Oxford Symposium
Authenticity in the Kitchen
Oxford Symposium
Authenticity in the Kitchen
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2005
The Oxford Symposium on Food on Cookery continues to be the premier English conference on this topic, gathering academics, professional writers and amateurs from Britain, the USA, Australia and many other countries to discuss contributions on a single agreed topic.Forty seven papers are contributed by authors from Britain and abroad including the food writers Caroline Conran, Fuchsia Dunlop, William Rubel and Colleen Taylor Sen; food historians and academics including Ursula Heinzelmann, Sharon Hudgins, Bruce Kraig, Valery Mars, Charles Perry and Susan Weingarten. The subjects range extremely widely from the food of medieval English and Spanish jews; wild boar in Europe; the identity of liquamen and other Roman sauces; the production of vinegar in the Philippines; the nature of Indian restaurant food; and food in 19th century Amsterdam.
Readership: Academic and cookery enthusiasts. |

Contents
Deciphering La vraye mettode de bien trencher les viandes (1926) | Julia Abramson |
Authentic Dutch Food and 19th-century Amsterdam Restaurants | Hilary Akers |
The Ambiguity of Authenticity | Joan P. Alcock |
The Rise of Molecular Gastronomy and Its Problematic Use of Science as an Authenticating Authority | Rachel A. Ankeny |
Food as Art and the Quest for Authenticity | Albert Arouh |
Tafelspitz, more than a Recipe: a Tribute to the Late Chef Louis Szathmáry | Fritz Blank |
Authenticity and Gastronomic Films – A Sybaritic Study | François Brocard |
Aged, but not Old: Local Identities, Market Forces, and the Invention of ‘Traditional’ European Cheeses | Bronwen E. Bromberger |
The Real Thing? Understanding the Archive at Fairfax House, York | Peter Brown |
Medieval Anglo-Jewry and their Food, 1066–1290 | Reva Berman Brown |
‘Real Eating’: A Medieval Spanish Jewish View of Gastronomic Authenticity | Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus |
Western Mediterranean Vegetable Stews and the Integration of Culinary Exotica | Anthony F. Buccini |
Communicating Authenticity | John F. Carafoli |
The Authenticity of Wild Boar in Europe | Caroline Conran |
The Quest for Reality | Daphne Derven & Christian Banfield |
The Strange Tale of General Tso’s Chicken | Fuchsia Dunlop |
Is it the Real Thing? Lidwina of Schiedam, Chocolate Eclairs, and GM Cornbread | James G. Ferguson, Jr. |
Food and Modernism | Anna Marie Fisker |
Running a 15th-century Restaurant in the 21st Century | Judy Gerjuoy |
Towards an Authentic Roman Sauce | Sally Grainger |
Naming Authenticity and Regional Italian Cuisine | Alexandra Grigorieva |
Bede’s World – Harvesting Knowledge on an Anglo-Saxon Farm | Christopher Grocock |
The Work of Food in the Age of Molecular Gastronomy | Naomi Guttman |
History in the Baking: Taste, Authenticity, and the Legacy of the Scotch Oven | Roger Haden |
In the Eye of the Beholder, on the Tongue of the Taster: What constitutes Culinary Authenticity? | Sharon Hudgins |
Adulteration as Part of Authenticity | Jan Krag Jacobsen |
Feeding Pharaoh: ‘Authentic’ Ancient Cookery for Schools? | Cathy K. Kaufman |
Nostalgia and Authenticity in Low-carbohydrate Dieting | Christine Knight |
Riverworld: The Vanished World of Illinois Riverfolk | Bruce Kraig |
Traditional Philippine Vinegars and their Role in Shaping the Culinary Culture | Pia Lim-Castillo |
Eating Postmodernity: Fusion Cuisine and Authenticity | Mark McWilliams |
19th-century Food Historians: Did they Search for Authenticity or Use the Past to Embellish their Present? | Valerie Mars |
‘How does it taste Cisti? Is it good?’ Authentic Representations of Italian Renaissance Society and Wine Consumption in Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron | Salvatore Musumeci |
Protecting Authentic French Food Heritage (Patrimoine Culinaire) | Lizabeth Nicol |
Imaginary Restaurants with Real Food in them: Reflections on the Quest for Authenticity in South-East Asian Food | Roger Owen |
Medieval Arab Authenticity | Charles Perry |
Meat Food of Mountain Jews of Daghestan | Z. Ramazanova & M. Magomedkhanov, edited by Robert Chenciner |
Saucing the Dish of Authenticity: Mrs Charles Dickens’s Menus and her Husband’s Writings | Susan M. Rossi-Wilcox |
Eggs and Soldiers, English Tea, Smoked Milk, and Pain Anniversaire | William Rubel |
The North American Indian Restaurant Menu: The Triumph of Inauthenticity | Colleen Sen |
Authentic Food: A Philosophical Approach | Nicholas F. Silich |
Eating in Eden: The Jonny-Cake Papers of ‘Shepherd Tom’ | Keith Stavely & Kathleen Fitzgerald |
Haroset | Susan Weingarten |
Authentic? Or just expensive? | John Whiting |
Catherine de’ Medici’s Fork | Carolin Young |
ISBN-10 1-903018-47-1
ISBN-13 978-1-903018-47-7
Published Aug 2006
440 pages; 174×246 mm; paperback; b&w illustrations
Price £30
Celebration
Oxford Symposium
Celebration
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2011
• Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2011 • • 38 essays by international scholars •The Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in 2011. In keeping with this happy event, celebration was the subject of this year’s meeting. Symposiasts have taken their usual broad and generous approach to the topic. So papers range in geographical relevance from highland Equador through Transylvania, Anatolia, Congo-Brazzaville, Iceland, and old Los Angeles. Chronologically too, several periods are addressed: ancient Rome, Ptolomaic Egypt, Ottoman Turkey, Georgian Dublin, and Victorian London.The occasions of celebration considered run from wedding breakfasts, birthday parties, Easter, harvest festival, and Passover, while the sorts of celebration include banquets, drinking bouts, the Icelandic thorrablot, and election day feasts.Authors include from America, Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus, Anthony Buccini, Sharon Hudgins, Charles Perry; from Turkey, Aylin Tan and Priscilla Mary Isin; from England, Robert Appelbaum, Andrew Dalby, Christopher Grocock, Gillian Riley, David C. Sutton, and from Israel, Susan Weingarten. |

Contents
Foreword | Mark McWilliams |
The Celebratory and the Everyday: Guinea Pigs, Hamburgers and the Performance of Food Heritage in Highland Ecuador | Emma-Jayne Abbots |
Celebrating Solitude: M.F. K. Fisher on Dining Alone | Robert Appelbaum |
Celebration and Japanese Food | Kimiko Barber |
Transylvanian Lambs and Easter Tables: Celebrations in Danger of Extinction | Rosemary Barron and Kate Hawkings |
It Was Divine … Gods and their Food in the Ancient Greek World | Kim Beerden |
Sukkot: The Paradigmatic Harvest Festival | Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus |
Chi vuol godere la festa, digiuni la vigilia: On the Relationship between Fasting and Feasting | Anthony F. Buccini |
A History of the Wassail Bowl: From Pagan Brew to Christian Custard | Joanna Crosby |
Celebrating Hellenism far from Hellas: Feasts and Festivals of Ptolemy II of Egypt | Andrew Dalby |
The ‘Floating Feasts’ of Ancient Rome | John F. Donahue |
The Great Aussie Barbecue | Len Fisher |
Celebrating Christmas and New Year with Punch | Elizabeth Gabay |
Long Life to You! Drinking and Celebrating in Ancient Rome in the Festival of Anna Perenna | Christopher Grocock |
Celebrating with Altamiras: The Spirit of Fiesta Food | Vicky Hayward |
Buttering Up the Sun: Russian Maslenitsa from Pagan Practice to Contemporary Celebration | Sharon Hudgins |
Celebrating with Sweets in Ottoman Turkey | Priscilla Mary Işın |
Royal Pomp: Viceregal Celebrations and Hospitality in Georgian Dublin | Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire and Tara Kellaghan |
The Unavoidable Ham Biscuit | Mark McWilliams |
North and South: Two Banquets Given to Promote the Great 1851 Exhibition | Valerie Mars |
Dining with the Drapers: The Drapers’ Company 1564 Election Day Feast as a Map of Elizabethan London | Sarah Ann Milne |
Feast for a King: The Wine and Food Society’s Carême Banquet at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton | Joan Navarre |
Keeping Kosher: Cause for Celebration? | Felicity Newman |
The Midwinter Celebration in Antarctica: Feeding Body and Soul | Diana Noyce |
The Bull’s Head Breakfast in Old Los Angeles | Charles Perry |
Underground Restaurants – A New Way to Celebrate with Strangers | Heike Pethe and Sabine Cikic |
On Mfúúmbu, Nkasa, and Whisky: A Wedding Celebration in Kimbonga-Louamba (Congo-Brazzaville) | Birgit Ricquier |
Tableware and Taste: Ceramic Production and the Presentation of Banquet Food | Gillian Riley |
Þorrablót – Icelandic Feasting | Nanna Rögnvaldardóttir and Michael R. Leaman |
Celebrating Life in Multicultural Rotterdam: A Visual Approach | Linda Roodenburg |
M.F. K. Fisher, W. H. Auden, and Thanksgiving for a Habitat | Seth Rosenbaum |
Cake: The Centrepiece of Celebrations | Marietta Rusinek |
Celebrating Purim and Passover: Food and Memory in the Creation of Jewish Identity | Georg Schäfer and Susan Weingarten |
Prints Charming: Nineteenth-Century New York Cake Boards and New Year’s Cake | Kimberly Sorensen |
The Festive Fruit: A History of Figs | David C. Sutton |
Be Merry, Around a Wheat Berry! The Significance of Wheat in Anatolian Rituals and Celebrations | Aylin Öney Tan |
The Rise of Taste and the Rhetoric of Celebration | Viktoria von Hoffmann |
Celebrations and the Torrid Pleasures of an Ice-Cream and Sorbet Tree in Rome in August 1714 | Robin Weir |
The Origins of the Celebration of St Cosmas and St Damian in Rio de Janeiro | Marcia Zoladz |
ISBN-13 978-1-903018-89-7
Published 12 Jul 2012
368 pages;
174×246 mm;
paperback;
16 b&w illustrations
Price £30
Celebration: 30 Years of the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery
This volume, edited by Jill Norman, contains memories of the Symposium from some of the most prestigious symposiasts, from 1981 to 2011.
