[Sca-cooks] Bottero book on Mesopotamian Cooking

[Johnna Holloway]

The University of Chicago Press catalog arrived today with
the news that Jean Bottero's  book is now out.
The Oldest Cuisine in the World:
Cooking in Mesopotamia.
Translated by Teresa Lavender Fagan. 152 p.  2004

Cloth $22.50 0-226-06735-1 Spring 2004

Cumin, garlic, and leeks. Sound familiar?
What about francolin, halazzu, and kissimu?
In this intriguing blend of the commonplace and the
ancient, Jean Bottéro's The Oldest Cuisine in the World
gives us the first comprehensive look at the delectable secrets of
Mesopotamia. Bottéro's anthropological perspective encompasses
the religious rites, everyday rituals, attitudes and taboos, and even the
detailed preparation techniques involving food and
drink in Mesopotamian high culture during the second
and third millenniums BCE, as the Mesopotamians recorded them.

With offerings including translated recipes for pigeon and
gazelle stews, the elements and uses of medicinal teas and broths,
and the origins of ingredients native to the region,
this book reveals the cuisine of one of history's most fascinating 
societies.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/hfs.cgi/00/16219.ctl

Another new one from Chicago is

Ferguson, Priscilla Parkhurst Accounting for Taste:
The Triumph of French Cuisine. 256 p. (est.), 10 halftones, 11 line 
drawings. 2004

Cloth $25.00 0-226-24323-0 Spring 2004 Available 05/04.

It's described as a---
"culinary journey [that] begins with Ancien Régime cookbooks and
ends with twenty-first-century cooking programs. It takes us from Carême,
the "inventor" of modern French cuisine in the early nineteenth century, to
top chefs today, such as Daniel Boulud and Jacques Pépin.
Not a history of French cuisine, Accounting for Taste focuses on the
people, places, and institutions that have made this cuisine what it is 
today:.."

I was wondering why we needed another history of French cuisine at the 
moment--
glad to know this is a "journey"!


Johnnae llyn Lewis