Food history

Food history is an interdisciplinary field that examines the history of food and nutrition, and the cultural, economic, environmental, and sociological impacts of food. Food history is considered distinct from the more traditional field of culinary history, which focuses on the origin and recreation of specific recipes.

The first journal in the field, Petits Propos Culinaires, was launched in 1979 and the first conference on the subject was the 1981 Oxford Food Symposium.

Middle Ages (500–1500)

Main article: Medieval cuisine

The Middle Ages, also referred to as the Dark Ages, began in Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire and lasted for almost a thousand years, leading up to the Renaissance. During this time, the food people ate was controlled by the seasons, geography, and the Church. Most food was homegrown and lacked the elegance seen in later European foods as well– this is because society was primitive and violent, not always focusing on the foods they consumed.

Food in the Middle Ages was entirely limited to whatever the land could provide. Poor families primarily consumed vegetables in the form of stew, soup, or pottage, and anything grown on their own small plots of land. They were unable to afford luxury items, like spices, and were not allowed to hunt deer, boar, or rabbits like members of the noble class could. The staple items of a lower class diet included rye or barely bread, stews, local dairy products, cheaper meats like beef, pork or lamb, fish if there was access to freshwater, vegetables and herbs grown at home, fruit from local trees and bushes, nuts, and honey. The reason that poor families were unable to obtain nutritious foods, or even a great variety of food for that matter, is due to the fact that this was the Dark Ages. It was a period of wars, raids, poverty, and isolation, meaning that most struggled to survive. However, those born into the upper class and into noble families did not struggle as much.

In terms of the upper class and nobility, their food and diet were definitely better than that of the lower classes, but food was eaten in small portions. This was because a new era emerged, in which people were influenced by other cultures and dining traditions after the Crusades. It began a time period of extensive food preparation and presentation, where meals were laid out with many different colors and flavors– a very different experience from those in the lower class. Smaller portion sizes developed around this time due to various cultural influences, and these large, table-long meals were essentially picked at by the nobility. Additionally, the foods were highly spiced, and many of these were expensively imported, or bought back from outside of Europe. The Middle Ages diet of the upper class and nobility included manchet bread, a variety of meats like venison, pork, and lamb, fish and shellfish, spices, cheese, fruits, and a limited number of vegetables.

A medieval baker with his apprentice.

While there were no great centers for learning, or very prosperous towns, there were many people looking to build a life with less struggle. Grains were grown for bread, beer and oats, root vegetables were grown for stews, and animals were raised for both meat and other entities, including wool, leather, etc. Families made due with what they could, primarily cooking over an open fire, in a cauldron or on spit. Their ovens were typically outside of the home, and made on top of clay or turf.

As food consumption was controlled by geography and availability, it was also governed by the Church. There were many fasts that occurred throughout the year, and the longest was that of Lent. There were designated days in which people could not eat meat or fish, but this did not affect the poor very much because of their already lacking food options. The Church also influenced people to have feasts throughout the year, including one on Christmas, and ones to celebrate lesser holidays. The noble and upper classes participated in these extravagant feasts, as they often followed a fasting period.

Potato

Main article: History of the potato

The potato was first domesticated in the region of modern-day southern Peru and extreme northwestern Bolivia. It has since spread around the world and become a staple crop in many countries.

Global production of potatoes in 2008

Some believe that the introduction of the potato was responsible for a quarter or more of the growth in Old World population and urbanization between 1700 and 1900. Following the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire, the Spanish introduced the potato to Europe in the second half of the 16th century, as part of the Columbian exchange. The staple was subsequently conveyed by European mariners to territories and ports throughout the world. The potato was slow to be adopted by distrustful European farmers, but soon enough it became an important food staple and field crop that played a major role in the 19th century European population boom. However, lack of genetic diversity, due to the very limited number of varieties initially introduced, left the crop vulnerable to disease. In 1845, a plant disease known as late blight, caused by the fungus-like oomycete Phytophthora infestans, spread rapidly through the poorer communities of western Ireland as well as parts of the Scottish Highlands, resulting in the crop failures that led to the Great Irish Famine.

Rice

Rice comes from the seasonal plant Oryza sativa, a grass belonging to the Gramineae family. Oryza sativa can grow up to 4 feet in height and has flat, long leaves and flower spikelets which produce the rice grains.

The principal rice-producing countries are China, India, Japan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Thailand, and Burma. The average amount of rice cultivated every year ranges between 800 billion and 950 billion pounds. The earliest archaeological evidence of the origins of rice dates back to central and eastern China during 7000–5000 BCE. All rice plants, besides upland rice, are grown on small flooded fields known as paddies. Upland rice is grown on dry soil.