Contributors include: Theodore Zeldin on ‘What Recipes Reveal and Conceal‘, Ken Albala on ‘Breakfast’, Raymond Blanc on ‘Essence of Tomato’, Sophie and Michael Coe on ‘Borshch’, with a fine recipe, and Caroline Conran on ‘Cuttlefish Rouille’, again with two fine recipes. The illustrative material from the archives show how the event developed from a gathering of like minded souls, enjoying dinner together, to the current day fabulous celebration of food history, with over 300 people, enjoying curated banquets, now in the dining hall of St. Catherine’s College, every July.
A fine record of this annual event, with menus designed by Jake Tilson, and a great collection to remember those who have now departed this earth, the coming stars and the redoubtable committee who work tirelessly on the event.
Price: £10.00 80 pages Hardback
Eggs in Cookery
Oxford Symposium
Eggs in Cookery
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2006
The Oxford Symposium on Food on Cookery continues to be the premier English conference on this topic, gathering academics, professional writers and amateurs from Britain, the USA, Australia and many other countries to discuss contributions on a single agreed topic.The 25th Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery was on the subject of ‘Eggs’. 140 symposiasts came from all over the world, including most of the countries of Western and Central Europe, North and South America, the Middle East and Australia, as well as Southeast Asia, China and Japan. This is by far the widest geographical distribution the Symposium has ever achieved.
Contributors to the volume include Bee Wilson, Pia Lim Castillo, Ken Albala, William Rubel, Rien Fertel, Fritz Blank, Phyllis Thompson Reid, Zona Spray Stark, Ursula Heinzelmann, Hervé This, Naomichi Ishige, Fuschia Dunlop, and Carolin Young. The subjects include the cultural and social significance of eggs; the use of egg whites in building Phillippine monasteries; the classification of egg cookery by classical French chefs; the mystique of the soufflé; ancient eggs in Chinese cookery; Arctic fish eggs; and molecular gastronomy and eggs. |

Contents
Ovophilia in Renaissance Cuisine | Ken Albala |
The Egg: its Symbolism and Mythology | Joan P Alcock |
Cackleberries and Henfruit: a French Perspective | Fritz Blank |
On Spaghetti alla Carbonara and Related Dishes of Central and Southern Italy | Anthony F. Buccini |
Poached Eggs at the Revolution | Doug Duda |
Transforming Eggs in Chinese Culinary Culture | Fuchsia Dunlop |
Begué’s Eggs | Rien Fertel |
The Language of the Egg | Anna Marie Fisker |
The Patina in Apicius | Sally Grainger |
Sustainable Is Beautiful: Pastured Egg Farming in Central New York | Naomi Guttman |
Saving the Lost, Sour Eggs: an Annotated Pictorial Documentation of an Almost Extinct German Egg Recipe | Ursula Heinzelmann |
Eggs and the Japanese | Naomichi Ishige |
The Egg Tree in America | Cathy K. Kaufman |
Eggs in Philippine Church Architecture and its Cuisine | Pia Lim-Castillo |
The Deviled Egg: History and Present | Nancy R. McArthur |
The History of Eggs in Irish Cuisine and Culture | Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire and Andrea Cully |
Scrambled Class: Eggs and Refinement in Nineteenth-century America | Mark McWilliams |
‘Balut’, the Fertilised Duck Eggs of the Philippines | Margaret Magat |
Eggs, the English Breakfast and the Biography of a National Meal | Kaori O’Connor |
Moorish Ovomania | Charles Perry |
‘The Ultimate in Cookery’: the Soufflé’s Rise Alongside Feminism | Phyllis Thompson Reid |
Eggs in Art | Gillian Riley |
Eggs in the Moon Shine With Cream. A Selection of Egg Recipes | William Rubel |
The Encyclopaedic Egg | Barbara Santich |
Turkey Eggs | Andrew F. Smith |
Creating with Arctic Eggs | Zona Spray Starks with Anore Paniyauraq Jones |
Egg Basket of the World | Dan Strehl |
Let’s Have an Egg | Hervé This |
‘Go to Work on an Egg’ Is Not the Same for All Cultures | Michelle Toratani |
More than One Way to Crack an Urchin | Christa Weil |
Eggs in the Talmud | Susan Weingarten |
The Egg and Ice | Caroline & Robin Weir |
Salvador Dalí’s Giant Egg | Carolin C. Young |
The Importance of Eggs in Rural Communities in Istria (Croatia) between the Wars | Tanja Kocković Zaborski |
About Eggs, Two Countries and a Cake, or, How the Lack of an Ingredient Can Tell us about Social Changes | Marcia Zoladz |
Eggs: the Sauces and the Sauced | Sami Zubaida |
Sample pages including Contents and Foreword
ISBN-13 978-1-903018-54-5
Published Sep 2007
335 pages;
174×246 mm;
paperback;
10 b&w illustrations
Price £30
Feasting and Fasting
Oxford Symposium
Feasting and Fasting
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 1990
There was a fine range of papers submitted to this Symposium in 1990. The keynote talks were by Theodore Zeldin, Astri Riddervold, Bjorn Fjellheim and Marit Ekne Ruud (as the names may indicate, these last three authors hail from Norway). The sorts of feasts discussed by the various contributors include medieval banquets by Professor Phyllis Bober, the Bayeux Tapestry by Robert Chenciner, Early Greek Banquets by Andrew Dalby, Anatolian Feasts by Nevin Halici, Thai Feasts by Philip Iddison, The First Communion Banquet by Alicia Rios, and Table Decoration in the Netherlands by Joop Witteveen. |
Contents
Fasts & Feasts – an Introduction | Theodore Zeldin |
Traditional Foodways, Fast and Feast | Astri Riddervold |
Three Whole Days to an End, The Norwegian Peasant Wedding Feast as a Social Mirror | Bjorn Fjellheim |
From Everyday Diet to Feast Food: an Example from the Hemsedal | Marit Ekne Ruud |
The Way the Contemporary Western Assyrians in the Middle East take Food during Fasts and Church Holidays | Michael Abdalla |
The Festival of Christmas | Joan P. Alcock |
Emma’s Wedding Feast – a Glance at Flaubert’s Madame Bovary | Rose Arnold |
Kalach, Kolatch, Kulitch – Challah? | Josephine Bacon |
The Black or Hell Banquet | Professor Phyllis. P. Bober |
The Bayeux Tapestry Shish Kebab Mystery | Robert Chenciner |
Iguanas, Chocolate, Muskrats, and a Glimpse of Cochineal | Dr. Sophie D. Coe |
On the Edge of the Feast, Outsiders in Early Greece | Andrew Dalby |
Tradition and Innovation in the Pacific Northwest Outdoor Feast | John Doerper |
Below-the-salt Cookery | Christopher Driver |
Feasts of the Fur Traders | Dorothy Duncan |
Butter before Guns | Hugo Dunn-Meynell |
Food for Family and Friends from Shrove Tide to Easter | Dr. Johanna M.P. Edema with Mrs. Katinka Hermans |
The Politics and Social Implications of Tableware for Feasting | Elizabeth Gabay |
White Foods in Anatolian Feasts | Nevin Halici |
Texas Barbecue: A Feast for all Classes | Sharon Hudgins |
Notes on Fasting and Feasting in Thailand | Philip Iddison |
Fasting and Feasting among Oregon’s Russian Old Believers | Mary Wallace Kelsey |
Fasting on Rumfordsche Suppe (circa 1791) and Woolton Pie (circa 1941). Feasting in Oxford, Capenhurst and Hammersmith | Nicholas Kurti |
Royal Feasts | Janet Laurence |
Feasting after Fasting in Archib Village, Dagestan | Dr. Magomedkhan Magomedkhanov |
The St. Joseph Day Altars of New Orleans | Richard C. Mieli |
