Recipes and Cookbooks: Food, Stories, Histories

"Commerce, Food, and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England and France: Across the Channel offers a compelling historical narrative of the relationship between food, national identity, and political economy in the early modern period." - excerpt from publisher description

"The essays in this volume illuminate [an] expansive view of cooking and aspire to show how the kitchen's inner workings prove tightly, though often invisibly, interwoven with local, national, and, increasingly, global surroundings. Engaging with literary and historical methodologies, including close reading, recipe analysis, and perspectives on gender, class, race, and colonialism, we begin to develop a shared theoretical and practical language for the art of cooking that combines the physical with the intellectual, the local with the global, and the domestic with the political." - excerpted from publisher description

"A sweeping overview of how and what humans have eaten in their long history as a species   The Story of Food in the Human Past: How What We Ate Made Us Who We Are uses case studies from recent archaeological research to tell the story of food in human prehistory."

"During the Depression, the Federal Writers' Project (FWP) dispatched scribes to sample the fare at group eating events like church dinners, political barbecues, and clambakes. Its America Eats project sought nothing less than to sample, and report upon, the tremendous range of foods eaten across the United States. Camille Begin shapes a cultural and sensory history of New Deal-era eating from the FWP archives." - excerpt from publisher description

"The Menial Art of Cooking shows how cooking activities provide a window into other aspects of society and, as such, should be taken seriously as an aspect of social, cultural, political, and economic life. This book examines techniques and technologies of food preparation, the spaces where food was cooked, the relationship between cooking and changes in suprahousehold economies, the religious and symbolic aspects of cooking, the relationship between cooking and social identity, and how examining foodways provides insight into social relations of production, distribution, and consumption." - excerpt from publisher description

"Eating Beside Ourselves expands the work of food studies by approaching eating and feeding as sites of transformation across a diversity of bodies and selves. In turning organic substance into food, acts of eating create webs of relations, interconnected and organized by relative conditions of edibility, through which eaters may in turn become eaten. Focusing on such relations, this volume explores how eating and feeding mediate thresholds between different conditions or states of being (e.g., living/dying; edible/inedible); between organisms of different species; and between living beings and their surrounding environment. The volume is organized around the analytic of the "threshold," which the contributors mobilize to think about how food serves as a threshold for human and inhuman relations. In addition to the single-authored chapters, the volume contains five conversational exchanges, which offers contributors the opportunity to discuss their work and the themes of the volume"-- Provided by publisher.

"This book explores the interrelations between food, technology and knowledge-sharing practices in producing digital food cultures. Digital Food Cultures adopts an innovative approach to examine representations and practices related to food across a variety of digital media: blogs and vlogs (video blogs), Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, technology developers' promotional media, online discussion forums and self-tracking apps and devices. The book emphasises the diversity of food cultures available on the internet and other digital media, from those celebrating unrestrained indulgence in food to those advocating very specialised diets requiring intense commitment and focus." - excerpte from publisher description

"Mining a wealth of menus, cookbooks, trade publications, interviews, and company records, Jayasanker explores Americans' changing eating habits to shed light on the impact of immigration and globalization on American culture." - excerpt from publisher description

"This essay anthology explores the intersection of gender, food and culture in post-1960s Soviet life from personal cookbooks to gulag survival." - excerpt from publisher description

"Food and drink has been a focal point of modern social theory since the inception of agrarian capitalism and the industrial revolution. From Adam Smith to Mary Douglas, major thinkers have used key concepts such as identity, exchange, culture, and class to explain the modern food system. Food, Politics, and Society offers a historical and sociological survey of how these various ideas and the practices that accompany them have shaped our understanding and organization of the production, processing, preparation, serving, and consumption of food and drink in modern societies." - excerpted from publisher description

"In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, working-class Americans had eating habits that were distinctly shaped by jobs, families, neighborhoods, and the tools, utilities, and size of their kitchens--along with their cultural heritage. How the Other Half Ate is a deep exploration by historian and lecturer Katherine Turner that delivers an unprecedented and thoroughly researched study of the changing food landscape in American working-class families from industrialization through the 1950s." - excerpt from publisher description

"Mikulak examines competing narratives of food, pleasure, sustainability, and value that have emerged from the growing sustainable food movement as well as food's past and present relationship to environmentalism in order to understand the potential and the limits of food politics. He also considers whether or not sustainable food practices can address questions about health, environmental sustainability, and local economic development, while at the same time articulating an ethical globalization." - excerpt from publisher description

"This book explores the interdisciplinary study of food and eating practices, examining various methods and perspectives within the humanities and social sciences. Edited by Olivier Lepiller, Tristan Fournier, Nicolas Bricas, and Muriel Figuié, it brings together insights from disciplines such as economics, geography, history, and sociology. The book aims to foster collaboration with nutritional science specialists to advance research on food systems. It is based on seminars held in Montpellier, France, and seeks to address challenges in transitioning to sustainable food systems. The intended audience includes researchers and policymakers interested in the social, economic, and health aspects of food studies." - excerpt from publisher description