Once harvesting season arrives, the husks are opened to access the rice kernels. White rice is a result of the hull and bran layers of the kernel being removed coating the kernel with glucose and talc. Brown rice comes from kernels that did not have the hull and bran layers removed. Since most of the nutrients are retained in the hull and bran layers, brown rice is considered healthier than white rice.

Rice is cooked by boiling and eaten alone as well as in a variety of dishes in many cuisines across the world. The by-products of rice include powdered bran and starch, oil, flour, fuel, fertilizer, and industrial chemicals. Parts of the rice plant are used to feed livestock, construction, clothing items, and cleaning tools.

Muslims brought rice to Sicily, and its cultivation started in the 9th century. After the 15th century, rice spread throughout Italy and then France, later spreading to all the continents during the age of European exploration. As a cereal grain, today it is the most widely consumed staple food in Asia and elsewhere. It is the third-largest agricultural commodity (741.5 million tonnes in 2014), after sugarcane (1.9 billion tonnes) and maize ("corn" in the United States, 1.0 billion tonnes).

Today, the majority of all rice produced comes from China, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Pakistan, Philippines, Korea and Japan. Asia accounts for 87% of the world's total rice production.

Iberian Peninsula

Both Portugal and Spain were expanding beyond just that of the New World in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century. Their dominance on the coast of major ports opened up new trade routes by the sea that linked food exchange across the world. Both countries that make up the majority of the Iberian Peninsula colonized: Canary and Azores islands, Goa--a coastal state of India, Malacca on the Malaysian coast, Ternate in the Moluccas as well as the Spice Islands. In the Americas, they had possession of Brazil as well as prevalent Spanish viceroyalties through modern Mexico. Under Phillip II, Catholic cuisine elements inadvertently helped transform the cuisine of the Americas, Buddhists, Hindus, and Islamic cuisines of the South Eastern Asian region. In Goa, the Portuguese were encouraged by the Crown to marry local women following their conversion. This integration led to mixed cuisine between Portugal and Western India. The Portuguese brought round raised loaves, using wheat shipped from Northern India, as well as pickled pork. The pork was pickled in wine or vinegar with garlic (carne de vinha d’alhos) tied to Portuguese cuisine that later became vindaloo.

Jesuits

To help bring about converts to the Catholic religion, the Society of Jesus, also known as Jesuits, was established in 1534. The Jesuits could be found in several countries at this time; many were in the Americas, some in Angola, Japan briefly, and some parts of China. Their influence and effect on cuisine differed from country to country. They sold maize and cassava to plantations in Angola that would later grant provisions to slave traders. They exported sugar and cacao from the Americas to Europe, and in southern parts of the Americas, they dried leaves of the local mate plant that would compete with coffee, tea, and chocolate as the favored hot beverage in Europe. Despite mate’s popularity and competition against chocolate, the Jesuits were the leading producers and promoters of chocolate. Using indigenous labor in Guatemala they shipped it across the world to Southeast Asia, Spain, and Italy. Chocolate’s popularity was also in part to the theological consensus that, because it was not considered a food, it could be eaten while fasting. It was thought to have lust-reducing effects applicable to many nuns and monks at the time.

Among popular exports from the Americas, maize flatbreads or dumplings (tortillas and tamales) made its way into Europe. Despite its modern popularity, many conquistadors and Charles V did not eat the food as it was not considered high cuisine at the time. In Japan, Jesuits did not attempt to integrate Catholic cuisine into Chinese society and accepted the well established high Confucian-Taoist-Buddhist cuisine. Although their stay was brief, deep frying (tempura), cakes and confectionary (kasutera, confetti), as well as the bread still called by the Iberian name (pan) can be traced back to Jesuit influence.

Processing sugarcane

The global dominance in the 16th century did more than just expand food styles for the Iberian Empires. Their control over sugar and confectionary exchange also advanced the processing of sugarcane. The advancement of the vertical roller mill, multiple boilers, and claying allowed sugarcane to become cheaper as well as of higher quality. The origin of the vertical roller mill is uncertain, but Catholic missionaries and the Manila galleon were essential in its widespread use at this time. Before the vertical roller mill, the horizontal roller mill went from India to China, until the early sixteenth century when artisans geared it for vertical milling. It did not reach Mexico and Peru until later in that same century. This cross-Pacific innovation was standard in sugar production and laid the foundation for the technological improvement of these same mills in the nineteenth century during the Industrial Revolution.

Early modern Europe

Grain and livestock have long been the most important agricultural products in France and England. After 1700, innovative farmers experimented with new techniques to increase yield and looked into entirely new products such as hops, oilseed rape, artificial grasses, vegetables, fruit, dairy foods, commercial poultry, rabbits, and freshwater fish.

