Details

Subject(s)

• Food—History—Encyclopedias [Browse]
• Cooking—History—Encyclopedias [Browse]
• Electronic reference sources [Browse]

Library of Congress genre(s)

• Encyclopedias [Browse]

Summary note

"World Food examines the spectrum of comestibles as they apply to history, politics, economics, medicine, nutrition, ethnicity, worship, and invention. For the convenience and edification of the teacher, student, researcher, chef, and food faddist, the text summarizes specifics of eating history--the development of humankind from hunter-gatherers to Turkish herders and German vintners, the marketing of foodstuffs at the produce stalls of Nice and the canal boats of Bangkok, and the exploitation of valuable edibles by Sri Lankan planters and Spanish conquerors. The issues of the present--improvements in the packaging, sanitation, and transportation of perishables--forecast the future of nontoxic, nourishing food for both the privileged and the have-nots. As listed on the Browse page and in the Topic Finder, entries cover travel writers (Ibn Battuta, Herodotus, Marco Polo), growers (Thomas Jefferson, Jethro Tull), preparers (Huou, Apicius, Pierre La Varenne, Julia Child), marketers (Agnes Marshall, Luther Burbank), scientists (James Lind, Nicholas Culpeper, Carolus Linnaeus), and corporations (Swedish East India Company, Virginia Company of Plymouth, McDonald's). National tastes figure in entries on specific examples of diet and cuisine--Russian, Inca, Indonesian, Portuguese, Byzantine--and in the preparation of such ethnic specialties as tofu, bushmeat, chowder, kebabs, dal, and condiments. Articles particularize flora and fauna that impact world events--beef and corn and maize in the settlement of North America, einkorn and emmer wheats in the evolution of bread, the buffalo in the gastronomy of Plains Indians, and tea in the socialization of Japan and China. Food processing attests to the ingenuity of cooks and industrialists and its importance in world history, notably pasta in the industrialization of Sicily, tortillas in Latin America, chutney in India, pemmican in the success of the Hudson's Bay Company, whiskey in the struggle between imbibers and abstainers, salt and vinegar to early miners and vegetable preservers, biscuits and bouillon to expeditions and military provisioners, and baby food and infant formulas for child nutritionists. In addition to kitchen staff and grocery dealers, gastronomy overlaps the concerns of altruists and activists, including ecofeminists, the battlefield cookery of Mary Jane Seacole during the Crimean War, the relief kitchens of Alexis Soyer to mitigate the Irish Potato Famine, rationing during world wars, soup kitchen cooks, and U.S. supply airlifts to the Burma Road and war-ravaged Berlin in the 1940s. The ethical sale and consumption of food permeates entries on food taboos, halal, biopiracy, prohibition, peyote, kosher food, alcoholic beverages, and vegetarianism. Some of the most serious issues emerge under the headings of commodity riots, famine relief, and endangered species. The role of exploration in acquainting consumers with new possibilities in table fare elevates the importance of Christopher Columbus, Captain James Cook, Amédée François Frézier, Giovanni da Verrazzano, and Hernán de Cortés, among many others. Entries on trade routes and trading vessels, caravans, clipper ships, and world trade summarize the successful conveyance of such perishables as yams, strawberries, and birch beer. From the transporters' holds, crates and bags pass to the operators of food inspection and safety, commodity regulation, public markets, food cooperatives, cooking schools, and farm subsidies and government agricultural programs. More technological matters fill essays on freeze-drying, refrigeration, monoculture, food storage, hormones in food, Count Rumford, and seed trade. Peripheral issues stress the crucial nature of food intake to well-being, the focus of articles on obesity, nutrition, food allergies, curative foods, fads, adulterated and poisonous foods, and additives and dyes. An overview of the food preparer in grilling, barbecue, saucing, pickling, cook-offs, espaliering, animal husbandry, and milling emphasizes the continued importance of the individual in feeding the world. A thorough survey of world food would not be complete without the evolution of agriculture into agribusiness, the rise of barter as a means of negotiation, foods used as currency, garbage disposal in middens, the selection of recipes for cookbooks, the invention of cookware and blenders and food processors, the representation of dining in the arts and film, and future concerns for traditions, customs, and food in the afterlife. Research involved delvings into a range of literature, beginning with retrospectives on the Paleolithic diet, the Fertile Crescent, the Silk Road, the tea ceremony, and the fare of the Crusaders. In addition to the biographies of Charlemagne and Catherine de' Médici, food critiques derived from chronicler Garcilaso de la Vega, sugar refiner Jules Paul Benjamin Delessert, esthete Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, environmentalist Rachel Carson, ethnographer Bernardino da Sahagún, horticulturist Antoine Nicholas Duchesne, folklorist and columnist Linda West Eckhardt, encyclopedist Pliny the Elder, and infantryman Bernal Díaz. The best in pantry and dining histories came from the works of Ken Albala, Sidney C.H. Cheung, Linda Civitello, Andrew Dalby, Alan Davidson, Yiu H. Hui, Michael Krondl, Andrew F. Smith, and Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat as well as articles from Archaeology, History, Mother Earth News, National Geographic, Saudi Aramco World, The New York Times, and Vegetarian Times."

Bibliographic references

Includes bibliographical references.

Source of description

Description based on print version record.

ISBN

• 9780765682796
• 0765682796

OCLC

809940482

Statement on language in description

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