, and numerous recipes both historical and contemporary, this unique and fascinating book is a must-read for chefs, food historians, and anyone ever drawn by the truffle’s mysterious, rich, and savory allure.

Coffee: A Global History was published in 2019 by Reaktion Books and is distributed in the United States by University of Chicago Press.  It's widely available for purchase on the internet.  Reviews include:

for the coffee nerd in your life . . . it's jam-packed with information. I don't think I have read a book this information dense and yet still incredibly readable possibly ever. A great little book that I recommend highly. If you want a tonne of history, a tonne of information, a tonne of background on coffee, this is a great gift'. 
James Hoffman, the You Tube coffee influencer and former World Barista Champion

The book that I wished had been published when I was working on the origins of coffee drinking in early modern Britain. It is very short and succinct and as such, it’s the obvious introduction to this fascinating topic. If you want a quick and reliable guide to the history of coffee, this is the book you need.
Dr Brian Cowan, Author of The Social Life of Coffee. The Emergence of the British Coffee House

Siódmy tom serii Monumenta Poloniae Culinaria zawiera rękopiśmienne, rozproszone (niepochodzące z książek kucharskich) i bardzo zróżnicowane receptury kulinarne z XVI-XVIII w. Staropolskie przepisy opowiadają nam o czymś więcej niż tylko o tym, jak usmażyć rybę w papierowym pudełku, jak ze szczupaka przyrządzić wołowinę i jak ugotować zdrowotny bulion. Gdy odkryjemy, co to znaczy abucht i sołtonosy, gdy dowiemy się, czym był pekienflejsz, do czego używano wizigi i dlaczego objadano się jesiotrzyną, to po prostu lepiej zrozumiemy naszych przodków, wnikniemy w ich problemy, docenimy ich ogromną wiedzę, poznamy ich pasje i upodobania.

Resumo: Este artigo estuda a alimentação e a sociabilidade à mesa no livro Lisboa em ca-misa, de Gervásio Lobato, que retrata, com bas-tante humor, alguns episódios da vida de uma família da pequena burguesia de Lisboa dos anos 80 do século xix. Palavras-Chaves: Gervásio Lobato; Lisboa em camisa; alimentação; sociabilidade. Abstract: This article aims to study several aspects of food and sociability around the table in the Portuguese humorous book Lisboa em camisa (1882), by Gervásio Lobato, which portrays, with great humor, some episodes from the life of a petty bourgeois family from Lisbon in the 1880s.

The nutritional, economic and politícal importance of hunting in medieval Aragón is revealed by the development of a legal framework to legislate this activity and its survival until the middle of the 20th century. Our research on hunting in the kingdom of Aragón in the lih-15th centuries is based on the information provided by two groups of legal texts: those for local or regional areas (local charters, town letters, royal privileges, municipal statutes) and those that were applied to all the kingdom after the 13ili centory (general charters passed in the Courts). Comparative studies and the information provided by iconography, archaeology, notarial documentation and literature have permitted us to contrast, clarify and complete the development of our analysis, based on various points: 1) hunting as a natural resource whose exploitation is regulated and controlled by local and state powers; 2) hunting as an activity done from very different perspectives and with plural purposes, methods and valuations, closely related to the position of each person in the hierarchised medieval society; 3) hunting as a method of social control for sorne and of rebelliousness against the established order for poachers; and 4) the supplying and consumption of game as an indicator of diverse food cultures and systems that coexist in the same chronological and spatial framework.

This article presents an overview of the long term trends in the trading patterns for salted herring in the area of the North Sea and the Baltic Sea and their hinterlands in the period of c. 1600-1850. The market is defined as ‘the interaction between supply and demand to determine the market price and corresponding quantity bought and sold.’  In this period the north European herring market underwent several changes. This is analysed from four different points of view:
The first main section examines the main trading routes for herring in Northern Europe by use of records from the Sound toll registers as well as from accounts of herring imports in the German North Sea and Baltic cities. Then a number of price series for various parts of northern Europe give indications for the long term development of prices of herring. Following this an analysis of the consumption patterns of salted herring is carried out, and finally the influence of mercantilist policies is evaluated.