Sugar began as an upper-class luxury product, but by 1700 Caribbean sugar plantations worked by African slaves had expanded production, and it was much more widely available. By 1800 sugar was a staple of working-class diets. For them, it symbolized increasing economic freedom and status.

Significance of Islamic cuisine in Eurasia

Christian cuisine, which was established around the first to third century, and was indebted to Islamic cuisine, spread over vast areas of the old Roman Empire, but it wasn't until around the fifteenth century that It spread as widely as Islamic cuisine. It is important to acknowledge the significance on types of islamic food and put emphasis on Islamic cuisine first, as well as the impact that it had throughout western Eurasia. Muslims respected, and valued both meat and alcohol over a long period of time, and the cuisine throughout Islam was heavily based on wheat products, meat, and sweet confections.

Food was treasured and treated with great praise, the Qur'an stated that, "God's creation was good.... Muslims should enjoy it," and that "to enjoy sweets is a sign of faith." According to the Baghdad Cookbook, of the six pleasures: drinks, sexual intercourse, scent, and sound, food was considered to be of the greatest importance. About one third of the Cookbook consisted of sweet dishes, and attractive cuisine consisting of fine foods was considered to stimulate one's appetite, therefore playing a part in the health of an individual, as well as the appearance of their physique. The Qur'an also indicated that the afterlife would consist of a garden with rivers full of sweet water, milk, wine, and honey, which were all liquids similar to those correlated throughout the human body. The water supported life; milk represented both breasts and semen, which contribute to new life; wine symbolized blood, as well as male activity and power; and lastly, honey illustrated sweetness, purity, and morality.

Although the Qur'an only makes a few references to wine, besides the wine running rivers, the beverage still had a large impact on Islamic customs. Wine that had been distributed and sold by Jews and Christian monks had been greatly admired in early Islam. In order to express opinions that would generally be looked down upon, poetry would be composed to speak on controversial topics, particularly while drinking. Wine drinking gatherings would bring courtly meals to an end, while poets would recite verses that celebrated the search for freedom, generosity, and aristocracy. In contrast to the Qur'an, there had been publications in the Hadith stating that, "wine seemed to be suspect." One passage mentioned that wine, as a fermented beverage, impacts ones intellect; and another passage forbids the storage of fermented fruit beverages altogether. Because of this, slowly over time, wine became prohibited. Similar to the wine drinking gatherings, following meals, poets, physicians, astrologers, alchemists, as well as other educated intellectuals would commemorate the state and its history and power. Cuisine, similar to poetry, was thought to be an art that was often used to celebrated and socialize.

Wheat products, such as breads and starches, have a long, extensive ancestry, and had been described in human-like terms. For example, physicians believed that wheat was the most esteemed grain, due to the warm and moist temperament, not unlike the human body. This similarity to the human body was believed to add nutritional value. Wheat had been used in attempt to alter personality traits as well. Wheat flour could be blended together with water in order to create a drink called Sawiq. This beverage was considered to be cooling and refreshing, therefore perfect for hot-tempered people, especially throughout the warm summer months of the year.

Food was also used to represent societal hierarchies throughout this era. For instance, wealth was often represented by the use of lavishly scented and colored cuisine. Flour was also produced in various categories: white, large grained semolina, whole meal, and what remained was a bran that had been used for animals. White flour was used in "high cuisine," the large-grained semolina was for notable situations, and whole meal was most often put to use by the urban poor. Bread was usually baked using beehive ovens,and white breads were most often sold to higher ranked individuals on the societal hierarchal scale, whereas darker breads were reserved for those who were considered a lower class throughout society.

Cuisine was thought to have symbolic meaning as well. Bread, for example, would symbolize and acknowledge the effort that God had put in to provide humans with food. The stages of the growth and use of bread may resemble that of a human life. "The growing of wheat and the making of bread- from the tead grain in the earth, to the living sweat, to meal and flour ground in the mill, to living leavened bread, and finally to bread dissolution in the human body." Other foods that symbolized concepts of human life were soup, meat and vegetables, rice pilau and stuffed flaky pastries (generally made with phyllo), eggs, salt meat, sweet halvah and rice-flour puddings, and milk and sweetened fruit drinks. Soup was used to remind people that life would cease to exist without water, meat and vegetables reminded people that life was sustained on earth, rice pilau and stuffed flaky pastries stimulated the power of fire to convert and perfect. Eggs considered women's fertility, salt meat was thought of in regard to mens power to impregnate. Sweet halvah and rice-flour puddings created imagery of humans living throughout a divine society, and lastly milk and sweetened fruit drinks had been what angels had offered to the Prophet.

