Food & History

During medieval times, Koreans were known to have had only two meals a day. These two meals were breakfast and supper and they were referred to as joseok (morning and evening [meal]). Occasionally, however, people would have a lighter meal known as jeomshim. The original meaning of jeomshim was “light-eating”, to lighten-up people’s subdued minds on account of their empty stomachs, but it eventually changed into a midday meal because the snack was usually taken at midday. Koreans soon started having jeomshim in the summer when the daytime was long and also while working hard and engaged in physical labour which would consume vital energy. Added to this, there was another meal, irunbab (early meal), which rich Koreans took in the morning before breakfast. Koreans ate more food than any other people or nation in Asia. They usually ate 420cc (336 grams) of cereals a meal, excluding side dishes. The staple foods were cereals such as rice, barley, foxtail millet and oats. Unsurprisingly, the staple food of Koreans at that time was rice.

The diversity of aubergine dishes came to be one of the notable features of Ottoman cuisine. This article tracks the rise of the aubergine to the position of top vegetable over the Ottoman period. Although grown abundantly from the beginning of the sixteenth century, palace menus for the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries indicate that abundance did not reflect superior status. Only from the eighteenth century do we find evidence of special regard for the aubergine over other vegetables. Evidence for the emergence of particular aubergine dishes and aubergine varieties is also examined.

During the early seventeenth century, physicians recognised that nature could artfully be manipulated in order to redress the insalubrious properties of pernicious foods. This “art and diet”, as it was known, was supposed to be used to rectify the harmful characteristics of waterfowl; and because this genre of food was popular with the English gentry, its theoretical modes of preparation and consumption, indicated by regimen guides, cookery books, household accounts and memoirs, enable us to see how the manipulation of nature was understood and, where deemed important, applied at the homes of the well-to-do at that time.

This article focuses on the comparison of two mountain landscapes and their relationship to a special food in European and Peruvian Indigenista literature and culture. Whilst dairy products such as milk, cheese and chocolate are often linked with the Alps, the coca leaf is associated with the Andes. In both cases, the relationship of food and landscape appears as a symbolic agglomeration which depends on specific historical and cultural factors. The process of landscape-making, including its food, is seen as an aesthetic and cultural construct. Thus, literature not only reflects but also influences the creation of “mountain food”.

Kochbücher sind eine selten genutzte Quelle der Technikund Konsumgeschichte. Dieser Artikel untersucht das Kochbuch “Das elektrische Kochen”, das seit 75 Jahren, von 1936 bis heute in 54 Auflagen herausgegeben wurde -zunächst von der Berliner Kraft- und Licht (BEWAG)- Aktiengesellschaft, später von der Hauptberatungsstelle (heute Fachberatungsstelle) für Elektrizitätsanwendung (HEA). Kochbücher wie dieses sollten ihre Nutzerinnen dazu erziehen, elektrische Haushaltsgeräte zu kaufen und, bevor diese zur Haushalts-Standardausstattung gehörten, Bedürfnisse nach neuen elektrischen Geräten zu wecken. In diesem Artikel wird der These nachgegangen, dass sich Wissen bezüglich Lebensmitteln, Ernährung und Zubereitungstechniken in Verbindung mit der Implementierung und Diffusion elektrischer Haushaltsgeräte wandelte. Innerhalb dieses Prozesses ging zwar Wissen über manuelle Zubereitungstechniken verloren. Aber durch die Einführung elektrischer Geräte musste auch neues Wissen zum Umgang mit ihnen generiert werden. In einer Fallstudie zu dem Kochbuch “Das elektrische Kochen” werden diese Prozesse für den Zeitraum von 1930 bis 2011 in Bezug auf Deutschland (bzw. auf die Bundesrepublik für die Zeit nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg) untersucht.

Our eating, conservation, food preparation and cooking habits changed significantly due to the implementation of electric household appliances. Cookbooks are a rarely used source in the history of technology and consumption. This paper deals with the cookbook “Das elektrische Kochen”, first edited by the German energy supply company Berliner Kraft- und Licht (BEWAG)- Aktiengesellschaft, later by the Hauptberatungsstelle (today Fachberatungsstelle) für Elektrizitätsanwendung (HEA). It has now been in print for 75 years, from 1936 to the present thanks to no less than 54 editions. These cookbooks were meant to educate users to buy electric household appliances and create new needs, even before the appliances became part of the standard household equipment. This article advances the theses that, on the one hand, knowledge about manual skills and traditional cooking procedures get lost in this process but, on the other hand, new knowledge concerning the handling of electric household appliances for preparation and cooking needed to be gained by the users. This process is illustrated in a case study of the cookbook “Das elektrische Kochen” for the period of 1930 to 2006 throughout Germany and after the Second World War in West Germany.

The aim of the article is to present Carin Boalt and an early investigation of food habits in Sweden, initiated by the Swedish Cooperative Association (KF) and carried out during 1936-37, presented in a report, “27000 Meals. An investigation of eating habits”. Participants in study circles organised by KF registered their food habits over the period of a week. Results show that mealtimes are confused and the way food is distributed within families has its failings. Women eat worst and children get too little in the way of ‘perfect’ foods. Information and propaganda is needed to improve standards. The main topics of debate about food habits today and some 70 years ago remain the same.

Dutch food history is often limited to descriptions of socioeconomic circumstances and food practices. Much can be gained from examining the impact of cultural values on consumption. Among such values are inhibitions regarding convenience and a great concern for nutrition and health, two features that influenced the popularity of ready meals in the Netherlands during the 1950s and 1960s, despite manufacturers’efforts. These canned, jarred, freeze-dried and frozen products suffered the consequences of a requirement imposed on housewives: carefully prepared, nutritious meals for their families, day in, day out.

