Cuisine and Empire

Cuisine and Empire PDF

Author: Rachel Laudan

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2015-04-03

Total Pages: 488

ISBN-13: 0520286316

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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.

Flavors of Empire

Flavors of Empire PDF

Author: Mark Padoongpatt

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2017-09-19

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0520966929

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With a uniquely balanced combination of salty, sweet, sour, and spicy flavors, Thai food burst onto Los Angeles’s and America’s culinary scene in the 1980s. Flavors of Empire examines the rise of Thai food and the way it shaped the racial and ethnic contours of Thai American identity and community. Full of vivid oral histories and new archival material, this book explores the factors that made foodways central to the Thai American experience. Starting with American Cold War intervention in Thailand, Mark Padoongpatt traces how informal empire allowed U.S. citizens to discover Thai cuisine abroad and introduce it inside the United States. When Thais arrived in Los Angeles, they reinvented and repackaged Thai food in various ways to meet the rising popularity of the cuisine in urban and suburban spaces. Padoongpatt opens up the history and politics of Thai food for the first time, all while demonstrating how race emerges in seemingly mundane and unexpected places.

Eating the Empire

Eating the Empire PDF

Author: Troy Bickham

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2020-04-13

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 1789142458

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When students gathered in a London coffeehouse and smoked tobacco; when Yorkshire women sipped sugar-infused tea; or when a Glasgow family ate a bowl of Indian curry, were they aware of the mechanisms of imperial rule and trade that made such goods readily available? In Eating the Empire, Troy Bickham unfolds the extraordinary role that food played in shaping Britain during the long eighteenth century (circa 1660–1837), when such foreign goods as coffee, tea, and sugar went from rare luxuries to some of the most ubiquitous commodities in Britain—reaching even the poorest and remotest of households. Bickham reveals how trade in the empire’s edibles underpinned the emerging consumer economy, fomenting the rise of modern retailing, visual advertising, and consumer credit, and, via taxes, financed the military and civil bureaucracy that secured, governed, and spread the British Empire.

The Food of Paradise

The Food of Paradise PDF

Author: Rachel Laudan

Publisher: University of Hawaii Press

Published: 1996-08-01

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780824817787

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Recent winner of a prestigious award from the Julia Child Cookbook Awards, presented by the International Association of Culinary Professionals. Lauden was given the 1997 Jane Grigson Award, presented to the book that, more than any other entered in the competition, exemplifies distinguished scholarship. Hawaii has one of the richest culinary heritages in the United States. Its contemporary regional cuisine, known as "local food" by residents, is a truly amazing fusion of diverse culinary influences. Rachel Laudan takes readers on a thoughtful, wide-ranging tour of Hawaii's farms and gardens, fish auctions and vegetable markets, fairs and carnivals, mom-and-pop stores and lunch wagons, to uncover the delightful complexities and incongruities in Hawaii's culinary history. More than 150 recipes, photographs, a bibliography of Hawaii's cookbooks, and an extensive glossary make The Food of Paradise an invaluable resource for cooks, food historians, and Hawaiiana buffs.

Chop Suey, USA

Chop Suey, USA PDF

Author: Yong Chen

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2014-11-04

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 0231538162

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American diners began to flock to Chinese restaurants more than a century ago, making Chinese food the first mass-consumed cuisine in the United States. By 1980, it had become the country's most popular ethnic cuisine. Chop Suey, USA offers the first comprehensive interpretation of the rise of Chinese food, revealing the forces that made it ubiquitous in the American gastronomic landscape and turned the country into an empire of consumption. Engineered by a politically disenfranchised, numerically small, and economically exploited group, Chinese food's tour de America is an epic story of global cultural encounter. It reflects not only changes in taste but also a growing appetite for a more leisurely lifestyle. Americans fell in love with Chinese food not because of its gastronomic excellence but because of its affordability and convenience, which is why they preferred the quick and simple dishes of China while shunning its haute cuisine. Epitomized by chop suey, American Chinese food was a forerunner of McDonald's, democratizing the once-exclusive dining-out experience for such groups as marginalized Anglos, African Americans, and Jews. The rise of Chinese food is also a classic American story of immigrant entrepreneurship and perseverance. Barred from many occupations, Chinese Americans successfully turned Chinese food from a despised cuisine into a dominant force in the restaurant market, creating a critical lifeline for their community. Chinese American restaurant workers developed the concept of the open kitchen and popularized the practice of home delivery. They streamlined certain Chinese dishes, such as chop suey and egg foo young, turning them into nationally recognized brand names.