Impact of religion on cuisines

Perhaps partly for geographical reasons, diet became an important feature of some religions. Focusing mainly on the foods eaten, the three most widespread religions (Christianity, Buddhism, and Islam) developed their own distinct recipes, cultures, and practices around food. The three religions, although varying in recipes and practices, follow the two main principles around food: "the theory of the culinary cosmos and the principle of hierarchy." There is a third principle that involved sacrifice. Over the years, religious and societal views on killing living things for religious purposes have changed, and it is no longer considered a major principle.

Buddhism

Buddhist meal

Starting in the 5th century CE, the earliest Buddhist meals were made up predominately of rice, sugar, ghee, meat and alcohol. As time has passed, Buddhism has split into four major schools of thought: Mahayana, Theravada, Vajrayana and Zen Buddhism. Although alike in many ways, the schools often differ in the sorts of dietary restrictions they practice. Although it is often inferred that Buddha was vegetarian, for the discretion of animals, there is no evidence in his teachings that he stated this directly. The teachings do state that killing is immoral; however, it is never stated that animals are involved in this practice and in the text of the Vinaya the act of eating meat is "permissible" as Buddha has done it himself. Many Buddhist teachings downplay the consumption of meat and alcohol. This does not completely forbid it, and they did prefer the use of supplemental proteins and refreshments. Buddhist monks often turned to fasting for spiritual guidance, and were told to eat whatever was placed in their begging bowls, which meant they could not choose or opt out of certain foods. The Buddhist religion and art of religious gastronomy spread in popularity all over East Asia and flourished mainly back in its homeland of India during the 16th and 17th centuries. Combining spices, new vegetables, and new cooking methods besides churning and heat pressure, the Buddhist cuisine adapted and transformed into what is known today as Indian cuisine.

Islam

Turkish coffee, often enjoyed with a Turkish Delight.

Emerging in the 9th century CE, Islamic meals were made up mostly of wine, (meat) stews, sugar, and bread. The culture around Islamic food did not delve as far from its original roots as Buddhism did, as they often still emphasized meat and alcohol with most meals, bread (and the type of grain used) represented God's love and resourcefulness for his creations, and the idea of treating oneself when eating. The culinary art developed in two stages: the first of these was Perso-Islamic cuisine from Mesopotamia and North African influences. Using a wide range of ingredients and chemical processing, the Perso-Islamic cuisine emphasised the healing properties of food. According to the Qu'ran, God's creation (food) was "good and good Muslims should enjoy it." Food was also considered one of the greatest pleasures, according to the Baghdad Cookbook.

The second development is known as Turko-Islamic cuisine; it emphasizes rice and coffee. Developing after the invasion of the Mongols, Turko-Islamic cuisine was considered a humble man's meal because it often focused on the use of grain for many versatile meals such as porridge, bread, boiled millet, and fried bread. The cuisine also spread mainly along trade routes through merchants and traveling royalty; the Turko-Islamic cuisine incorporates many spices and ingredients that were not known in the Muslim world during the late 14th and 15th centuries. The obsession with coffee and the role society plays in this cuisine is associated with the creation of modern-day Turkish coffee.

Christianity

The Last Supper, perhaps the best-known Christian meal.

The idea of feasting and fasting rose with Christian cuisine in the late fifteenth century. Being based mainly on wine and wheat, Christians would often refer to their meals as the (figurative) body and blood of Christ. This tradition of consuming bread and wine during a religious gathering or church ceremony is still widely practiced in Christianity today; however, a few churches use grape juice and crackers for the sake of the legal drinking age. The spread of Christian cuisine is based largely off of the vast expansion of Islamic cuisine in the centuries before hand, but often placed emphasis on different roles of certain foods. Bread (and wheat) played a more representative role in Christian cuisine than kindness role (like in Islamic cuisine) and alcohol was seen as a religious drink, not a downplayed refreshment (as in Buddhism). Placing emphasis on the eucharist, Christians see food as many different things, from representing Jesus' body to being a source of punishment during fasting. In modern times, food not only represents Christ's body, but also a gift for those in good or bad times. According to Ken Alba, from giving birth to mourning the loss of a loved one, food is now an essential part of the Christian religion.

Judaism

It is difficult to define Jewish food as Jewish people have a vast geographic diversity. Often times throughout history Jews have eaten many different types of food that were no different than the cuisine of their Gentile neighbors. However, Jewish cuisine is unique in the sense that it is influenced by socio-economic and migratory patterns of the Jewish community that follow Jewish dietary laws called the Kashrut along with other religious requirements such as teachings in the Torah and Talmud. For example, creating a fire was forbidden on Shabbat which led to inspiration for slow-cooked Sabbath stews in Sephardic and Ashkenazi cuisine.

