First published in 1962, Elizabeth David's culinary odyssey through provincial France forever changed the way we think about food. With elegant simplicity, David explores the authentic flavors and textures of time-honored cuisines from such provinces as Alsace, Provence, Brittany, and the Savoie. Full of cooking ideas and recipes, French Provincial Cooking is a scholarly yet straightforward celebration of the traditions of French regional cooking. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Essays on food and language from the Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cooking 2009.

When did we first serve meals at regular hours? Why did we begin using individual plates and utensils to eat? When did "cuisine" become a concept and how did we come to judge food by its method of preparation, manner of consumption, and gastronomic merit? Food: A Culinary History explores culinary evolution and eating habits from prehistoric times to the present, offering surprising insights into our social and agricultural practices, religious beliefs, and most unreflected habits. The volume dispels myths such as the tale that Marco Polo brought pasta to Europe from China, that the original recipe for chocolate contained chili instead of sugar, and more. As it builds its history, the text also reveals the dietary rules of the ancient Hebrews, the contributions of Arabic cookery to European cuisine, the table etiquette of the Middle Ages, and the evolution of beverage styles in early America. It concludes with a discussion on the McDonaldization of food and growing popularity of foreign foods today.

Comfort, both physical and affective, is a key aspect in our conceptualization of the home as a place of emotional attachment, yet its study remains under-developed in the context of the European house. In this volume, Jon Stobart has assembled an international cast of contributors to discuss the ways in which architectural and spatial innovations coupled with the emotional assemblage of objects to create comfortable homes in early modern Europe. The book features a two-section structure focusing on the historiography of architectural and spatial innovations and material culture in the early modern home. It also includes 10 case studies which draw on specific examples, from water closets in Georgian Dublin to wallpapers in 19th-century Cambridge, to illustrate how people made use of and responded to the technological improvements and the emotional assemblage of objects which made the home comfortable. In addition, it explores the role of memory and memorialisation in the domestic space, and the extent to which home comforts could be carried about by travellers or reproduced in places far removed from the home. The Comforts of Home in Western Europe, 1700-1900 offers a fresh contribution to the study of comfort in the early modern home and will be vital reading for academics and students interested in early modern history, material culture and the history of interior architecture.

How was human (in)equality built across the table? Why were the first great banquets at the origin of the communal goods of humanity? Who, after forcing men from eating bread, wanted to forbid them chestnuts and popularized the potato? The Egyptian food table invented the notion of "symbols for food." The Greek food table invented the notion of sharing. The Roman food table invented the concept of pleasure. How was the person, caught eating and drinking alone, punished? Why did people die less of hunger in ancient times than in Africa in the 21st century? Why in China do people eat round things to show their love? How and why do we choose to eat this way? Why do societies choose to express their unity through their conception of the food table? Did the division in prehistoric societies first occur at the dinner table? Did the first great civilizations make the food table a major political tool with the rationing and banqueting systems in Mesopotamia and Egypt? Were the Gallic food tables swept away by the political alliance between the Catholic Church and the new masters coming from the great invasions? Did the feudal politico-religious system durably structure our food table? Did absolute monarchy have to invent its own conception of the food table with music, dance and architecture? What were the great French revolutionary conceptions of the food table? Did the philosophy of the Enlightenment change our conception of the food table? Did the French Revolution impose a new way of eating with the adoption of the three-fold table service and the banning of cuisine made with mixtures and knots? Does the grammar of our food correspond to a social project? Was Robespierre afraid of the great popular banquets? Did the Republic enforce the eating of potatoes instead of the "breadfruit tree" (the chestnut tree)? How was the myth of Parmentier imposed on schools? What were the great food utopias in the history of the world? Paul Ariès invites you on a gourmet journey from prehistory to the present day. You will know (almost) everything about what our ancestors ate and drank. The prehistoric food table, the ancient food table, the Gallic food table... Paul Ariès shows how the tables of the world remain largely dependent on the tables of the past. This political history of food is the result of thirty years of teaching and research. Better known as a political scientist specializing in ecology than as a specialist of the food table, Paul Ariès has been teaching since 1988 in the most prestigious international hotel schools. He is the author of La fin des mangeurs (DDB), Les Fils de McDo (L'Harmattan), and Manger sans peur (Golias).