This paper examines the uses of food in La Grande Illusion and considers the insights this offers about the film’s double historical context of 1937 and the First World War (1914-1918). It is a first attempt to focus exclusively on food in one of Renoir’s films. I argue that the many ambiguities, ambivalences and contradictions revealed by the uses of food not only provide us with multiple layers of interpretative potential about the transformation of human society in the film’s historical contexts but that they also serve to engage us specifically in the ideology of these historical changes.

My preoccupation is with the meeting: how to belong, how to meet. Often Renoir compared the functions of a film director with those of a chef in a restaurant. A chef can create great meals, but they are also the result of his collaboration with his helpers, the meat chefs, the wine stewards, the sauce makers and the rest.

Nombreuses sont les récentes recherches qui apportent un éclairage nouveau sur le Troisième Reich en focalisant sur les questions liées à l’alimentation. Pourtant, le rapport de Hitler à la nourriture n’a pas encore été complètement étudié, alors même qu’il nous livre des clés importantes pour comprendre non seulement sa vision du monde, mais aussi les ressorts idéologiques du national-socialisme, notamment son antislavisme et ses fondements mémoriels. Le présent article, en plus de mettre en lumière la place centrale de la faim dans la pensée de Hitler, revient sur son végétarisme et montre qu’il est moins l’expression de préférences personnelles, que l’actualisation directe d’une vision du monde qui est peut-être moins intempestive que l’on pourrait le croire de prime abord.

The article asks why it is that projects celebrating regional cuisine may be unsuccessful in gaining recognition from people in the region. It explores how a recent campaign in Yunnan, China attempted to construct a “modern” image for the province through promoting a distinctive, “green” regional cuisine. However, in a context of rapid changes to urban space and the food supply, residents in the provincial capital, Kunming, were ambivalent towards the notion of a regional cuisine. It is argued that to gain recognition locally, public celebrations of regional cuisine must resonate with people’s lived experiences and performances of “their” foods.

Cynthia SHAFER-ELLIOTT, Food in Ancient Judah: domestic cooking in the time of the Hebrew Bible (Equinox / Acumen: Sheffield, 2013) 256 pp; 10 figs; price £60/$99.95; ISBN 978-1-908049-73-5.

Ken ALBALA and Trudy EDEN (eds), Food and Faith in Christian Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. 265 pp. ISBN: 9780231149976.

Philip SLAVIN, Bread and Ale for the Brethren: The Provisioning of Norwich Cathedral Priory, 1260‑1536. Studies in Regional and Local History 11 (University of Hertfordshire Press, Hatfield, 2012) xvii+220 pages, 18 figs, hb £35, pb £18.99. ISBN 978-1-907396-63-2.

Joan FITZPATRICK (ed.), Renaissance Food from Rabelais to Shakespeare (Farnham, Ashgate, 2010), 171 pages. ISBN 9780754664277; Price: $99.

Rebecca EARLE, The Body of the Conquistador: Food, Race and the Colonial Experience in Spanish America (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2012), 265 pages, 21 illustrations. Price: £60.00 ($99.00). ISBN 978-1-107-00342-2.

Matthieu LECOUTRE, Ivresse et ivrognerie dans la France moderne (Rennes, Presses universitaires de Renne / Tours, Presses universitaires François- Rabelais de Tours, 2011), 395 pages, 20 black and white illus., 8 colour illus. Price : €21. ISBN 978-2-7535-1706-6.

Philippe MEYZIE, L’alimentation en Europe à l’époque moderne. Manger et boire, XVIe s.-XIXe (Paris, Armand Colin, “Collection U: Histoire”, 2010), 288 pages. ISBN 9782200244071.

Rachel RICH, Bourgeois consumption. Food, space and identity in London and Paris, 1850-1914 (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2011), 239 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables. Price : £55. ISBN 978 0 7190 8112 5.

Kilien STENGEL, L’aide alimentaire : colis de vivres et repas philanthropiques. Histoire de la Gigouillette 1934-2009 (L’Harmattan, coll. “Historiques”, 2012), 140 pages. ISBN : 978-2-296-296776-2 ; Prix : €14,50.

Yang JISHENG, Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962 (London, Allen Lane, 2012), 629 pages, 1 illustration. Price : £30. ISBN 978-1-846-14518-6. ; Zhou XUN (ed.), The Great Famine in China, 1958-1962: A Documentary History, Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut, 2012, 204 pages, 1 illustration, ISBN 978-0-300-17518-9.

América Solanger BUSTAMENTE ARÉVALO, Ernährungserziehung (shokuiku) und die nationale Identität Japans [Food Education (shokuiku) and National Identity in Japan], (München, Iudicium 2013), 159 pages, 6 illustrations. ISBN 978-3-86205-307-0 (published in German); price : € 18.

Dorothy DUNCAN, Canadians at Table: A Culinary History of Canada (Toronto, Dundurn, 2011), 248 pages, illustrated. ISBN 9781459700383; price: C$24.99; Barbara SANTICH, Bold Palates: Australia’s Gastronomic Heritage, Kent Town, South Australia: Wakefield Press, 2012, 336 pages, illustrated, AU$49.95, ISBN 9781743050941.

Jeffrey M. PILCHER, Planet Taco. A Global History of Mexican Food (New York, NY, Oxford University Press, 2012), 292 pages, 44 images. ISBN 978-0-19-974006-2; price: US $ 27.95.