In Deuteronomy 8:8 seven types of produce are mentioned as dietary staples. These include wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranate, olives and dates. Meat, which was mostly mutton was also eaten in biblical times along with legumes and other wild plants. Thoroughly analyzed in detail in the Talmud, dietary laws found in the Torah governed Jewish people’s diets throughout ancient Jewish history.

Sephardic cuisine refers to foods eaten by the Jews of the Mediterranean, North Africa and the Middle East. Much of this territory was and still is apart of the Islamic world, which reflects similar food customs of this culture. During the early Middle Ages, Jews in Islamic lands prospered economically as well as culturally. Thus, Sephardic cuisine reflects its socio-economic position by its vast quantity, top quality and illustrious presentation. Upon Jewish expulsion from Spain in 1492 as a result of the Spanish Inquisition, many Sephardic Jews migrated south to North Africa and Ottoman lands where they continued to influence the local cuisine while also simultaneously adapting changes based on the local Islamic cuisine.

Oppositely, unlike to Sephardic Jewry, many Ashkenazi Jews from Europe and Russia were oppressed and very poor. Hence, their food reflects just that. Ashkenazi cuisine reflects the migration of a community originally settled in Germany which eventually spread east towards Poland and Russia. Often times when Americans reference Jewish food such as bagels, knishes and borscht they are referring to common staples in Ashkenazi cuisine. Gentiles also ate the above foods widely throughout Eastern Europe as well.

American Jewish cuisine is a refined version of traditional Ashkenazi cuisine. However, Jews inhabited the United States long before the major wave of Eastern European immigration at the turn of the 20th century.

Christianity and sugar

The rise of global exploration by the Spanish and Portuguese aided the growth and expansion of the sugar trade. Through their cultivation of sugar, a new process emerged that made processing sugarcane cheaper and enabled them to receive a yield of higher quality. This invention was the vertical roller mill which consisted of two or more rollers that were geared to move in different directions that would crush the sugarcane. After the sugarcane was crushed, it would then have to be processed through multiple boilers and eventually clay.

Catholic missionaries played a major role in the diffusion of the new technology that was the vertical roller mill. Missionaries traveled around the world hoping to study and adapt different sugar-making methods from places such as China and India around the sixteenth century. By late seventeenth century, as plantations within the Americas continued to grow, Brazil became the dominant sugar producer.

Due to the increase of sugar cultivation, obtaining sugar became easier and more affordable. Thus, Europeans could now enjoy Islamic-inspired confectionary goods that were previously costly to produce. Surprisingly, the Jesuits were leading producers of chocolate, obtaining it from the Amazon jungle and Guatemala and shipping it across the world to Southeast Asia, Spain and Italy.

The Jesuits introduced Mesoamerican techniques to Europe for processing and preparing chocolate which in turn reintroduced simple grindstones into Europe. Fermented cocoa beans had to ground on heated grindstones to prevent producing oily chocolate, a process that was foreign to many Europeans. As a beverage, chocolate remained largely within the Catholic world as it was not considered a food to the church and thus could be enjoyed during fasting.

Fermentation cosmos in early modern cuisine

The most important shift to the creation of gourmet cuisine was the publication of François Pierre La Varenne's cookbook Le Cuisinier François (The French Cook) in 1651. The French gourmet cuisine brought about the appearance of new fat-based cooking techniques and the disappearance of spices and sugars. Additionally, new advancements in chemistry led to a new culinary philosophy of nutrition, digestion, and fermentation. Rather than the old philosophies: the culinary cosmos of the four elements.

This is notable because this theory helped the French cuisine take over the Catholic cuisine from 1650 and on in Europe. However, every noble in Europe didn't dine on French cuisine. The bourgeoisie of the Dutch Republic still ate Catholic dishes but incorporated middling. While the English nobles dined on French cuisine, the lower class preferred middling bread-and-beef cuisine. Middling is the process of bringing high and low cuisine together by using fats, sugars, and exotic foodstuffs like sauces and sweets. Throughout all the empires early modern cuisine introduced "new sauces and the separation of sweet and sour, emphasized bread and beef and experimented with fat, flour, and liquid combinations in sauces and sweet dishes."

Prior to the new culinary theory of nutrition, digestion, and fermentation, classical culinary cosmos was the bases of cooking. Which is the idea that dishes are primarily created by the four elements: fire, earth, air, and water. With fire or heat being the most important component of cooking. It was commonly believed that everything needed to be heated to be able to be consumed. Cold food was thought to be dangerous. So with the rise of the new culinary theory, there was a newfound respect for eating raw vegetables, fruits, ices, sorbets, iced custards, and ice cream.

