Food & History

Tomatoes, chiles, chocolate, maize and a host of other New World ingredients bear daily witness to the transformation of global eating habits that followed European colonisation of the Americas. Nonetheless, we know surprisingly little about the processes whereby these foods were naturalised into the cultural universes of their adoptive lands. This special issue of Food and History builds on the growing literature dedicated to the culinary dimensions of the Columbian exchange to offer a detailed analysis of the adoption of particular New World foodstuffs in early modern Europe. How did individual eaters respond to the new foods that curious travellers and sailors brought with them from the Indies? How does the unfamiliar become familiar? The papers that make up this dossier address these questions directly through attentive study of the incorporation of particular New World foodstuffs into the daily diets and cultural spaces of early modern Europeans. Individual articles chart the European trajectories of particular foodstuffs at the same time as they explore the methodological and theoretical frameworks within which the study of food and consumption may be situated.

Conventional approaches to the adoption of “new” consumables in early modern England, have focused on the impact of so-called “new groceries” and the exponential rise in the consumption of tea, coffee and sugar. Yet none of these is strictly a “New World” commodity, and analyses of their uptake are not necessarily suited to investigating the reception of true “New World” edible products, such as potatoes and cacao. In this paper, the mechanisms by which novel foodstuffs are encountered and brought into the English diet are explored, with the emphasis laid upon familiarity as a condition of acceptability. The use of recipe texts to explore the types and varieties of preparation in which potatoes and cacao were deployed also allows an exploration of the utility, and limitations of such texts for the history of culinary reception.

This article examines the role of aristocratic networks in the spread of chocolate in the Austrian Habsburg monarchy in the second half of the seventeenth century, focusing on the influential Harrach family. Due to their excellent contacts in Spain, the Harrachs had been of vital importance in the mediation and distribution of cultural goods and consumption practices from Spain to Austria. Chocolate, valued for both its medicinal properties and its exquisite taste, had conquered the salons of the Austrian elite by the mid seventeenth century. However, chocolate production developed slowly in Vienna, and it was not until the beginning of the eighteenth century that professional merchants took over the chocolate trade.

Stimulant beverages such as chocolate, tea and coffee fascinated the inhabitants of early modern Europe, and they remain today one of the most tangible signs of how exotic foods have penetrated our daily lives. This article forms part of a larger research project exploring the diffusion of chocolate in eighteenth-century Spain: on the one hand investigating the interactions between production, distribution, and consumption and the ideological, religious and scientific constructions created to promote and sustain the appropriation of chocolate in Spanish culture; on the other examining the role of chocolate as a privileged product in the creation of new forms of sociability/consumption and in the democratisation of consumption. Over the course of the eighteenth century cacao passed from being an exotic elite drink to being a well established Spanish commodity. How are we to explain this transformation? To answer this question we must explore the impact of colonial politics, the organisation of Spain’s Atlantic economy and the scientific, medical and religious discourses related to the adoption and appropriation of cacao by different social classes, alongside the evidence provided by travellers and other contemporary commentators.

At the end of 16^th Century, the Italian painters Vincenzo Campi and Bartolomeo Passerotti addressed the topic of the turkey in the scenes of poultry sale. The importance given to and the treatment of the exotic animal by these two artists is quite original. This originality will be presented in relation with the mainstream artistic treatment of the turkey in 16^th and 17^th Century in Italy and Flanders ; but also with the history of the discovery of the turkey and its emergence in Europe, in order to find out if the integration of the turkey in the European system of painted depictions was as rapid as the assimilation of the turkey in the European food system. The important number of artistic examples which will be submitted to you in this presentation as well as the variety of aesthetic and symbolic approaches of the turkey which artists showed, in general, testify that the integration of this exotic animal in European culture and in diets was particularly successful. If the images dedicated to the turkey play a role in the general movement of this success, they also reveal the numerous subtleties of this assimilation. Depicted as dead in Campi’s and Passerotti’s work, the exotic animal in pictures is both a sign of distinction and a sign of symbolic wealth. A blasphemous or obscene motif, the turkey takes part in all formal and symbolic games. I will give the opportunity to show how the new image of the turkey these two painters offered was to have consequences in the pictorial production of the following centuries.

A la fin du XVI^e siècle, les peintres italiens Vincenzo Campi et Bartolomeo Passerotti abordent le motif du dindon dans des scènes de vente de volailles. L’animal exotique y possède une place et un traitement tout à fait originaux. Une originalité à présenter en miroir au traitement artistique courant réservé au dindon aux XVI^e et XVII^e siècles en Italie et en Flandres, mais à mettre, aussi, en parallèle avec l’histoire de la découverte du dindon et sa diffusion en Europe, cela afin de saisir comment l’intégration de cet animal dans le système européen des représentations picturales se fit et si elle fut aussi rapide que son assimilation dans le système alimentaire européen. L’importance quantitative des exemples artistiques ainsi que la diversité des approches plastiques et symboliques dont les artistes ont fait preuve, en général, à l’encontre du dindon attestent d’une intégration particulièrement réussie de cet animal exotique dans la culture européenne et dans l’alimentation. Si les images consacrées au dindon accompagnent le mouvement général de cette réussite, elles révèlent aussi les nombreuses subtilités de cette assimilation. Représenté mort dans les tableaux de Campi et Passerotti, l’animal exotique est à la fois signe distinctif et porteur d’une riche symbolique. Motif blasphématoire ou obscène, le dindon se prête à tous les jeux formels et symboliques. Nous montrerons en quoi l’image nouvelle du dindon que proposent les deux peintres italiens aura des conséquences dans la production picturale des siècles suivants.

