Cuisine and culture : a history of food and people / Linda Civitello

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Raw to cooked, prehistory, Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, India -- Grain, grape, olive, ancient Greece and imperial Rome -- Crazy bread, coffee, and courtly manners, Christendom, Islam and Byzantium in the Middle Ages, 500-1300 -- Tea, chocolate, and the first cookbook, medieval Asia, the Americas, and Renaissance Europe to 1500 -- Columbian exchange and the Protestant reformation, sugar and vice in the sixteenth century -- Thanksgiving, Hutspot, and Haute cuisine, seventeenth-century America, the Netherlands, Russia, France -- Election cake and "let them eat cake", the American and French revolutions-the eighteenth century and the enlightenment -- Coyotes to Coca-Cola, the nineteenth century in America -- Sanitation, nutrition, colonization, the nineteenth century in Europe, Asia, and Africa -- Purity crusade, cuisine classique, and communal food, the early twentieth century in Europe and the United States -- Prohibition, soup kitchens, spam, and TV dinners, the roaring twenties, the Depression, World War II, and the Cold War -- Revolutions in cuisines and cultures, from "bon appétit" to "bam!" the 1960s into the New Millennium --

Why did the ancient Romans believe cinnamon grew in swamps guarded by giant killer bats? How did the African cultures imported by slavery influence cooking in the American South? What does the 700-seat McDonald's in Beijing serve in the age of globalization? With the answers to these and many more such questions, [this book] presents an engaging, informative, and witty narrative of the interactions among history, culture, and food. From prehistory and the earliest societies around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers to today's celebrity chefs, [the book] presents a multicultural and multiethnic approach that draws connections between major historical events and how and why these events affected and defined the culinary traditions of different societies. Fully revised and updated, [it] offers new and expanded features and coverage, including: New Crossing Cultures sections providing brief sketches of foods and food customs moving between cultures; More holiday histories, food fables, and food chronologies; Discussions of food in the Byzantine, Portuguese, Turkish/Ottoman, and Austro-Hungarian empires; Greater coverage of the scientific genetic modification of food, from Mendel in the 19th century to the contemporary GM vs. organic food debate; Speculation on the future of food; And much more! Complete with sample recipes and menus, [this book] is the essential survey history for students of food history.