Culture of the Fork: A Brief History of Everyday Food in Europe

From Publishers Weekly
In 1492, Columbus knew nothing of ragout. But perhaps he did enjoy the occasional sliced eel or roasted partridge, according to Rebora's investigation of food habits in Europe, from about 1400 to 1700. A professor of economic history at the University of Genoa, Rebora takes a scholarly approach and a learned tone in considering the impact of peasantry, population booms and modes of transport on the evolution of meals, drinks and, of course, spices. His is a quirky effort, though: no particular topic is treated in any great depth, resulting more in a pocket guide through the fourth dimension than a cultural treatise. This will be a disappointment to those who feel they haven't learned enough about the history of olive oil in four pages. Still, for those seeking the perfect dinner party conversation topic, the book is a godsend. Divided into 18 chapters, each on a different food type ("Stuffed Pasta") or trade passage ("The Sugar Route"), it offers countless delicious factual tidbits. The fork first appeared in Europe during the Middle Ages as a "single-pronged wooden utensil" used for eating lasagna, for instance, while 15th-century France had no plates diners used mensa, rounded disks of bread. Sonnenfeld offers a workmanlike translation despite the difficulties of, say, 60 different Italian words for various types of sausage. Etchings and woodcuts of ancient cheese graters and soup spoons, frying pans and coffee pots enliven the text, and a thorough bibliography refers readers to such Italian works as The Pleasures of Gluttony and Primitive Bread. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.


From Booklist
Translated from Italian, this highly personalized history of European food and cooking makes delightful reading. Assuming a bit of knowledge from his readers, Rebora sets out to debunk some myths. At the beginning of the Renaissance, food abounded in Europe. As the author points out, a skilled mason couldn't climb scaffolding to lay the stones of a cathedral if he was half starved. Surprisingly, meat was readily available and cheap due to the abundance of land for grazing cattle. Artichokes cost more than pork or beef; vegetables and fruits were poor man's fare, but peasants generally ate well. Religious opinion on fasting led to some strains in the market as fish prices soared, making a fast day's protein actually more expensive than meat. The rare luxury was the new boiled pasta, and a man's wealth could be assessed by the number of times a week his family dined on lasagna. The slippery noodles demanded a new eating implement, and the modified fork couldn't have appeared at a better time. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Review
"This highly personalized history of European food and cooking makes delightful reading." -- Booklist


Review
"A wonderfully descriptive book with a smorgasbord of information on the culinary traditions in post-medieval Europe.... Great reading and great reference material for any seasoned chef or inquisitive novice." -- Lidia Matticchio Bastianich, author of Lidia's Italian American Kitchen and host of TV's Lidia's Italian Table


Book Description
The Renaissance and the age of discovery introduced Europeans to exotic cultures, mores, manners, and ideas. That kitchen revolution led to the development of new utensils and table manners. Rebora discusses the availability of resources, how people kept from starving in the winter, how they farmed, how tastes developed, what the lower classes ate, and what the aristocracy enjoyed.


About the Author
Giovanni Rebora is professor of economic history and chair of the Department of Modern and Contemporary History at the University of Genoa. In 1983 he organized the First International Convention on the History of Culture and Food. In 1992 he edited Columbus at Table and has published Medieval Italian Cuisine Between East and West.Albert Sonnenfeld is Chevalier Professor of French and Comparative Literatures at the University of Southern California and is a longtime member of the National Board of Directors of the American Institute of Wine and Food. He is the English-language editor of Food: A Culinary History and a frequent contributor on culinary topics to such publications as The Languages of Wine and Food and Ideology.


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A lively stroll through (mostly southern) European culinary history. Eskimo languages have 50 words for snow, suggesting an important feature of the cultural and physical landscape. In the same spirit, there are "sixty specifically named Italian words for pork or beef sausage," to say nothing of the countless ways of naming noodles. Rebora (Economics/Univ. of Genoa) has a fine time touring through the Italian kitchen, pausing here to offer recipes like the kind Christopher Columbus might have enjoyed as a young man (panned partridge from France, lamprey from Portugal, marzipan from the Baltic), there to ponder the history of the fork (which, he tells us, was invented in Byzantium and introduced in the 14th century in Italy, where some clerics viewed it as a "shocking overrefinement"), and there to tease out the origins of local culinary traditions (French settlers brought couscous to Puglia, where it eventually mutated into orecchiette, the ear-shaped pasta associated with that far-southern Italian region). All this is far from the usual whirlwind tour of food history found in the frontmatter of many cookbooks, for Rebora packs his text with learned asides on the biochemical and cultural bases for lactose intolerance, with the transmission from one region to another of methods for curing and treating meat (which led to all those Italian sausages, to Serrano ham, to Turkish pasterme, to German w￯﾿ﾽrstel, and on and on), and other arcane data. He argues that the image of the European Middle Ages as a time of endemic hunger is wrong: "I believe," he writes, "that the people mostly had at their disposal adequate food, produce, and goods"-if nothing like the astounding choice that accompaniedthe exploration of the Americas and Asia. Nicely balancing recent encyclopedic treatments such as the Cambridge World History of Food, Rebora's slender volume should be of interest to foodies, cookbook collectors, and historians alike.


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