In the past years, it seems that food has found itself a central focus of creativity in contemporary culture. To wit, streaming platforms are littered with cooking shows celebrating chefs' creativity around the world, books take culinary creativity as their central topic (see, e.g., Redzepi 2013 and Questlove 2016), and people seem to be constantly concerned about the last culinary trend. But what is culinary creativity? And what are the forms it can take? This paper addresses these issues. Building upon pioneering work on creativity by Margaret Boden, I argue that creativity is a matter of adding new valuable things to the world. Creative people are those that take on this task, and creative things are the output of their creative processes. Many recipes and many chefs meet this characterization. However, as we shall see, they don't all meet it in the same sense, and some forms of culinary creativity can be deemed more valuable than others. I will argue that this is especially the case with the kind of culinary creativity displayed at Noma in Copenhagen, one of today's most creative restaurants, headed by its celebrated chef René Redzepi. Indeed, the kind of culinary creativity displayed at Noma emphasizes the mediating role that recipes can have with respect to the environment and realizes the full potential of this mediating relation by taking into account not only its sensory, but also its cognitive and disruptive aspects. The structure of the paper is the following. In the first section, I expound on some background issues about creativity and recipes. In the second section, I provide a summary of the creative perspective at Noma. In a third section, I discuss three ways creativity can occur in the culinary domain and discuss three important culinary movements: fusion food, nouvelle cuisine, and modernist cuisine. Before summarizing my results in the conclusion, I then expound, in a fourth section, my reasons to consider that the kind of culinary creativity displayed at Noma is distinctive.

This article intends to compare two cooking books published in the 1930s. These books had different contents and were addressed to completely different audiences, despite its authors have the same name, Rosa Maria. The work of Rosa Maria was published in Brazil with the title Arte de comer bem, whose first edition appeared in 1931. In Portugal, it is believed that the first edition appeared in 1932, also authored by Rosa Maria, with the title A cosinheira das cosinheiras. A arte de comer bem. Higiene alimentar e mais de 500 receitas para cosinhar fazer doces, gelados, compotas etc. Since several questions have arisen, this paper proposes to answer some of them.
Este artigo pretende comparar dois livros de culinária publicados nos anos de 1930, que, apesar de possuírem autoras com o mesmo nome, Rosa Maria, tiveram conteúdos e dirigiram-se a públicos completamente diferentes. No Brasil, foi publicada a obra de Rosa Maria, com o nome Arte de comer bem, cuja primeira edição apareceu em 1931, e, em Portugal, crê-se que em 1932, igualmente por Rosa Maria, apareceu A cosinheira das cosinheiras. A arte de comer bem. Higiene alimentar e mais de 500 receitas para cosinhar, fazer doces, gelados, compotas etc. Neste sentido, importa proceder a uma abordagem exploratória das duas fontes, respondendo a algumas questões consideradas pertinentes.

A partir do século quinze, observamos um fenômeno que teve, como uma de suas principais características, a disseminação do cultivo, comercialização e consumo de uma série de determinadas plantas. Apesar, de hoje a Historiografia dispor de um razoável volume de estudos publicados sobre as especiarias do Oriente, bem como o impacto econômico destas no Renascimento, uma questão ainda pouco abordada refere-se à disseminação e uso de algumas plantas americanas que, por sua vez, também se converteram em especiarias de considerável importância gastronômica e econômica.

From the beginning of the fifteenth century, it is observed a phenomenon that had as one of its main features, the spread of trade, cultivation and consumption of some specific varieties of plants. Although, modern historiography has a reasonable volume of studies published about the spices of the East as well as the economic impact of these in the Renaissance, an issue still remains, that is related to the dissemination and use of some American plants which in turn have also become spices of considerable economic, cultural and gastronomical importance.

Seamus Heaney’s poetry is rich in detail about agricultural and food practices in his native Northern Ireland from the 1950s onwards, such as cattle-trading, butter-churning, eel-fishing, blackberry-picking or home-baking. Often studied from an ecocritical perspective, the abundance of agricultural and culinary scenes in Heaney’s work makes a gastrocritical focus on food and foodways suitable. Food has been recognized as a highly condensed social fact, and writers have long tapped into its multi-layered meanings to illuminate socio-cultural circumstances, making literature a valuable ethnographic source. A gastrocritical reading of Heaney’s work from 1966 to 2010, drawing on Rozin’s Structure of Cuisine, shows that the foodstuffs and culinary techniques featured in the poetry reflect historic and contemporary Irish cuisine and culture as explained by food-historical and folkloristic research, giving his work a particularly Irish cultural signature. In turn, Heaney’s poetic sensibilities and language craft may contribute to our verstehen of Ireland’s culinary heritage.

Hoy no concebiríamos una dieta sin legumbres, tan nutritivas como arraigadas en la cultura popular, aunque se introdujeran por las cocinas del rey.

En el marco de la Semana de la Ciencia 2016, La Herencia de los Reales Sitios celebrará un seminario sobre la importancia de las Casas Reales y los Reales Sitios en el desarrollo de cultivos y la incorporación de nuevos alimentos a las dietas europeas.

Historia de la alimentación andaluza a través de uno de los platos más arraigados y antiguos, el salmorejo,  así como de sus ingredientes (tomate, pan, ajo, aceite de oliva, sal y vinagre). Análisis bromatológico y sensorial de los diferentes ingredientes y del plato.