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Food Is Culture (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History)

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Author: Massimo Montanari
Creator: Albert Sonnenfeld
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Category: Book

List Price: ~~$24.50~~
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Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars

1 reviews
Sales Rank: 73124

Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 168
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 6.3 x 1

ISBN: 0231137907
Dewey Decimal Number: 641.3
EAN: 9780231137904
ASIN: 0231137907

Publication Date: October 20, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days

Also Available In:

•	Hardcover - Food Is Culture (Arts and Traditions of the Table)

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
Elegantly written by a distinguished culinary historian, Food Is Culture explores the innovative premise that everything having to do with food& mdash;its capture, cultivation, preparation, and consumption& mdash;represents a cultural act. Even the "choices" made by primitive hunters and gatherers were determined by a culture of economics (availability) and medicine (digestibility and nutrition) that led to the development of specific social structures and traditions.Massimo Montanari begins with the "invention" of cooking which allowed humans to transform natural, edible objects into cuisine. Cooking led to the creation of the kitchen, the adaptation of raw materials into utensils, and the birth of written and oral guidelines to formalize cooking techniques like roasting, broiling, and frying. The transmission of recipes allowed food to acquire its own language and grow into a complex cultural product shaped by climate, geography, the pursuit of pleasure, and later, the desire for health.In his history, Montanari touches on the spice trade, the first agrarian societies, Renaissance dishes that synthesized different tastes, and the analytical attitude of the Enlightenment, which insisted on the separation of flavors. Brilliantly researched and analyzed, he shows how food, once a practical necessity, evolved into an indicator of social standing and religious and political identity. Whether he is musing on the origins of the fork, the symbolic power of meat, cultural attitudes toward hot and cold foods, the connection between cuisine and class, the symbolic significance of certain foods, or the economical consequences of religious holidays, Montanari's concise yet intellectually rich reflections add another dimension to the history of human civilization. Entertaining and surprising, Food Is Culture is a fascinating look at how food is the ultimate embodiment of our continuing attempts to tame, transform, and reinterpret nature.

Customer Reviews:

5 out of 5 stars

The Montanari Way November 24, 2006
15 out of 15 found this review helpful

As an American boy growing up in France, we had only to hop it down to the local grocery to find the very best terrine. Massimo Montanari, author of a new compendium of his food columns, has written an exciting book about how and why people (especially in the Wrst) became interested in eating as an aesthetic proposition. Just yesterday here in San Francisco, I had the strange experience of having one of Montanari's columns come to life, as at a festive Thanksgiving dinner, someone brought a heaping box of cranberry flavored biscotti, explaining that the Italian bakeries of North Beach made them only at Thanksgiving and Christmas, for there's no market for them at other times of the year.

Exactly, Massimo Montanari would exclaim. One of his chapters shows how once a dish is associated with Christmas, you never see it the whole year round, and some foods (gingerbread for example) have been unfairly stigmatized with this "Christmas branding," although anybody could enjoy a nice piece of gingerbread in any season except that culturally, it would revolt us and most of us, even if we were starving, shipwrecked with Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Sun and the rest of the cast of LOST, on a desert island, most of us would turn up our noses at gingerbread. Brillat Savarin said it best, "Tell me what you eat anbd I'll tell you what you are," but canny old Massimo Montanari turns the good Frenchman upside his head to produce a slew of new apercus.

He knows his history backwards and forewards. When, for example, did Europeans introduce the custom of providing salad, sherbet, or just plain still water between courses? Montanari knows! And, he theorizes: would you ever suspect that the popularity of McDonalds is at least partially due to its providing the atavistic thrill of eating with one's hands, a practice that has been gradually taken from us since its heyday in the Middle Ages?

Even if you think you're not interested in food, this book will make you wonder how much of it is you, and how much of you is it.

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