Art, Culture, and Cuisine

Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy

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by Phyllis Pray Bober

University of Chicago Press

Due/Published June 2001, 480 pages, paper

ISBN 0226062546

New in paper (S01)

Bober examines cooking through the dual lens of archaeology and art history. She argues that cuisine--the higher, skilled, and creative manifestation of cooking--is an art that should be elevated to the level of those more generally termed "fine."

She describes prehistoric eating in ancient Turkey; traditions of the great civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, and Rome; and rituals of the Middle Ages and the "Late Gothic International" period. She shows cuisine and dining's to be at the heart of cultural, religious, and social activities that have shaped Western sensibilities."Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are," --Brillat-Savarin.

Review

Got a caveman coming over for supper? A pharaoh stopping by for lunch? Well, if you're wondering what to serve, look no farther. Bober has included recipes from the cuisines of societies long-gone in this fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable culinary history. Bober successfully demonstrates that food and the practices of dining reveal a great deal about a society's cultural, religious and social practices. She examines culinary practices through archeological evidence and visual representations of food and dining. Bober discusses dining in Prehistoric times, Ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, and the Early Middle Ages.

In a review of the book Barbara Ketcham Wheaton writes, "Phyllis Bober is one of the pioneers of modern culinary history. No one else has undertaken to give such a wide-ranging account of this crucial human activity from the dawn of civilization to the Middle Ages."