Dutch Treats or Festive Food in an Affluent Society | Ileen Montijn |
Elements of Arab Feasting | Charles Perry |
L’ordre de bon temps: Good Cheer as the Answer | Jo Marie Powers |
Beans for the Dead | Gillian Riley |
The First Communion Banquet | Alicia Rios |
A Perfect Feast? Preventative Medicine and Diet in Medieval France | Brenda S. Rose |
Serendipity | Alice Wooledge Salmon |
The Golden Spice from Ancient Persia | Margaret Shaida |
Feasts in the Archaeological Record | Paul Stokes |
Feasts and Fasts. As Described, Documented and Illustrated in the Johnson & Wales University Culinary Archives and Museum, Providence, Rhode Island | Louis I. Szathmary |
Twelfth Night | Greta Verdin |
Feasts in Jordan and the Transkei | Kathie Webber |
Of Sugar and Porcelain. Table Decoration in the Netherlands in the 18th Century | Joop Witteveen |
Ramadhan: Fasting and Feasting | Sami Zubaida |
Dinner on Saturday Evening – Menu and Recipes | Lisa Chaney and Harlan Walker |
Welsh Food and Drinks Offered at Lunch on 23rd September | Gilli Davies |
ISBN-10 0-907325-46-7
ISBN-13 978-0-907325-46-8
Published Sep 1991
230 pages; 297×210 mm; paperback; tables and illustrations
Price £24
Food and Communication
Oxford Symposium
Food and Communication
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2015
The Oxford Symposium on Food on Cookery continues to be the premier English conference on this topic, gathering academics, professional writers and amateurs from Britain, the USA, Australia and many other countries to discuss contributions on a single agreed topic. Symposiasts considered food as an area of control and resistance in totalitarian societies; struggles between activists, corporations and bureaucracies over food labels; the use of food and cookery to explore the past and the exotic; the sounds of eating and selling food; and, as Brillat-Savarin predicted, the role of food in constructing and communicating aspects of individual and collective identity. This year marked the first Symposium under the leadership of Bee Wilson, the new Chair, and Ursula Heinzelmann, the new Director. We also celebrated many years of leadership from Elisabeth Luard and the inimitable Paul Levy. Also deserving a mention is the editing of these papers by Mark McWilliams.
CONTENTS
- Fava Beans and Béchamel: Translating Egyptian Food as Modern Cuisine Anny Gaul 11
- Secrets of the Great Chefs: Decrypting Untrustworthy Communications from the Kitchens of Carême, Escoffier and Guérard Ray Sokolov
- Symposium Papers The Evolution of Cookbooks in the Digital Age Ken Albala and Christine Larson
- ‘Anything is possible!’: MasterChef, World-Wide Illusion Robert Appelbaum
- Tatattoouille on the Menu: Tats in the Kitchen, a Side of Ink, and Food as Communication Paula Arvela
- Totalitarian Tastes: The Political Semantics of Food in Twentieth-Century Germany Volker Bach
- Communicating Frenchness: Escoffier and the Export of Terroir Janet Beizer
- Nobody Said to Cook: The Chinese Food of Emily Hahn and Time-Life Books Lucey Bowen
- Tablecloth and River: Dramatizing Historical Land Claims in Tomson Highway’s Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout Shelley Boyd
- Communicating Jewish Identity Through Taste: Jewish Flavour Principles as Culinary ‘Midrash’ Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus
- Defining ‘Cuisine’: Communication, Culinary Grammar, and the Typology of Cuisine Anthony F. Buccini
- ‘That Was Good’: Eating, Drinking and the Etiquette of Slurping in Japan Voltaire Cang
- Lessons from Generations Past: Timely and Timeless Communication Strategies of Some Canadian Cooks of Note Nathalie Cooke
- Common Senses: Sound and Touch in London Food Shopping Anastasia Edwards
- Children’s Culinary Culture: Why It Matters Elizabeth Fakazis
- When Menus Talk: The Bernard Fread Menu Collection Rebecca Federman
- By Any Other Name Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson
- The Past on a Plate: Images of Ancient Feasts on Italian Renaissance Maiolica Allison Fisher
- Dinner Isn’t Served!: The Use of Historic Cookery as a Method of Interacting with Visitors to Hampton Court Palace Richard Fitch
- Framework for a New Culinary-Arts Curriculum Peter Hertzmann
- Deep-frying the nation: Communicating about Scottish Food and Nutrition Christine Knight
- Messages of Subversion: Communicating Czech Nationalism through Culinary History Michael Krondl
- Dragon on a Platter: The Art of Naming Chinese Dishes Kian Lam Kho
- Communicating Superfoods: A Case Study of Maca Packaging Jessica Loyer
- A French Culinary Figure in the Anglosphere: Translating Édouard de Pomiane for English Books and Television Katherine Magruder
- The Language of Food Gifts in an Eighteenth Century Dining Club India Aurora Mandelkern
- Hot, Sour, Salty…Write: Saveur Magazine, Thai Food Culture, and the Communicative Potential of Food & Travel Journalism Robert McKeown
- Food Fight: Survival and Ideology in Cookbooks from the Spanish Civil War Maria Paz Moreno
- On Food and Fascism: Plating up Oral Histories Karima Moyer-Nocchi
- The Author, the Reader, the Text: Literary Communication of a 1611 Spanish Cookbook Carolyn A. Nadeau
- The Squander Bug: Propaganda and its Influence on Food Consumption in Wartime Australia Diana Noyce
- I Am What I Don’t Eat: Food and Eating as a Form of Communicating Distinction in the Jewish Literature of the Second Temple Period Harriet Publicover
- Looking Good: Picturing Food in Early Books and Prints Marcia Reed
- Whitebait or Blanchailles? Cuisine and Chaos in Britain, 1865-1914 Laura Shapiro
- The Rhetoric of Salmon: The War of Words, Images and Metaphors in the Battle of Wild-caught vs. Farmed Salmon Richard Warren Shepro
- The Comté Aroma Wheel: History of an Invention, Ethnography of a Practice. A Look at the Early Years Christy Shields-Argelès
- ‘What if I smell your peanuts and die?’ Communicating Fact and Fiction about Peanut Allergy Matthew Smith
- Communicating Gourmet Values in Japanese Popular Media Nancy Stalker
- Crossing the Kosher Food Barrier: Outside Influences on Talmudic Food Susan Weingarten
ISBN-10 1-909248-49-5
ISBN-13 978-1-909248-49-6
Published July 2016
400 pages; 174×246 mm; paperback; b&w illustrations
Price £30
Food and Landscape
Food and Landscape
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2017
One may expect a symposium on landscape, or terroir, to be a fabulous celebration of the beautiful, bountiful and luscious green hills, valleys and fields we love to think about when the countryside is in our minds. Well, some of the papers celebrated the fruits of the earth, from scallops to mutton in the Highlands, so much tastier than lamb. But as the three days of the symposium progressed, we became aware of how we must change our ways, in order to keep these images of beautiful landscapes a reality. There are dangers ahead, from the effects of climate change, the threat of Brexit to farms which will lose all subsidy, and changing weather patterns in Kenya.
In such context, many Symposium presentations not only demanded careful attention to how humans have affected the landscape but also became calls for action.