This paper argues that the time has come for a new approach to food exchange. Using the literatures of geography and sociology, it points out that the social constructionism that is being used increasingly in food studies is inadequate. Its privileging of human agency has led to an underestimation of the importance of the materiality of foodstuffs. Three dimensions are proposed for a rematerialisation of research on food exchange histories.

The experience of the arrival, reception and success of New World products in Europe – tomatoes, maize, potatoes, chillies, etc. – is a unique event in the culinary history of the continent. The assimilation of each foodstuff has its own distinct trajectory. This article explores how the tomato gradually and slowly came to dominate Italian cookery and food exports, after inauspicious beginnings in the 1500s, by following the tomato’s itinerary, back and forth across the Atlantic. We do this through the medium of “taste”, analysing the role it had to play in shaping the different stages of the tomato’s Italian history.

The history of human eating habits paradoxically straddles two opposite tendencies: enduring conservatism and profound transformation. The latter, in particular, have often come about in the course of history. However, the transformations initiated by the developments in world history that began in 1492 constitute an extraordinary test case for evaluating the importance of various such transformations. Indeed, the products characterizing the respective New and Old World diets considerably increased in variety with the exchange between the two continents that began in 1492. Many historians have attempted to establish the chronology and diffusion of various products in different regions of the world. Some have analyzed the results of this transformation as a kind of “blending” of the food traditions. But if we hope to study such “blending” seriously, we must make a distinction between, on the one hand, studying components of the diet (an approach requiring us to think primarily about specific food products that were consumed) and, on the other hand, studying components of the cuisine in general, in which we adopt a more complete perspective. Likewise, when studying food habits, we must be certain to think in terms of individuals and groups of individuals rather than in terms of “continents”. In weighing the concept of “food blending”, we must question whether such blending affected all individuals or groups of individuals in one or the other continent, whether it affected only certain human groups, or even whether it affected some individuals or groups in a given manner and to a certain extent while other individuals or groups were affected in other ways and to another extent.

Europe is indebted to America for a large number of vegetables and food products – grains, root crops, fruit, spices – which are today for the most part very common in Europe. The reception of New World crops in Europe was far from being a predictable or continuous process. Until modern times, society usually absorbed new foods very slowly. Before being integrated, Columbian crops had to overcome various obstacles. In order to enter the food system, every new element had to pass through three different conceptual stages :

a) Discovery

b) Classification

c) The elaboration of culinary prescriptions

The aim of this paper is to follow the introduction and the naturalisation of some American crops in order to see how traditional food habits absorb or reject what is new.

L’Europe est redevable à l’Amérique d’un grand nombre de produits qui aujourd’hui sont pour la plupart très communs dans nos champs et sur nos tables. Le processus d’intégration s’étala sur une période très longue ; parfois deux siècles et demi, voire trois, furent nécessaires. Avant d’être intégrés, les apports colombiens durent surmonter un certain nombre d’obstacles. Pour être accepté dans un système alimentaire préétabli, tout nouvel élément doit passer par des étapes conceptuelles différentes, que l’on peut schématiser de la manière suivante :

a) Découverte

b) Classification

c) Élaboration des prescriptions culinaires

Dans cet article, nous allons illustrer quelques aspects des modalités d’assimilation des apports colombiens au système alimentaire préexistant afin de comprendre comment ce dernier réagit et évolue lorsqu’il est confronté à des éléments extérieurs, qu’il englobera ou rejettera par la suite.

Known as of 8000 years ago, the potato has become the fourth food-stuff in the world. The diffusion on all continents results from a variety of geographical itineraries. Many different economic actors are implicated in its transformation from a marginal foodstuff to achieve its role as cornerstone in world diets. The potato, source of many easily prepared products, had to first convince consumers that it was also a nutritive food. At present it is one of the most popular products for “fast” cooking. The potato resumes in itself the paradigm of food globalization and is the centerpiece of a remarkable process of agricultural, technical and cooking innovations. The year 2008 was declared “International potato year” by FAO, a sign of the future role it may well play in feeding the world !

Connue dans les Andes il y a 8000 ans, la pomme de terre est aujourd’hui la quatrième denrée alimentaire dans le monde. Sa diffusion a suivi des trajectoires géographiques multiples. Elle a aussi mobilisé de nombreux acteurs économiques pour passer d’une culture marginale à une base alimentaire essentielle. Source de très nombreux produits préparés faciles d’emploi, il a fallu d’abord convaincre les consommateurs de ses qualités nutritives. Symbole de la globalisation alimentaire, la pomme de terre est au cœur d’un processus remarquable d’innovations agricoles, techniques et culinaires. La FAO lui a dédié l’année 2008 comme un signe de son avenir pour répondre au défi de l’alimentation mondiale.

The Indian sub-continent is ethnically and culturally diverse, and its food cultures are widely divergent. The category of “Indian cuisine” is a modern construction, a culmination of a history of successive imperial movements and syntheses, with contributions by the Portuguese, the Mughals, the Persians and the British. Diverse ingredients and traditions are synthesised and re-shaped to create distinct styles of cookery and service. The British, being a capitalist and globalising empire, was the most potent in shaping and diffusing forms of “Indian food”. Colonial and post-colonial migrations of the twentieth century developed those formations into a restaurant culture, first in Britain, then diffused to other parts of the world, including India itself. Further mutations are in progress at present with the wide diffusions and hybridisation of food cultures and the seemingly opposite pull to “authenticity”.

The relationship between migration and food is one that takes many forms. For the migrant in Britain food has played a much greater role than simply providing nourishment on a regular basis. This article illustrates the way in which, for migrants, food has contributed to the construction and perception of outsider identity; how it has been used as a weapon by the racist and xenophobic, yet for other incomers has been the source of entrepreneurial wealth. In addition it highlights the way in which food has contributed to cultural fusion and cultural separation as well as to religious tolerance and antipathy.