Bountiful Empire

Bountiful Empire PDF

Author: Priscilla Mary Isin

Publisher: Reaktion Books

Published: 2018-05-15

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1780239394

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The Ottoman Empire was one of the largest and longest-lasting empires in history—and one of the most culinarily inclined. In this powerful and complex concoction of politics, culture, and cuisine, the production and consumption of food reflected the lives of the empire’s citizens from sultans to soldiers. Food bound people of different classes and backgrounds together, defining identity and serving symbolic functions in the social, religious, political, and military spheres. In Bountiful Empire, Priscilla Mary Işın examines the changing meanings of the Ottoman Empire’s foodways as they evolved over more than five centuries. Işın begins with the essential ingredients of this fascinating history, examining the earlier culinary traditions in which Ottoman cuisine was rooted, such as those of the Central Asian Turks, Abbasids, Seljuks, and Byzantines. She goes on to explore the diverse aspects of this rich culinary culture, including etiquette, cooks, restaurants, military food, food laws, and food trade. Drawing on everything from archival documents to poetry and featuring more than one hundred delectable illustrations, this meticulously researched, beautiful volume offers fresh and lively insight into an empire and cuisine that until recent decades have been too narrowly viewed through orientalist spectacles.

Food Culture in Colonial Asia

Food Culture in Colonial Asia PDF

Author: Cecilia Leong-Salobir

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2011-05-03

Total Pages: 246

ISBN-13: 1136726535

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Presenting a social history of colonial food practices in India, Malaysia and Singapore, this book discusses the contribution that Asian domestic servants made towards the development of this cuisine between 1858 and 1963. Domestic cookbooks, household management manuals, memoirs, diaries and travelogues are used to investigate the culinary practices in the colonial household, as well as in clubs, hill stations, hotels and restaurants. Challenging accepted ideas about colonial cuisine, the book argues that a distinctive cuisine emerged as a result of negotiation and collaboration between the expatriate British and local people, and included dishes such as curries, mulligatawny, kedgeree, country captain and pish pash. The cuisine evolved over time, with the indigenous servants preparing both local and European foods. The book highlights both the role and representation of domestic servants in the colonies. It is an important contribution for students and scholars of food history and colonial history, as well as Asian Studies.

Cuisine and Culture

Cuisine and Culture PDF

Author: Linda Civitello

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2011-03-29

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 0470403713

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An illuminating account of how history shapes our diets—now in a new revised and updated Third Edition Why did the ancient Romans believe cinnamon grew in swamps guarded by giant killer bats? How did African cultures imported by slavery influence cooking in the American South? What does the 700-seat McDonald's in Beijing serve in the age of globalization? With the answers to these and many more such questions, Cuisine and Culture, Third Edition presents an engaging, entertaining, and informative exploration of the interactions among history, culture, and food. From prehistory and the earliest societies in the Fertile Crescent to today's celebrity chefs, Cuisine and Culture, Third Edition presents a multicultural and multiethnic approach to understanding how and why major historical events have affected and defined the culinary traditions in different societies. Now revised and updated, this Third Edition is more comprehensive and insightful than ever before. Covers prehistory through the present day—from the discovery of fire to the emergence of television cooking shows Explores how history, culture, politics, sociology, and religion have determined how and what people have eaten through the ages Includes a sampling of recipes and menus from different historical periods and cultures Features French and Italian pronunciation guides, a chronology of food books and cookbooks of historical importance, and an extensive bibliography Includes all-new content on technology, food marketing, celebrity chefs and cooking television shows, and Canadian cuisine. Complete with revealing historical photographs and illustrations, Cuisine and Culture is an essential introduction to food history for students, history buffs, and food lovers.

Tastes of Byzantium

Tastes of Byzantium PDF

Author: Andrew Dalby

Publisher: Tauris Parke

Published: 2019-06-18

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 9781838600365

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For centuries, the food and culinary delights of the Byzantine empire - centred on Constantinople - have captivated the west, although it appeared that very little information had been passed down to us. Andrew Dalby's "Tastes of Byzantium" now reveals in astonishing detail, for the first time, what was eaten in the court of the Eastern Roman Empire - and how it was cooked. Fusing the spices of the Romans with the seafood and simple local food of the Aegean and Greek world, the cuisine of the Byzantines was unique and a precursor to much of the food of modern Turkey and Greece. Bringing this vanished cuisine to life in vivid and sensual detail, Dalby describes the sights and smells of Constantinople and its marketplaces, relates travellers' tales and paints a comprehensive picture of the recipes and customs of the empire and their relationship to health and the seasons, love and medicine. For food-lovers and historians alike, "Tastes of Byzantium" is both essential and riveting - an extraordinary illumination of everyday life in the Byzantine world.