ISBN: 978-1-909-248-62-5 Published July 2018; 448 pages: 174 x 246 mm; paperback, b & w illustrations; Price: £30.00
Food and Language
Oxford Symposium
Food and Language
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2009
Cooking may be simply the provision of nourishment palatable to the human body, but it needs language to soar beyond the kitchen stove and a viable vocabulary to make communication between cooks and diners profitable and possible. This is a rich field for the collective endeavours of the 28th Symposium at Oxford. Linguistics and etymology may be a tool for unravelling the history of foodstuffs and their migration from one culture to another; or language may supply a social and cultural subtext to what would otherwise be solely a culinary message; or the tools of literary criticism may be unleashed with profit on texts of cookery manuals or recipe books. Subjects covered include:
The contributors are amateurs and academics from five continents and the style is fully referenced and academic. |
Contents
The Language of Food | Judith Jones |
Food and Language: What’s In a Name? | Joan P. Alcock |
Shinagaki Tales: Reading Between the Lines of a Japanese Menu | Elizabeth Andoh |
In Praise of Shadows: Japanese Language for Japanese Food Experience | Kimiko Barber |
‘Truly the Ear Tests Words as the Palate Tastes Food’ (Job :): Synaesthetic Food Metaphors for the Experience of the Divine in Jewish Tradition | Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus |
The Anatolian Origins of the Words ‘Olive’ and ‘Oil’ and the Early History of Oleïculture | Anthony F. Buccini |
The Visual Language of the Recipe: A Brief Historical Survey | Ruth Carroll |
Re-viewing a Surrealist’s Distasteful Writings: Georges Bataille’s Linguistic Consumption of/with the Eye | Janine Catalano |
A Limousin-French Dictionary as a Source on the History of Cooking: Potatoes in the Tulle Area in the Early Nineteenth Century | Monique Chastanet |
The Emergence of the Cookbook and the Evolution of Cooking Terminology in Imperial Russia | Didi DiVirgilio |
Sex, Food, and Valentine’s Day: Language of Food – Language of Love: A Linguistic Analysis of Valentine’s Day Menus in a Selection of Parisian Restaurants at Present | Carole Faivre |
The Italian Language of Food: Notes from a Translator | Maureen B. Fant |
How Do You Describe a Champagne Jelly? | Len Fisher |
The Rhetoric of American Restaurant Menus and the Use of French | Paul Freedman |
Ministries and Campaigns: The Political Language and Tactics of Popular British Food-writing | Charlotte Frew |
Russian Food Words at Home and Abroad | Alexandra Grigorieva |
German on the Menu – Serving Nationalism: Franco-German Linguistic Relations and an Evaluation of the Present Situation | Ursula Heinzelmann |
Recipe Structure – An Historical Survey | Peter Hertzmann |
A Very Cold Collation: Food Stories from Polar Words | Bernadette Hince |
The Unspoken Language of Food | Sybil Kapoor |
Recipes and Dishes: What Should Be Copyrightable? | Cathy K. Kaufman |
What’s in the Name of a Dish? The Words Mean what the People of the Mediterranean Want them to Mean… | Aglaia Kremezi and Anissa Helou |
What Can the Culinary Historian Learn from the Linguist? Ten Suggestions | Rachel Laudan |
Hidden Voices from the Culinary Past: Oral History as a Tool for Food Historians | Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire |
‘A Vulgar Care’: Talking about Food in Eighteenth-Century Anglo-American Novels | Mark McWilliams |
Early Modern Spanish Cookbooks: The Curious Case of Diego Granado | Carolyn A. Nadeau |
Food for Thought: Ye Sette of Odd Volumes Dining Society | Joan Navarre |
Korma, Kavurma, Ghormeh: A Family, or Not So Much? | Charles Perry |
Retrieving Food History through Linguistics: Culinary Traditions in Early Bantuphone Communities | Birgit Ricquier and Koen Bostoen |
Telling Porkies: The Nomenclature of the Pig and its Parts | Gillian Riley |
A Plate of Fresh Jewish Maidens With Potatoes | Alicia Rios Ivars, translated by Raymond Sokolov Saltzman |
The Meaning of Pepper: Money, Medicine and Magic | Caroline Rowe |
Food as Story: Story as Food | William Rubel |
‘Doing’ Words: The Evolution of Culinary Vocabulary | Barbara Santich |
The Language of Butchery Diagrams | Teagan Schweitzer |
George Washington Carver: Bulletin Author | Elizabeth M. Simms |
The Language of the Food of the Poor: Studying Proverbs with Jean-Louis Flandrin | David C. Sutton |
Empanadas with Turkish Delight or Borekitas de Lokum? The Sweet-sour Journey of Sephardic Cuisine and Ladino Language | Aylin Öney Tan |
Using Language to Investigate Ellen Chantrill’s Recipe Book | Malcolm Thick |
Gynaecophagia: Metaphors of Women as Food in the Talmudic Literature | Susan Weingarten |
Would a Dish By Another Name Taste as Good? Western Dishes in Cantonese Cooking | Willa Zhen |
Blogs about Food on the Internet or How Everyone has Something to Say about what we Eat | Marcia Zoladz |
Vocabularies of Middle Eastern Food | Sami Zubaida |
ISBN-13 978-1-903018-79-8
Published Jul 2010
390 pages;
246×174 mm;
paperback;
6 b&w illustrations
Price £30
Food and Markets
Oxford Symposium
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2014
Edited by Mark McWilliams
The thirty-third Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery discussed food and material culture from every possible angle, and from every possible geographical perspective. Scholars assembled from countries around the globe, hailing from the UK, USA, Turkey, Italy, France, Brazil, Japan, Israel, and Germany.The topics of some of the papers are:
- Ballymaloe’s Darina Allen on farmer’s markets in Ireland
- Mastering the art of Soviet cooking by Anya von Bremzen
- Janet Beizer on royal table leftovers in eighteenth-century France
- Garritt Van Dyk on the origins of champagne
- Food and the Female Body by Mary Gray –
- Gillian Riley on food from Southern Italy painted by Dutch artists
in the North - Andrew Coe on the kosher poultry racket in early twentieth-century
New York - Doug Duda on why markets grow while cooking crashes
- Dan Strehl on the Hollywood market at the famous Hollywood and
Vine intersection
The Table of contents, and one page of each of the first four papers from the conference can be found here.