The new culinary theory was now based on fermentation, rather than heat (fermentation cosmos). Additionally, instead of the four elements, there were only three important principles: salt, oil, and mercury. Which could still be thought of like the earth, water, and air elements. But these new properties were more refined. "Salt was the solid residue that resisted the heat of distillation" and was responsible for the body and taste. "Oil was the oily liquid" that made the food viscous. "Mercury was the vapor, the pure essence of whatever was being distilled" that gave the food lightness and aroma. An example of this is using fats (oil principle) such as butter, lard, or olive oil to bind with flour and salt (salt principle), and mixed with aromas (mercury principle) such as wine, vinegar, stocks, or "spirits" (essences of meat or fish) to make a sauce that would be served over bread or meat. This innovation would lead to making fats the center of cooking for the next three hundred and fifty years. Until the modernization and urbanization food in the nineteenth century.

The innovation of the fermentation cosmos was only possible because of European rulers who hired chemical physicians such Paracelsus and many other Catholic and Protestants, who believed in chemical remedies over dietary cures for illnesses that Galenist physicians would use. This research was so successful, that fermentation became the bases of life and was used to explain how the world works. For instance, lime (mercury) would bind together with water (oil) and stone (salt) to make cement. Or in the case of biology, babies were formed of ferment-like semen inside the uterus. Additionally, digestion was considered to be your stomach fermenting. Paracelsus suggested that "ferment" was spiritual, reinterpreting the links between the divine. Chemical physicians also researched more into nutrition. Sugar was found to be a salt-like property that caused all kinds of sickness such as sugary urine (diabetes) and was considered unhealthy and a dangerous substance. Fruits, vegetables, herbs, and many others were considered to be healthy foods since they fermented. Fermentation cosmos wouldn't stop being the main way to describe the physical cosmos until René Descartes, Isaac Newton, and Pierre-Simon Laplace proposed their theories of gravity to explain the world.

19th century

Laborers in Western Europe in the 18th century ate bread and gruel, often in a soup with greens and lentils, a little bacon, and occasionally potato or a bit of cheese. They washed it down with beer (water usually was too contaminated), and a sip of milk. Three fourths of the food was derived from plants. Meat was much more attractive, but very expensive. By 1870 the West European diet was at about 16 kilos per person per year of meat, rising to 50 kilos by 1914, and 77 kilos in 2010. Milk, and cheese, was seldom in the diet-- even in the early 20th century, it was still uncommon in Mediterranean diets.

In the immigrant neighborhoods of fast-growing American industrial cities, housewives purchased ready-made food through street peddlers, hucksters, push carts, and small shops operated from private homes. This opened the way for the rapid entry of entirely new items such as pizza, spaghetti with meatballs, bagels, hoagies, pretzels, and pierogies into American eating habits, and firmly established fast food in the American culinary experience.

20th century

In the first half of the 20th century there were two world wars, which in may places resulted in rationing and hunger; sometimes the starvation of the civilian populations was used as a powerful new weapon. In Germany during World War I the rationing system in urban areas virtually collapsed, with people eating animal fodder to survive the Turnip Winter. In Allied countries, meat was diverted first to the soldiers, then to urgent civilian needs in Italy, Britain, France and Greece. Meat production was stretched to the limit in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Argentina, with oceanic shipping closely controlled by the British.

In the first years of peace after the war ended in 1918, most of eastern and central Europe suffered severe food shortages. The American Relief Administration (ARA) was set up under the American wartime "food czar" Herbert Hoover, and was charged with providing emergency food rations across Central and Eastern Europe. The ARA fed millions, including the inhabitants of Germany and the Soviet Union. After U.S. government funding for the ARA expired in the summer of 1919, the ARA became a private organization, raising millions of dollars from private donors. Under the auspices of the ARA, the European Children's Fund fed millions of starving children.

The 1920s saw the introduction of new foodstuffs, especially fruit, transported from around the globe. After the World War many new food products became available to the typical household, with branded foods advertised for their convenience. Now instead of an experienced cook spending hours on difficult custards and puddings, the housewife could purchase instant foods in jars, or powders that could be quickly mixed. Wealthier households now had ice boxes or electric refrigerators, which made for better storage and the convenience of buying in larger quantities.

During World War II, Nazi Germany tried to feed its population by seizing food supplies from occupied countries, and deliberately cutting off food supplies to Jews, Poles, Russians and the Dutch.