"Through various case studies, Ancient Foodways illustrates how archaeologists can use bioarchaeology, zooarchaeology, archaeobotany, architecture, and other evidence to understand how food acquisition, preparation, and consumption intersect with economics, politics, and ritual. Spanning four continents and several millennia of human history, this volume is a comprehensive and contemporary survey of how archaeological data can be used to interpret past foodways and reconstruct past social worlds." - excerpted from publisher description"Through various case studies, Ancient Foodways illustrates how archaeologists can use bioarchaeology, zooarchaeology, archaeobotany, architecture, and other evidence to understand how food acquisition, preparation, and consumption intersect with economics, politics, and ritual. Spanning four continents and several millennia of human history, this volume is a comprehensive and contemporary survey of how archaeological data can be used to interpret past foodways and reconstruct past social worlds." - excerpt from publisher description

"Food and Nutrition: What Everyone Needs to Know® looks at food systems globally and historically to explain how food production, diets, and nutrition science have changed across time. It will begin with chapters on contemporary diets and nutritional problems, food revolutions (from the birth of agriculture to genetic food technologies), basic concepts in nutrition science, food choices and the evolution of human taste preferences, the politics of food environments, modern food production and its effects on human health, and the environmental costs of food production. The book will then dive into the nutrition and ethics of animal-based diets, beverages, plant-based diets, nutrition guidelines and food labels, and food technologies. Ultimately this book provides an overview of the contemporary relationship between humans, land, and food, and explores the sustainability of consumption patterns on our health." - excerpt from publisher description

"The authors of The Perfect Meal examine all of the elements that contribute to the diner's experience of a meal (primarily at a restaurant) and investigate how each of the diner's senses contributes to their overall multisensory experience. The principal focus of the book is not on flavor perception, but on all of the non-food and beverage factors that have been shown to influence the diner's overall experience. Examples are: the colour of the plate (visual) the shape of the glass (visual/tactile) the names used to describe the dishes (cognitive) the background music playing inside the restaurant (aural) Novel approaches to understanding the diner's experience in the restaurant setting are explored from the perspectives of decision neuroscience, marketing, design, and psychology." - excerpt from publisher description

"Drawing on new empirical data collected in urban and rural areas of Europe, North America and Africa, this book offers a timely and original contribution to the school food debate by highlighting the potential of creative public procurement - the power of purchase" - excerpt from publisher description

"The Board on Agriculture organized a Forum on Agriculture's Role in K-12 Education to provide an opportunity for agricultural professional societies to explore ways in which examples from agriculture, food, and environment systems can be used to enhance inquiry-based science education. Participants discussed how professional societies could enhance the continued education of K-12 teachers, improve school science programs, and increase collaboration with other professional societies and science teachers. This booklet presents the proceedings of this forum." - excerpt from publisher description

Growing Local reports the findings from a coordinated series of case studies designed to develop a deeper, more nuanced understanding of how local food products reach consumers and how local food supply chains compare with mainstream supermarket supply chains. To better understand how local food reaches the point of sale, Growing Local uses case study methods to rigorously compare local and mainstream supply chains for five products in five metropolitan areas along multiple social, economic, and environmental dimensions, highlighting areas of growth and potential barriers." - excerpt from publisher description

"The founders of the first railroad companies cared more about hauling freight than feeding passengers. The only food available on trains in the mid-nineteenth century was whatever passengers brought aboard in their lunch baskets or managed to pick up at a brief station stop. It was hardly fine dining. Seeing the business possibilities in offering long-distance passengers comforts such as beds, toilets, and meals, George Pullman and other pioneering railroaders like Georges Nagelmackers of Orient Express fame, transformed rail travel. . . Food on the Rails traces the rise and fall of food on the rails from its rocky start to its glory days to its sad demise. Looking at the foods, the service, the rail station restaurants, the menus, they dining accommodations and more, Jeri Quinzio brings to life the history of cuisine and dining in railroad cars from the early days through today." - excerpt from publisher description

"Labor and the Locavore focuses on one of the most vibrant local food economies in the country, the Hudson Valley that supplies New York restaurants and farmers markets. Based on more than a decade's in-depth interviews with workers, farmers, and others, Gray's examination clearly shows how the currency of agrarian values serves to mask the labor concerns of an already hidden workforce. She also explores the historical roots of farmworkers' predicaments and examines the ethnic shift from Black to Latino workers. With an analysis that can be applied to local food concerns around the country, this book challenges the reader to consider how the mentality of the alternative food movements implies a comprehensive food ethic that addresses workers' concerns." - excerpt from publisher description