ISBN-13 978-1-909248-44-1
Published Jul 2015
408 pages; 246×174 mm;
paperback;
25 b&w illustrations
Price £30
Food and Material Culture
Oxford Symposium
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2013
The thirty-second Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery discussed food and material culture from every possible angle, and from every possible geographical perspective. Scholars assembled from countries around the globe, hailing from the UK, USA, Turkey, Italy, France, Brazil, Japan, Israel, and Germany.The topics of some of the papers are:
- Aesthetics and politics of the kitchen in fascist Italy
- Why kitchen utensils matter
- Computer engineered food
- The bamboo tea whisk in Japanese tea culture
- Cooking under fire, 1914–1918
- Sugar sculpture in Italian court banquets
- Mongolian milk spoons
- Élite consumption trends in ceramic tableware in Georgian Ireland
- Vessels and equipment used by street food vendors of Istanbul
- Perfuming the table in old Baghdad
- Salt cellars and the origins of etiquette
- Utensils in the classical Greek world
- The everyday cooking pot of late antique Palestine
- Tools and learning the language of cooking
- The rise of the picnic hamper
- The story of mixers and mixing
- Beefy British bovril, plasmon and quality Cadbury’s cocoa essence
- Towards an anthropology of bimby food processors in Italy
ISBN-13 978-1-909248-40-3
Published Jul 2014
368 pages; 246×174 mm; paperback; 25 b&w illustrations
Price £30
Food and Morality
Oxford Symposium
Food and Morality
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2007
In this continuing series, the topic of morality embraces a wide range of essays from English, American and overseas scholars who ponder contemporary questions such as eating foie gras, advertising junk food, and master and servant relationships as well as historical studies concerning fasting in the Reformation, food in Dickens’s novels, the ethics of early gastronomy and Jainism and food.In nigh on forty essays the whole question of the interplay between our eating habits and ethics is covered from multiple angles. The rise of ecological awareness and the intimate connection between food habits and the big questions of life such as Global Warming make the topic one of the most popular among present students of foodways. This volume will be a significant addition to the present debate. |

Contents
Food in a Time of War: Food Rationing in Britain during World War II | Joan P. Alcock |
The Moral Economy of Red Meat in Australia | Rachel A. Ankeny |
The Civility of Eating | Robert Appelbaum |
From Rules to Principles: The Transformation of a Jewish Agricultural Ethic | Travis Berg |
‘Torah On the Table’: A Sensual Morality | Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus |
From Necessity to Virtue: The Secondary Uses of Bread in Italian Cookery | Anthony F. Buccini |
Food, Morality, and Politics: The Spectacle of Dog-Eating Igorots at the St Louis World Fair | Bel S. Castro |
Les Halles and the Moral Market: Frigophobia Strikes in the Belly of Paris | Kyri Watson Claflin |
Virtuous Food: ‘Conscientious Production’ as Moral Imperative | Michaela DeSoucey & Gary Alan Fine |
Eat Like There’s No Tomorrow and Other Lessons Learned from Last Meals | Doug Duda |
Scientists and Food – Moral, Immoral or Amoral? | Len Fisher |
Smell and Morality in the Dining Environment | Charles Foster-Hall |
The Foie Gras Fracas: Sumptuary Law as Animal Welfare? | Cathy K. Kaufman |
Why not Eat Pets? | Bruce Kraig |
How Clean Is Your Plate? | Steven Kramer |
Refined Cuisine or Plain Cooking? Morality in the Kitchen | Rachel Laudan |
Morality and Servants of Empire: A Look at the Colonial Kitchen and the Role of Servants in India, Malaysia, and Singapore | Cecilia Leong-Salobir |
The Morality of Anti-Picnics | Walter Levy |
How the Judged became the Judge: the Glutton, the Voluptuary, and the Epicure in Early Gastronomic Literature | Llio Teleri Lloyd-Jones |
Moral Fiber: Bread in Nineteenth-Century America | Mark McWilliams |
‘Feed their vile bodies…starve their immortal souls’: Food as Moral Instructor in Nineteenth-century Homes and Schools | Tani A. Mauriello |
The Ethics of Food and Environmental Challenges | Brian Melican and Edward Maxwell |
‘Morality touched by emotion’: Food in the Novels of Dickens | Anne Mendelson |
¡Prohibidísimo!!! | Alicia Ríos |
Jainism: The World’s Most Ethical Religion | Colleen Taylor Sen |
Mustapha Mond down on the Farm | Alexia Genese Smith and James Gates Ferguson, Jr. |
Marketing Junk Food to Children in the United States | Andrew F. Smith |
Piscinae and the Myth of Roman Decadence at Table | Raymond Sokolov |
Plainness and Virtue in New England Cooking | Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald |
The Poppy: Potent yet Frail | Aylin Öney Tan |
‘Quality food, honestly priced’: Traders and Tricksters in Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair | Tracy Thong |
Food on Trial | Elizabeth M. Williams |
Cacao in Brazil or the History of a Crime | Marcia Zoladz |
ISBN-13 978-1-903018-59-0
Published Aug 2008
320 pages;
246×174 mm;
paperback
Price £30
Food and Power
Food and Power
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2019
Food & Power (Oxford Symposium 2019) was a vivacious gathering, and the debates were heated. The Jane Grigson lecture came from Joanna Blythman, on the differences between the natural, homely world, and that of commerce, resulting in food ‘pyramids’, for example how a traditional diet of fish and seal fat, the Innuit diet, can be seen to be the top of a pyramid shape, with the carbohydrates and fatty processed foods they sadly consume now forming the wide base.
From Brexit food security to hunger strikes, feminist restaurants in 1970s Chicago, to lower class diners in Belle Époque France, the symposium formed both opinions and new impressions.
CONTENTS
Foreword
Mark McWilliams
Plenary Papers
Foodnight
Len Fisher, Janet Clarkson, and Elisabeth Luard
The Power of Enjoyment in the Face of Industrialized Food
Joanna Blythman
Serving Up A Slice of Africa: Reading Empire Adventure Stories as Textual Blancmanges of National Identity, Power, and Race
Siobhan Dooley
A Tale of Two Cities: Paris, London, and the Political Power of Food
Carolyn Steel
Symposium Papers
Forging the Future, Making Peace with the Past: The Case of Ammachi Canteens in Sri Lanka
Vidya Balachander
Shooting them Softly: Photographing Lower-Class Eaters in Belle Époque Paris
Janet Beizer
Gastrodiplomacy and the UK Diplomatic Network
Paul Brummell
Sushi, Sake, and Women
Voltaire Cang
Food as Power in the Letters of Isabella d’Este
Allison Fisher
Food Production, Consumption, and Resistance by Japanese Americans Incarcerated by the United States Government During World War II
Paula I. Fujiwara
The Muckamuck: Restaurants, Labour, and the Power of Representation
Sasha Gora
Starving for Rights: Hunger Strikes as Weapons of Resistance inside Farms and Prisons in the United States
Melissa Gouge and Jennifer Hostetter
Eating French, Being French: Gastronomy and National Identity in Contemporary France
Jennifer Holm
Marxist Analysis, in My Food Technology? Fuzzy Legibility, Flavour Connections, and the Recent Dialectical Emergence of Post-Modernity in Cuisine
Arielle Johnson
Counter Narratives: American and Canadian Feminist Restaurants from 1972 to the Present
Alex D. Ketchum
Weaponizing Food: Communism, the Democratic Transition, and the Transformation of Taste
Dorota Koczanowicz and Leszek Koczanowicz
Sugar and Show: Power, Conspicuous Display, and Sweet Banquets during Henri III’s 1574 Visit to Venice
Michael Krondl
Making Yakiniku Japanese: Erasing the Korean Contribution from Japan’s Food Culture
Christopher Laurent
The Community Cookbook as a Vehicle of Women’s Empowerment in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century America
Don Lindgren
The Power of Eating Together, or the Story of Why Banquets Were the Core of Marriage in the Past
Andrea Maraschi
Not in One Place: Parenteral Nutrition and Time-Space Compression
Jacob A. Matthews
Encounters of Food and Power in the Australian Colonial Contact Zone
Frieda Moran
Meat and Power in Communist Romania
Simona Moti
Going Hungry in the Magdalene laundries, 1922-1996
Guilia Nicolini and Alice Mulhearn-Williams
Cooking in Calais: Resistance to the Food Desert in Northern France
Féilim Ó Cuireáin
Everything but the Kitchen Syndicate: How Parisian Cuisinières Cleaned up their Reputation by Tapping into Social Stereotypes
Samantha Presnal
Sustainable Gastronomy: Power and Energy Use in Food
Christian Reynolds
Mom vs. the FDA: How One Woman Got the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to Correct Their Evaluation of the Mid-Atlantic Golden Tilefish
Charity Robey
Perceptions of Food and Italy’s Colonization of Libya, 1911-1912
Or Rosenboim
‘To Make the Whole World Homelike’: Gender and Power in the Food Revolution
Laura Shapiro
True Bread, Pizza Napoletana, and Wedding Cakes: The Changing Ways Legal Power Has Shaped Bakers’ Lives
Richard Shepro
I’ll Tell You How to Cook to Tell You Who I Am: The Culinary Identity Constructions of the Eaton Sisters
Koby Song-Nichols
Lebanese Sea Power: Food and the Phoenicians
David Sutton
Cannibalism and Power: Resituating the Narratives of Post-Soviet Foodways Through Vladimir Sorokin’s Feast
Svetlana Tcareva
The Shared Power of Hunger Artists and the Viennese Actionists
Carolyn Tillie
Empire of Wheat: Bread, Power, and Colonialism in the French Empire (1890-1940)
Nicholas Tošaj
The Power of Laws and Lies in the Italian Fascist Kitchen
Anne Urbancic
Subsistence Depression in Alaska: Who Gets Paid?
Nina Vizcarrondo
ISBN-10 1-909248-70-3
ISBN-13 978-1-909248-70-0
Published July 2020
400 pages; 174×246 mm; paperback; b&w illustrations
Price £30
Milk: Beyond the Dairy
Oxford Symposium
Milk: Beyond the Dairy
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 1999
This is the seventeenth volume of the ongoing series of papers and submissions to the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery, the longest running food history conference in the world.
The subject this year revolves around milk and milk products, their uses in food and cookery through the ages and, as important, their substitutes. This broad definition gives rise to a very wide range of essays and studies. including: The hierarchy of milk in the Renaissance and Marsilio Ficino on the rewards of old age.
