Food Culture, Food History before 1900
About the Book Series
The history and culture of food has been the object of wide-ranging methodological approaches: literary, cultural, economic, and material, to name just a few. The expanding interest that food has elicited in the past few decades confirms the importance of a field that is still very much in the making, while it continues to elicit contributions from all the major disciplines.
The series Food Culture, Food History before 1900 publishes monographs in the history and culture of food, and invites contributions from different disciplines, historiographic perspectives and methodological approaches. It is open to a long chronological period running from the Middle Ages to the early 19th century, in order to respect the distinctive time frames of food history. A similar criteria is adopted in determining the extensive geographic parameters of this series: as of the late 15th century, food and cuisine traveled with extreme ease, not only within the European continent but between other parts of the world. The purview of this series thus comprises Europe, the Atlantic world, and exchanges with Asia and the Middle East. To this end, the Food Culture, Food History before 1900 series welcomes both scholarly monographs and edited/collective volumes in English, by both established and early-career researchers.
Beer, Brewing, and the Boundaries of the Human in Early Modern English Culture: Literature and Fermented Drink, 1580–1750
1st Edition
By Donovan E. Tann
July 27, 2026
Exploring a wide range of written discourse on early modern brewing and the material features and practices contributing to those conversations, this book demonstrates the considerable role that discussions of drink played in defining the boundaries of human life and action in England and beyond. ...
Food Production and Gender across the Early Modern World
1st Edition
Edited
By Melissa Calaresu, Marta Manzanares Mileo
May 27, 2026
This collection of nine essays presents new research exploring the significance and forms of labour involved in food production across the early modern world from c. 1500 to 1800. Ranging from the Netherlands to the Mediterranean basin and from the Pacific and Atlantic worlds, the volume opens up ...
Colonial Caribbean Diets and the Creolisation of Food Practices (1780-1890)
1st Edition
By Ilaria Berti
March 31, 2026
Colonial Caribbean Diets and the Creolisation of Food Practices (1780– 1890) approaches the topic with a comparative analysis of the British and Spanish Caribbean to give a fresh perspective on the history of the empires during the long nineteenth century. In order to examine processes of colonial ...
Commerce, Food, and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England and France: Across the Channel
1st Edition
By Garritt van Dyk
December 01, 2025
Tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you who you are was the challenge issued by French gastronomist Jean Brillat-Savarin. Champagne is declared a unique emblem of French sophistication and luxury, linked to the myth of its invention by Dom Pérignon. Across the Channel, a cup of sweet tea is ...
Culinary Texts in Context, 1500–1800: Manuscript Recipe Books in Early Modern Europe
1st Edition
Edited
By Sarah Kernan, Helga Müllneritsch
December 01, 2025
This collection represents a new and significant contribution to the study of recipe books from the early modern period (ca. 1500–1800) by situating them in a broader European context, traversing Catalonia, Finland, French and German-speaking regions, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and England. ...
Dante's Gluttons: Food and Society from the Convivio to the Comedy
1st Edition
By Danielle Callegari
December 01, 2025
Dante’s Gluttons: Food and Society from the Convivio to the Comedy explores how the medieval Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) uses food to express and condition the social, political, and cultural values of his time. Combining medieval history, food studies, and literary criticism, Dante’s ...
Food Culture and Literary Imagination in Early Modern Italy: The Renaissance of Taste
1st Edition
By Laura Giannetti
December 01, 2025
As the long sixteenth century came to a close, new positive ideas of gusto/ taste opened a rich counter vision of food and taste where material practice, sensory perceptions and imagination contended with traditional social values, morality, and dietetic/medical discourse. Exploring the complex and...
Food, Heresies, and Magical Boundaries in the Middle Ages
1st Edition
By Andrea Maraschi, Francesca Tasca
December 01, 2025
In this book readers will find stories about medieval heresies and “magic” from an unusual perspective: that of food studies. The time span ranges from Late Antiquity to the Late Middle Ages, while the geographical scope includes regions as different as North Africa, Spain, Ireland, continental ...
In the Kitchen, 1550-1800: Reading English Cooking at Home and Abroad
1st Edition
Edited
By Madeline Bassnett, Hillary Nunn
December 01, 2025
In the Kitchen insists that the preparation of food, whether imaginative, physical, or spatial, is central to a deeper understanding of early modern food cultures and practices. Devoted to the arts of cooking and medicine, early modern kitchens concentrated on producing, processing, and preserving ...