Why read Cuisine and Empire?

Book cover of Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History

Book description

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…

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Why read it?

2 authors picked Cuisine and Empire as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Harold J. Cook

Author

I was quite taken by Laudan’s attention to the preparation of foods, from deep time to the present, in many of the regions of the world. She is attentive to mixtures: in any dish, in the kinds of dishes served for meals of different kinds, in the sharing and exchanging of tastes, and in the close relationships between dining and worship.

Beginning with the simple motions of a woman grinding grain on stone for the daily meal, or pounding hulls in a vessel, to the innumerable kitchen attendants needed to turn raw materials into ingredients for palace feasts, or the…

From Harold's list on how the desire for foods and drugs shaped the world.

Troy Bickham

Author

I love this book primarily for the ambitiousness of its breadth. It begins thousands of years ago with the role of early grain domestication in empire-building and stretches to the roles of modern cuisines in global trade, industry, and capitalism. Although a whirlwind of peoples and places from across human history, this beautifully written and illustrated book is easy for any reader interested in the subject to digest.

From Troy's list on food and empires in history.