There are upwards of 30 papers by academics from Britain, America and other countries. |
Contents
Milk and its Uses in Assyrian Folklore | Michael Abdalla |
Milk: Nutritious and Dangerous | Ken Albala |
Milk and its Products in Ancient Rome | Joan P. Alcock |
The Cheeses of Hokkaido and other Milky Issues in a Ricist Society | Michael Ashkenazi |
How the Bengalis Discovered Chhana and its Delightful Offspring | Chitrita Banerji |
Touloumotyro: Centuries Old and About to Die | Rosemary Barron |
Milk and its By-products in Ancient Persia and Modern Iran | Najmieh Batmanglij |
Rabbits, Fondues and Physics | Tony Blake |
Milk-borne Diseases: An Historic Overview and Status Report | Fritz Blank |
Hawking Milk: The Public Health Profession, Pure Milk, and the Rise of Advertising in Early Twentieth-century America | Daniel Ralston Block |
The Hierarchy of Milk in the Renaissance, and Marsilio Ficino on the Rewards of Old Age | Phyllis Pray Bober |
New York Milk Culture: Some History, Facts and Concerns | Una Bray |
Farmhouse Gouda: A Dutch Family Business | Janny de Moor |
Milk and Dairy Products in the Roman Period | Carol A. Déry |
Carabao Milk in Philippine Life | Doreen G. Fernandez |
A Spring-house in Pennsylvania: Design and Use | Rebecca Fitzjohn and Harlan Walker |
How Old is Old Cheese? Gamalost in Coffin-shaped Boxes and Eccentric Jars | Ove Fosså |
The Origins of Taste in Milk, Cream, Butter and Cheese | Sarah Freeman and Silvija Davidson |
Cato’s Roman Cheesecakes: The Baking Techniques | Sally Grainger |
Dairy Food in the UAE | Philip Iddison |
What’s in a Name? Some Thoughts on the Origins, Evolution and Sad Demise of Béchamel Sauce | Cathy K. Kaufman |
Low-temperature Cheese-making: Ancient Wisdom not Outdated | Lidia Kitrilakis and Sotiris Kitrilakis |
The Artisanal and Regional Cheeses of Greece | Diane Kochilas |
Fresh From the Cow’s Nest: Condensed Milk and Culinary Innovation | Rachel Laudan |
The Rise of the Cream Sauce, 1660–1760 | Gilly Lehmann |
Finnish-American Milk Products in the Northwoods | Yvonne R. Lockwood & William G. Lockwood |
Names for Milk and Milk Products | Jenny Macarthur |
The Milk-tie | Jeremy MacClancy |
The Health Hazards of Milk | H. Morrow Brown |
The Art of Making Brie de Meaux Fermier | Lizabeth Nicol |
Medieval Arab Dairy Products | Charles Perry |
Images of Progress: Milk Advertisements in Greece | Elia Petridou |
Cheese in Art | Gillian Riley |
Animal Husbandry and Other Issues in the Dairy Industry at the End of the Twentieth Century | Cherry Ripe |
Sandesh: An Emblem of Bengaliness | Colleen Taylor Sen |
Yoghurt in Iran | Margaret Shaida |
The Origins of the New York Dairy Industry | Andrew F. Smith |
The Wet-nurse | Raymond Sokolov |
Milky Medicine and Magic | Layinka M. Swinburne |
More on the Origin and History of the Ice-cream Cone | Robin Weir |
Use of Almonds in Late-medieval English Cookery | Caroline Yeldham |
La Laiterie de la Reine at Rambouillet | Carolin C. Young |
ISBN-10 1-903018-06-4
ISBN-13 978-1-903018-06-4
Published Aug 2000
300 pages; 171×246 mm; paperback; b&w illustrations
Price £25
Offal: Rejected and Reclaimed Food
Offal: Rejected and Reclaimed Food
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2016
This year’s theme – offal, rejected and reclaimed foods – when taken in the broadest sense is a subject well-suited to the explorative ethos of the Oxford Symposium, not least because there’s no universal agreement on what actually qualifies as offal. Each culture has its own views on whether foods are acceptable or merit rejection. Even in neighbouring countries, differences run deep. For example, English ‘offal’ is linguistically related to the Dutch word ‘afval’ which means unambiguously ‘garbage’, a designation that includes most animal-intestines and extremities. The negative connotation of the word indicates automatic rejection of offal by the native Dutch. Nevertheless, within the nation, differences can be observed. In modern times, consumption of most varieties of organ-meats, traditionally unusual in The Netherlands, is having a come-back thanks to newcomers from all parts of the world. Goatheads, chickens-feet, blood, liver, testicles, stomach, udder and heart, are all available if you know the right butcher.
Contents
|
ISBN: 978-1-909-248-55-7 Published July 2017; 400 pages: 174 x 246 mm; paperback, b & w illustrations and charts; Price: £30.00
Oxford Symposium
Oxford Symposium
An Index to the Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 1981–1994
The ultimate vade-mecum to all these titles. What you have missed and what you are missing.
The Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery is perhaps the longest-running annual meeting and conference on these subjects in the world today. It sees a gathering of scholars and professionals from many different disciplines, each contributing their special knowledge to a single overriding theme – the food we eat and the way we eat it. Each year a volume of the essays and lectures delivered to the Symposium is produced, normally devoted to a single aspect of the subject. They have ranged from ‘Food in Motion’, to ‘Taste’, to ‘Disappearing Foods’, and ‘Public Eating’. An index to the cumulative set is an essential tool for any student or scholar working in this field. It has been published as a separate volume for the convenience of users, who may have to consult the proceedings themselves in a library or institution. |
ISBN-10 0-907325-73-4
ISBN-13 978-0-907325-73-4
Published Sep 1996
30 pages; 250×170 mm; paperback
Price £7.50
Public Eating
Oxford Symposium
Public Eating
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 1991
There was a fine range of papers submitted to this Symposium in 1991. The keynote talk was by Sami Zubaida The papers include discussions of the topic as reflected in conditions in Nigeria (Esther Balogh); Mexico (Sophie Coe); Transylvania (Andrew Dalby); Great Britain (Christopher Driver); British Hospitals (Bobby Freeman); Japan (Richard Hosking); United States (Tom Hudgins); Hungary (Louis Szathmary); and Ancient Greece (John Wilkins). |
Contents
Utility and Symbol in Public Eating | Sami Zubaida |
Feeding the 42,000. Public Institutional Eating: The British Army in the Gulf | Dr. Joan P. Alcock |
The Whistle-Blowers: the Darker Side of Public Eating with Reviews of Two Books from Abroad | Josephine Bacon |
Eating out in Nigeria – from Food Vendors to The Sheritan | Dr. Esther Balogh |
Slow Starvation. Some Notes Concerning the Feeding of Children in Nineteenth Century Institutions | Maggie Black & Priscilla Bain |
Identity with Mycenaean Ancestors in Cult Meals at Ancient Greek Sanctuaries | Prof. Phyllis P. Bober |
The Company of Qahwa | Holly Chase |
Two Sixteenth Century Banquets in Mexico | Dr. Sophie D. Coe |
Transylvanian Inns and Travellers | Andrew Dalby |
Pasta Eating in the Streets of Naples | June di Schino |
Street Food/Road Food in the Pacific Northwest | John Doerper |
Postgate in Partibus | Christopher Driver |
Singapore Street Food | Hugo Dunn-Meynell |
Balut to Barbecue: Philippine Street Food | Professor Doreen G. Fernandez |
Hospital Food | Bobby Freeman |
Table Top Cooking | Elizabeth Gabay |
Pavement Food, Packed Meals and Picnics in Japan | Professor Richard F. Hosking |
The Beer Taverns of Prague | Sharon Hudgins |
Burger and Fries: from White Castles to Golden Arches | Tom Hudgins |
Teenagers frequenting a Snack-Bar | Preben L. Johannesen |
The English Tea Room | Dr. Brigid Keane & Olive Portnoy |
Dining out in Ancient Rome | Mary Wallace Kelsey |
Street Food in Hawaii | Judith M. Kirkendall |
The American Hot Dog Stand | Professor Bruce Kraig |
Food, Drink, and Swahili Public Space | Robert A. Leonard & Wendy J. Saliba |
Camp Cookery in the American Civil War: the Florence Nightingale and Alexis Soyer Connections | Professor Daniel & Mrs Janice Longone |
Field Food – Men’s Business | Elisabeth Luard |
Gobble, Gulp and Go | Jeremy MacClancy |
Ice Cream and Immorality | Francis McKee |
Learning How to Eat in Public: School Dinners | Laura Mason |
The Oyster House – Then and Now | Richard C. Mieli |
Eating Out in the Ancient Near East | Janny de Moor |
Pre-Columbian Mark Food and its Descendants | Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz |
Public Eating, Public Manners in Asia | Sri & Roger Owen |
Judhabah and Lauzinaj: Or What to Order in 9th Century Baghdad | Charles Perry |
Temperance Hotels and ‘Those Damned Cold Water Drinking Societies’ | Jo Marie Powers & Dorothy Duncan |
Giovedi Gnocchi, Sabato to Trippa | Gillian Riley |
The Asianisation of the Australian Palate | Cherry Ripe |
Public Eating in Afghanistan | Helen Saberi |
Chez soi chez eux | Alice Wooledge Salmon |
Chellow Kabab – The National Dish of Iran | Margaret Shaida |
Marketplace and Street Food in Hungary 1850 to 1950 | Dr. Louis Szathmary |
Coffee Houses in the Eighteenth Century | Greta Verdin |
From Turtle to Tripe: Philadelphia Pepperpot, A Street Food from the West Indies | William Woys Weaver |
Penny Licks and Hokey Pokey, Ice Cream before the Cone | Robin Weir |
Expositions Universelles | Barbara K. Wheaton |
Public (and Private) Eating in Greece 450-300 BC | Dr. John Wilkins |
Historical Attitudes to Women Eating in Restaurants | Anne Williams |
ISBN-10 0-907325-47-5
ISBN-13 978-0-907325-47-5
Published Sep 1992
326 pages; 297×210 mm; paperback; tables and illustrations
Price £25
Seeds: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery 2018
‘The sights could not be more different. In one, curved greenhouse-like buildings rise gently from the wildflowered English countryside; in the other, an angular metallic shape juts starkly out of a snowbound Norwegian mountainside. And yet both – the Millennium Seed Bank at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and the Svalbard Global Seed Bank – serve at once as witness to the widespread destruction of the Anthropocene and as ark-like hope for surviving those same collective acts of self-harm.’ Mark McWilliams, Foreword, Seeds
The papers in this collection explored topics ranging widely from what was once seen as the promise of irradiated seeds to the many threats to indigenous species, from the way individual grains shape communal identity to the role of seeds in religious symbolism. Crops are grown for different reasons, and not always to nurture the community that cultivates them. Economic boom and bust cycles can influence the choice of crops, and as one region becomes the main source for a species of plant, perhaps a cash crop like coffee, at the same time the climate in another region changes, and the harvest falters.
