[Sca-cooks] Food History

[lilinah at earthlink.net]

I recently picked up "Writing Food History: A Global Perspective" edited by Kyri W. Claflin and Peter Scholliers, published in 2012 by Berg (London and New York). It's a collection of 12 dry essays on the writing of the history of food, and including an introduction and a conclusion written by the editors. It is commentary on those who have written on the history of food, rather than a history of food.

I'm fine with dry, although this might not appeal to some. Four of the 6 essays in Part One: The West, cover a particular time period: ancient, medieval, early modern, and modern, plus an essay on the U.S., and one on 500 years of Iberian food. Part Two: the Middle East, has 3 essays: one on Ottoman, one on Jewish, and one on Arab food. Part Three has a article about Indian food, and one about a specific historian of food who looked at East Asia: China, Japan, and Korea, and others following in his footsteps. The final Part Four has one essay on the food history of Africa. I suspect these last two section are rather weak because in one case so little is available in Western European languages, and in the other case, there is limited information, and the writing is in its nascency.

Let me reiterate, the essays are not about food history: they are about the history of writing food history. They look at changes in the field, in the availability of documents, in the changing attitudes of writers, in the use of more archaeological, anthropological or sociological methods.

Since i got 5 very different books at the same time, i'm only slowly picking my way through this. But since some of us are food historians and not just cooks of historical food, i thought i'd mention this food historiography: the almost recursive history of writing about food history, in case anyone else might be interested.

Urtatim (that's oor-tah-TEEM)