History of food

The history of food has been a subtopic explored in economic and social history.

United States and Canada

Ethnic foods

Diner (2001) shows that Italian immigrants created a symbolically lush Italo-American food culture based on their memories of crushing poverty and landlord exploitation in peasant Italy, while the Irish, whose ethnic memory linked colonialist starvation to collective identity, did nearly the opposite, eating because they must but refusing to elevate food to any sort of iconic status (such symbolization was reserved for hunger).

While sharing with other immigrants the deep impress of American material abundance, a conspicuous feature of which was a variety of protein-rich meals, eastern European Jews differed on account of the dense religious significance that centuries of halakic existence had imparted to their foodways. Diner (2001) depicts the sanctification of food in the shtetl, based on scriptural and rabbinic sanctions for eating well. Jewish political activism sometimes centered on food; witness the famous kosher meat protests of the turn of the century and labor struggles within the Jewish food industry. By 1929 waiters' unions controlled roughly eight hundred restaurants in New York City. When bakers, poultry handlers, and other food-industry employees went on strike, consumers overwhelmingly sided with the workers. Conflicts emerged between "experts" such as nutritionists and social workers and immigrant housewives, who were criticized for their unenlightened cookery. Immigrant Jewish women flocked to cooking classes, demonstrating their anxieties and aspirations about food and its Jewish and American meanings.

Historiography

In the 21st century the history of food began attracting more scholarly attention. Two book series appeared, Food in American History series by Greenwood Press, and Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History series by Columbia U. Press.

See also

• Agriculture
• Irish Famine

Bibliography

• Ashkenazi, Michael and Jacob, Jeanne. Food Culture in Japan. Greenwood, 2003. 207 pp.
• Belasco, Warren and Scranton, Philip, ed. Food Nations: Selling Taste in Consumer Societies. Routledge, 2002. 288 pp.
• Burnett, John. England Eats Out: A Social History of Eating Out in England from 1830 to the Present. Harlow, England: Pearson Educ., 2004. 363 pp.
• Cwiertka, Katarzyna and Walraven, Boudewijn, ed. Asian Food: The Global and the Local. Richmond, England: Curzon, 2002. 190 pp.
• Dunmire, William W. Gardens of New Spain: How Mediterranean Plants and Foods Changed America. U. of Texas Press, 2004. 375 pp.
• Evans, Lloyd T. Feeding the Ten Billion: Plants and Population Growth. Cambridge University Press (1998).
• Farquhar, Judith. Appetites: Food and Sex in Postsocialist China. Duke U. Press, 2002. 341 pp.
• Federico, Giovanni. Feeding the World: An Economic History of World Agriculture, 1800-2000.Princeton U. Press, 2005. 388 pp.
• Fernández-Armesto, Felipe. Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food. Free Press, 2002. 258 pp.
• Ferguson, Priscilla Parkhurst. Accounting for Taste: The Triumph of French Cuisine. U. of Chicago Press, 2004. 258 pp.
• Fletcher, Nichola. Charlemagne's Tablecloth: A Piquant History of Feasting. St. Martin's, 2005. 256 pp.
• Fussell, Betty. The Story of Corn. U. of New Mexico Press, 2004. 356 pp.
• Greenspoon, Leonard J. and Simkins, Ronald A., ed.; Shapiro, Gerald. Food and Judaism. Creighton U. Press, 2005. 345 pp.
• Kiple, Kenneth F. and Ornelas, Kriemhild C., ed. The Cambridge World History of Food. 2 vol. Cambridge U. Press, 2000. 1958 pp.
• Long, Lucy M., ed. Culinary Tourism. U. Press of Kentucky, 2004. 306 pp.
• Ochoa, Enrique C. Feeding Mexico: The Political Uses of Food Since 1910. Scholarly Resources, 2000. 267 pp.
• Oddy, Derek J. From Plain Fare to Fusion Food: British Diet from the 1890s to the 1990s. Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell & Brewer, 2003. 269 pp.
• Rebora, Giovanni. Culture of the Fork: A Brief History of Food in Europe. Columbia U. Press, 2001. 196 pp.
• Spencer, Colin. British Food: An Extraordinary Thousand Years of History. Columbia U. Press, 2003. 416 pp.

United States and Canada

• Audet, Bernard. Se Nourrir au Quotidien en Nouvelle-France [Everyday eating habits in New France]. Quebec: Editions GID, 2001. 367 pp.
• Bentley, Amy. Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and the Politics of Domesticity. U. of Illinois Press, 1998. 238
• Denker, Joel. The World on a Plate: A Tour through the History of America's Ethnic Cuisine. Westview, 2003. 196 pp.
• Diner, Hasia R. Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration. Harvard U. Press, 2001. 292 pp.
• Gabaccia, Donna. We Are What We Eat: Ethnic Food and the Making of Americans (1998)
• Goodwin, Lorine Swainston. The Pure Food, Drink, and Drug Crusaders, 1879-1914. McFarland, 1999. 352 pp.
• McLean, Alice L. Cooking in America, 1840–1945. (Greenwood, 2006. xxx, 194 pp. isbn 0-313-33574-5.)
• McWilliams, James E. A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America. (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History series.) Columbia U. Press, 2005. 386 pp.
• Oliver, Sandra L. Food in Colonial and Federal America. Greenwood, 2005. 230 pp. (Food in American History series.)
• Parkin, Katherine J. Food Is Love: Food Advertising and Gender Roles in Modern America. U. of Pennsylvania Press, 2006. 296 pp.
• Smith, Andrew F. The Turkey: An American Story. (University of Illinois Press, 2006. xxii, 224 pp. isbn 978-0-252-03163-2.)
• Smith, Andrew F. Peanuts: The Illustrious History of the Goober Pea. U. of Illinois Press, 2002. 234 pp.
• Smith, Andrew F. Pure Ketchup: A History of America's National Condiment. Smithsonian Inst. Press, 2001. 242 pp.
• Stavely, Keith W. F. and Fitzgerald, Kathleen. America's Founding Food: The Story of New England Cooking. U. of North Carolina Press, 2004. 396 pp.
• Williams, Susan. Food in the United States, 1820s–1890. (Greenwood, 2006. xvi, 240 pp. isbn 0-313-33245-2.)
• Witt, Doris. Black Hunger: Soul Food and America. U. of Minnesota Press, 2004. 292 pp.