As part of the Marshall Plan in 1948-1950, the United States provided taking logical expertise and financing for high-productivity large-scale agribusiness operations in postwar Europe. Poultry was a favorite choice, with the rapid expansion in production, a sharp fall in prices, and widespread acceptance of the many ways to serve chicken.

The Green Revolution was a technological breakthrough in plant productivity that increased agricultural production worldwide, particularly in the developing world. Research began in the 1930s and dramatic improvements in output became important in the late 1960s, and continued into the 21st century. The initiatives resulted in the adoption of new technologies, including:

"new, high-yielding varieties (HYVs) of cereals, especially dwarf wheats and rices, in association with chemical fertilizers and agro-chemicals, and with controlled water-supply (usually involving irrigation) and new methods of cultivation, including mechanization. All of these together were seen as a 'package of practices' to supersede 'traditional' technology and to be adopted as a whole."

See also

• Combined Food Board in World War II
• Food faddism
• Food studies
• History of breakfast
• List of ancient dishes
• List of food and beverage museums
• List of historical cuisines
• Ovelgönne bread roll
• Timeline of food

Further reading

• Collingham, Lizzie. Taste of War: World War II and the Battle for Food (2013)
• Gremillion, Kristen J. Ancestral Appetites: Food in Prehistory (Cambridge UP, 2011) 188 pages; explores the processes of dietary adaptation in prehistory that contributed to the diversity of global foodways.
• Grew, Raymond. Food in Global History, Westview Press, 2000
• Heiser Charles B. Seed to civilisation. The story of food (Harvard UP, 1990)
• Kiple, Kenneth F. and Kriemhild Coneè Ornelas,eds. The Cambridge World History of Food, (2 vol, 2000).
• Katz, Solomon ed. The Encyclopedia of Food and Culture (Scribner, 2003)
• Lacey, Richard. Hard to swallow: a brief history of food (1994) online free
• Le, Stephen (2018). 100 Million Years of Food: What Our Ancestors Ate and Why It Matters Today. Picador. ISBN 978-1250117885.
• Mintz, Sidney. Tasting Food, Tasting Freedom: Excursions into Eating, Power, and the Past, (1997).
• Nestle, Marion. Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (2nd ed 2007).
• Parasecoli, Fabio & Peter Scholliers, eds. A Cultural History of Food, 6 volumes (Berg Publishers, 2012)
• Pilcher, Jeffrey M. ed. The Oxford Handbook of Food History (2017). Online review
• Pilcher, Jeffrey M. Food in World History (2017) advanced survey
• Ritchie, Carson I.A. Food in civilization: how history has been affected by human tastes (1981) online free

Foods and meals

• Anderson, Heather Arndt. Breakfast: A History (2014) 238pp
• Blake, Michael. Maize for the Gods: Unearthing the 9,000-Year History of Corn (2015).
• Elias, Megan. Lunch: A History (2014) 204pp
• Kindstedt, Paul. Cheese and Culture: A History of Cheese and its Place in Western Civilization (2012)
• Kurlansky, Mark. Milk!: A 10,000-Year Food Fracas (2018). excerpt
• Kurlansky, Mark. Salt: A World History (2003) excerpt
• Mintz, Sidney. Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (1986)
• Pettigrew, Jane, and Bruce Richardson. A Social History of Tea: Tea's Influence on Commerce, Culture & Community (2015).
• Reader, John. Propitious Esculent: The Potato in World History (2008), 315pp a standard scholarly history
• Salaman, R.N. The history and social influence of the potato (1949)
• Valenze, Deborah,. Milk: A Local and Global History (Yale UP, 2012)

Historiography

• Claflin, Kyri and Peter Scholliers, eds. Writing Food History, a Global Perspective (Berg, 2012)
• Duffett, Rachel, and Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska, eds. Food and War in Twentieth Century Europe (2011) excerpt
• Pilcher, Jeffrey M. "The embodied imagination in recent writings on food history." American Historical Review 121#3 (2016): 861-887.
• Pilcher, Jeffrey M., ed. Food History: Critical and Primary Sources (2015) 4 vol; reprints 76 primary and secondary sources.
• Scholliers, Peter. " Twenty-five Years of Studying un Phénomène Social Total: Food History Writing on Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries," Food, Culture & Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research (2007) 10#3 pp 449-471 https://doi.org/10.2752/155280107X239881

Asia

• Achaya, Kongandra Thammu. A historical dictionary of Indian food (New Delhi: Oxford UP, 1998).
• Cheung, Sidney, and David Y.H. Wu. The globalisation of Chinese food (Routledge, 2014).
• Chung, Hae Kyung, et al. "Understanding Korean food culture from Korean paintings." Journal of Ethnic Foods 3#1 (2016): 42-50.
• Cwiertka, Katarzyna Joanna. Modern Japanese cuisine: Food, power and national identity (Reaktion Books, 2006).
• Kim, Soon Hee, et al. "Korean diet: characteristics and historical background." Journal of Ethnic Foods 3.1 (2016): 26-31.
• Kushner, Barak. Slurp! a Social and Culinary History of Ramen: Japan's Favorite Noodle Soup (2014) a scholarly cultural history over 1000 years
• Simoons, Frederick J. Food in China: a cultural and historical inquiry (2014).