The topics ranged from prehistoric to high-tech ways of planting seeds. And yet the papers often share an unexpected similarity: though many explore the specific context of seeds in the past and others lament that loss in the present, both approaches share a sense of the way landraces – individual species carefully adapted to specific geographies and climates – capture a sense of place.
ISBN: 9781909248656/ 400 pages Paperback Price: £ 30.00 / US$ 50.00
Staple Foods
Oxford Symposium
Staple Foods
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 1989
There was a fine range of papers submitted to this Symposium in 1989. The keynote talks were by Keith Botsford in the staples of Italian cooking; the staple foods of the classical world, by Andrew Dalby; and a speculation on whether cuisines based largely on processed foods have any staples at all, by Erica Wheeler. The sorts of foods discussed by the various contributors include rice, maize, polenta, wheat, other grains, potatoes, root crops, beans and herring. |

Contents
Staples: Some Considerations on the Nature of Staples Especially in Regard to Italy | Keith Botsford |
In Search of the Staple Foods of Prehistoric and Classical Greece | Andrew Dalby |
Do Processed Societies Have Staple Foods? | Erica F:Wheeler |
Bulgur – An Important Wheat Product in the Cuisine of Contemporary Assyrians in the Middle East | Michael Abdalla |
Pasta – Not Only Italian | Massimo Alberini |
Buckwheat – Food for Peasants and Pheasants | Josephine Bacon |
The Significance of Wheat in Judaeo-Christian Religion | Josephine Bacon |
History and Perspectives of Staple Foods in Africa | Dr. Esther Balogh |
The Ever-Evolving Store Cupboard | Suzy Benghiat |
Survival Kit (16th Century Seamen’s Fare) | Maggie Black |
The Date Palm: Pillar of Society | Holly Chase |
Atolli: A Liquid Staple | Dr. Sophie D. Coe |
Polenta – An Italian Staple | Anna Del Conte |
Staple Foods of the American West Coast | John Doerper |
Different Methods of Baking Bread in Private Households – A Comparison of Working Time, Quality and Costs | Martina Ehnle, Comelie Pfau, Johannes Piekarski |
The Metamorphic Potato: A Revolutionary Root | Dr. Beatrice Fink |
Rice and Traditional Ceremony in Japan | Yoshiko Hirasawa |
Tarhana – From Steppe to Empire | Maria Johnson |
Beans of the Southwestern United States Indians | Mary Wallace Kelsey |
The Flavour of Japan | Max Lake |
Maize as a Staple Food | Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz |
Corn – A Staple from the New World | Janet Laurence |
A Dictionary of Edible Aroids | Jenny Macarthur |
Unfair Game | Carolyn McCrum |
Traditional Table Manners in Dagestan | Dr. Magomedkhan Magomedkhanov & Sergi Luguev |
Rice, a Staple Food in Spain | Lourdes March |
Healthy – or a Health Hazard – Yesterday’s Diet, Today’s Disaster | Dr. H. Morrow Brown |
Three Staples of Indonesia: Rice, Coconuts, Tempeh | Sri Owen with Roger Owen |
Couscous and its Cousins | Charles Perry |
Wine, Women and Song: The Staples of Life | Graham Pont |
Fishery and the Utilization of Fish Products in Russia and the USSR | Professor T. S. Rass |
The Importance of Herring in the Daily Life of the Coastal Population of Norway | Dr Astri Riddervold |
Sylvester Graham and the Origins of the Breakfast Food Industry | Elizabeth Riely |
Vilhjalmur Stefansson and the All-Meat Diet | Gillian Riley |
A Medieval Staple. Verjuice in France and England | Brenda S. Rose |
Wheat, Staple Food for the Dead | Rena Salaman |
Ancient Vegetarianism – Staple Foods and Customs in Azerbaijan | Dr. Emil Salmanov |
Feed the Man Meat | Barbara Santich |
Roots and Other Garden Vegetables in the Diet of Londoners, c.1550–1650, and Some Responses to Harvest Failures in the 1590’s | Malcolm Thick |
Wheat and Rice Recipes of India | Kathie Webber |
Rye, a Daily Bread and a Daily Treat | Joop Witteveen |
Rice and Wheat in Middle Eastern Cultures | Sami Zubaida |
ISBN-10 0-907325-44-0
ISBN-13 978-0-907325-44-4
Published Sep 1990
248 pages; 297×210 mm; paperback; tables and illustrations
Price £19.50
The Meal
Oxford Symposium
The Meal
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2001
The Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery continues to be the premier English conference on these topics, gathering academics, professional writers and amateurs from Britain, the USA, Australia and many other countries. Prospect Books has published these proceedings since 1981 with a short break in 2001–2003. The scope of this volume is revealed from the list of contents below. |
Contents
Folk Mexican Street Food and the Morality of the Meal | Joy Adapon |
Hunting for Breakfast in Medieval and Early Modern Europe | Ken Albala |
The Funerary Meal in the Cult of the Dead in Classical Roman Religion | Joan P. Alcock |
Food in the Passover Seder | Michael Ashkenazi |
The German-Texan Meal 1831–2001 | Gwen Barclay |
Dining by Design | Peter Brown |
The Flattest Meal – Pancakes in the Dutch Lowlands | Janny de Moor |
The Oyster Supper | Dorothy Duncan |
The Filipino Meal: Swift, Slow; Sweet, Sour; Adazzle, Dim | †Doreen G. Fernandez and Pia Lim Castillo |
The Middle to Late Sixteenth-Century English Upper-Class Meal | Judy Gerjuoy |
Moretum – a Peasant Lunch Revisited | Christopher Grocock and Sally Grainger |
A Thousand Years of Japanese Banquets | Richard Hosking |
Perpetual Picnics – The Meal in the UAE | Philip Iddison |
Structuring the Meal: the Revolution of Service à la Russe | Cathy K. Kaufman |
Ring the Doorbell with your Elbow: a Light-hearted Look at the American Potluck Meal | Mary Wallace Kelsey |
Meals and Mealtimes, 1600–1800 | Gilly Lehmann |
Being American: an Arab American Thanksgiving | William G. Lockwood and Yvonne R. Lockwood |
The Fine Art of Eighteenth-Century Table Layouts | Fiona Lucraft |
The Medieval Arab Meal, East and West | Charles Perry |
African American Meals from Slavery to Soul Food | Tracy N. Poe |
A Sumptuous Meal: Navigating the Laws Restricting Wedding Banquets of Fourteenth-century Florence | Eden Rain |
Lust, Fear and Loathing on the Village Green | Gillian Riley |
Meals and Morality | Barbara Santich |
Manners Maketh the Meal: Table Etiquette in England and Iran | Margaret Shaida |
A Northern Gourmet: Benjamin Newton on the Move, 1816–1818 | Layinka M Swinburne |
From Menu, to Recipe, to Meal: a Renaissance Wedding Banquet | David S. Walddon |
Colonel Hawker Tells How to Get a Decent Meal with a Bad Cook and Poor Ingredients | Harlan Walker |
Charles Fourier (1772–1837) and the Phalansterian Banquet | Bee Wilson |
Drink in the Structure of the Meal: Middle Eastern Patterns | Sami Zubaida |
ISBN-10 1-903018-24-2
ISBN-13 978-1-903018-24-8
Published Sep 2002
272 pages; 246×172 mm; paperback; b&w illustrations
Price £30
Vegetables
Oxford Symposium
Vegetables
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2008
