The Culture of Food

This book is about the history of food in Europe and the part it has played in the evolution of European cultures over two millennia. Food is the prerequisite both of survival and of culture. It has been a driving force in national and imperial ambition, the manner of its production and consumption a means by which the identity and status of regions, classes and individuals have been and still are expressed. The European relationship to food has rarely been straightforward. In this wide–ranging exploration of its history the author weaves deftly between the social groups, geographical areas and nations of Europe, between the habits of late antiquity and the problems of modernity. He examines the interlinked evolutions of consumption, production and taste, to show both what these reveal of the varied cultures and peoples of Europe in the past and what they suggest about the present.

1. The Basis for a Common Language. 2. The Turning Point. 3. To Each His Own. 4. Europe and the World. 5. The Century of Hunger. 6. The Revolution.

Massimo Montanari was born in Imola in 1949. He teaches medieval history at the universities of Catania and Bologna. Among his other publications are The Medieval Countryside (Turin, 1984) and Food and Culture in the Middle Ages (Rome, 1992).

"Massimo Montanari has sliced through the evidence of anecdotes, novellas, dietary tracts and demographic surveys to show the close and often surprising connections between food as precarious necessity and food as symbol of power, culture and social ambition." Times Literary Supplement