Europe

• Gentilcore, David. Food and Health in Early Modern Europe: Diet, Medicine and Society, 1450–1800 (Bloomsbury, 2016)
• Goldman, Wendy Z. and Donald Filtzer, eds. Food Provisioning in the Soviet Union during World War II (2015)
• Roll, Eric. The Combined Food Board. A study in wartime international planning (1956), on World War II
• Scarpellini, Emanuela. Food and Foodways in Italy from 1861 to the Present (2014)

Great Britain

• Addyman, Mary et al. eds. Food, Drink, and the Written Word in Britain, 1820–1945 (Taylor & Francis, 2017).
• Brears, P. Cooking and Dining in Medieval England (2008)
• Burnett, John. Plenty and want: a social history of diet in England from 1815 to the present day (2nd ed. 1979). A standard scholarly history.
• Collins, E.J.T. "Dietary change and cereal consumption in Britain in the nineteenth century." Agricultural History Review (1975) 23#2, 97-115.
• Gazeley, I. and Newell, A. "Urban working-class food consumption and nutrition in Britain in 1904" Economic History Review. (2014). http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ehr.12065/pdf.
• Harris, Bernard, Roderick Floud, and Sok Chul Hong. "How many calories? Food availability in England and Wales in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries". Research in economic history. (2015). 111-191.
• Hartley, Dorothy. Food In England: A complete guide to the food that makes us who we are (Hachette UK, 2014).
• Meredith, D. and Oxley, D. "Food and fodder: feeding England, 1700-1900." Past and Present (2014). (2014). 222:163-214.
• Oddy, D. " Food, drink and nutrition" in F.M.L. Thompson, ed., The Cambridge social history of Britain, 1750-1950. Volume 2. People and their environment (1990). pp. 2:251-78.
• Otter, Chris. "The British Nutrition Transition and its Histories", History Compass 10#11 (2012): pp. 812-825, [DOI]: 10.1111/hic3.12001
• Panayi, Panikos. Spicing Up Britain: The Multicultural History of British Food (2010)
• Spencer, Colin. British Food: An Extraordinary Thousand Years of History (2007).
• Woolgar. C.N. The Culture of Food in England, 1200–1500 (2016). 260 pp.,

United States

• Pendergrast, Mark. For God, Country, and Coca-Cola: The Definitive History of the Great American Soft Drink and the Company That Makes It (2013)
• Shapiro, Laura. Something From the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America, Viking Adult 2004, ISBN 0-670-87154-0
• Smith, Andrew F. ed. The Oxford companion to American food and drink (2007)
• Veit, Helen Zoe, ed. Food in the Civil War Era: The North (Michigan State University Press, 2014)
• Veit, Helen Zoe. Modern Food, Moral Food: Self-Control, Science, and the Rise of Modern American Eating in the Early Twentieth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2013)
• Wallach, Jennifer Jensen. How America Eats: A social history of U.S. food and culture (2014) 256256pp
• Williams, Elizabeth M. New Orleans: A Food Biography (AltaMira Press, 2012).

Journals

• Food and Foodways. Explorations in the History and Culture of Human Nourishment
• Food, Culture and Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
• Food & History, multilingual scientific journal about the history and culture of food published by the (IEHCA)

Other languages

• Montanari, Massimo, Il mondo in cucina (The world in the kitchen). Laterza, 2002 ASIN: B0055J686G
• Mintalová - Zubercová, Zora: Všetko okolo stola I.(All around the table I.), Vydavateľstvo Matice slovenskej, 2009, ISBN 978-80-89208-94-4

External links

• Getting Started in Food History
• University of Houston Digital Library: 1850-1860's Hotel and Restaurant Menu Collection images
• [1]: FOST: Social & Cultural Food Studies (VUB's research unit in food history)
• Italian Food History Blog
• Spanish Food History Articles: 27 most relevant products and Timeline by Enrique García Ballesteros
• "Culinary History". NYPL Recommendations: Best of the Web. USA: New York Public Library.
• Explained With Maps - History of World Food (Documentary Video)