In this continuing series, the topic of vegetables embraces a wide range of pieces from English, American and overseas scholars. Their treatments encompass both a broader consideration of the vegetable diet and the history of the cultivation and consumption of specific varieties. Cookery and consumption are not highlighted at the expense of cultivation, so there are some interesting essays on allotments, market gardening in the Paris region, early-modern vegetable gardening in England and the development of markets in India. The theme has been treated with admirable latitude in contributions on vegetables and diplomacy, vegetable carving, and vegetables in Renaissance art. |

Contents
Vegetable Carving: For Your Eyes Only | Julia Abramson |
The War of the Vegetables: The Rise and Fall of the English Allotment Movement | Lesley Acton |
The First Scientific Defense of a Vegetarian Diet | Ken Albala |
The Roman Vegetable Garden | Joan P. Alcock |
The Bitter – and Flatulent – Aphrodisiac: Synchrony and Diachrony of the Culinary Use of Muscari Comosum in Greece and Italy | Anthony F. Buccini |
We Talked About the Aubergines: International Diplomacy and the Cretan Diet | Andrew Dalby |
The Carrot Purple | Joel S. Denker |
Listening to Vegetables | Len Fisher and Nick Sorensen |
Vegetables as a Symbol in Design and Art | Anna Marie Fisker & Tenna Doktor Olsen |
An Edible Wild Thistle from the Lebanese Mountains | Anissa Helou |
Allotment Diaries | Phil Iddison |
Salvation in Sweetness? Sugar Beets in Antebellum America | Cathy K. Kaufman |
Up on the Farm: The Role of Vegetables in Conquering Space | Jane Levi |
The History of the Potato in Irish Cuisine and Culture | Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire and Pádraic Óg Gallagher |
‘Sweet as’– Notes on the Kumara or New Zealand Sweet Potato as a Taonga or Treasure | Ray McVinnie |
The American Pumpkin | Mark McWilliams |
Wild Thing: The Naga Morich Story | Michael Michaud and Joy Michaud |
‘Per rape et porri et per spinachi’: Examining the Realities of Vegetable Consumption at the Monastery of Santa Trinità in Post-Plague Florence | Salvatore Musumeci |
The Maraîchers – Market Gardeners of the Ile-de-France | Lizabeth Nicol |
The Southern California Vegetable Cult | Charles Perry |
From the Plate to the Palate: Visual Delights from the Vegetable Kingdoms of Italy | Gillian Riley |
The Still-life Painter | Alicia Ríos; translated by Raymond Sokolov; photographs by Johanna Hecht |
But, Did the English Eat Their Vegetables? A Look at English Kitchen Gardens, and the Vegetable Cookery they Imply | William Rubel |
Who Put the Leeks in Cock-a-leekie Soup? | Allyson E. Sgro |
Bone-dry Freshness: Dried Vegetables | Aylin Öney Tan and Filiz Hösükoğlu |
Dokonjo Daikon: The Radish with the Fighting Spirit | Michelle Toratani |
The Pomtajer | Karin Vaneker |
A Vegetable Zodiac from Late Antique Alexandria | Susan Weingarten |
ISBN-13 978-1-903018-66-8 Published Sep 2009 320 pages; 246×174 mm; paperback; 12 b& w illustrations Price £30
Wild Food
Oxford Symposium
Wild Food
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2004
The Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery continues to be the premier English conference on these topics, gathering academics, professional writers and amateurs from Britain, the USA, Australia and many other countries. Prospect Books has published these proceedings since 1981 with a short break in 2001–2003.The 2004 Symposium on Wild Food: Hunters and Gatherers received a large number of excellent papers. Forty papers cover subjects as various as ginseng; wild olives; seaweed; angelica; imitation game in nineteenth century Germany; wild mushrooms; the pike; eating insects and the Mexican maize fungus, cuit lacoche. |
Contents
Wild Food: The Call of the Domestic | Ken Albala |
Umbles and the Eating of Humble Pie | Joan P Alcock |
Fungi as Food | Josephine Bacon |
Capering About | Rosemary Barron |
Muskrats and Terrapins: The Forgotten Bounty of the Coastal Marshlands of New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland | Fritz Blank |
Cooking His Goose: Gender in American Wild Game Cookbooks | Bronwen E. Bromberger |
Some Notes on Seakale: Crambe Maritima | Lynda Brown |
Hunting in the Medieval Royal Forests 1066–1307 | Reva Berman Brown |
The Hunting and Gathering of Wild Foods | Susan Campbell |
La Ceuillette: Foraging for Edible Wild Plants in Southern France | Caroline Conran |
Ginseng: Taming the Wild | Andrew Dalby |
Walk on the Wild Side | Daphne Derven |
Where the Wild Things Are: From Wild Olive to Present-Day Cultivars and a Tasting of New World Feral Olive Oils | Anne Dolamore |
Irish Seaweed Revisited | Elizabeth Field |
The Significance of Samuel Pepys’ Predilection for Venison Pasty | John Fletcher |
Angelica: From Norwegian Mountains to the English Trifle | Ove Fosså |
A Wild Herb Nursery in Alicante | Vicky Hayward |
Wild About the UAE | Philip Iddison |
The Taming of the ’Shroom | Cathy Kaufman |
The Water Tiger: The Pike in English Cooking | Sam Kilgour |
Entomophagy | Bruce Kraig |
Tracking the Wild in ‘Wild’ Foods | Steven Kramer |
Cuitlacoche: Pest or Prize? | Jane Levi |
Some Like it Raw: Buffalo Cookery and Foodways in America | Walter Levy |
Bamboo for Life | Pia Lim-Castillo |
A History of Seafood in Irish Cuisine and Culture | Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire |
Contemporary Novelists on GM Foods and Industrial Farming | Kathy Mathys |
Some Thoughts on Wild Fruits | Robert Palter |
The Game of the Caliphs | Charles Perry |
The Edible, Incredible Cattail | Susan McLellan Plaisted |
Wild Plant Foods: Panacea or just a Picnic? | Christopher Robbins |
There are No Walls in Eden | William Rubel |
The Forest Foodways of the Tribals of India’s Bastar District | Colleen Taylor Sen |
The Fall and Rise of the Edible Turkey | Andrew F. Smith |
Really Wild: Britain, Before Agriculture | Colin Spencer |
The Artifice of the Hunter: Gathering Ancient Inspiration | Marshall Walker |
Wild Foods in the Talmud | Susan Weingarten |
Recipe for a Bacchanal | Carolin C. Young |
ISBN-10 1-903018-43-9
ISBN-13 978-1-903018-43-9
Published Feb 2006
344 pages; 246×172 mm; paperback
Price £30
Wrapped & Stuffed Foods
Oxford Symposium
Wrapped & Stuffed Foods
Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2012
• Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2012 •
• 32 essays by international scholars •The thirty-first Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery discussed wrapped and stuffed foods from every possible angle, and from every possible geographical perspective. This may include sausages on the one hand, or stuffed ravioli on the other. It may also go as far as pies and sausage rolls. In geographical terms the Symposiasts were willing to look at cultures as disparate as Turkey, the United States, seventeeth-century England, Korea and Italy.There is also a pan- cultural discussion of stuffing and wrapping foods in avant-garde or molecular gastronomy.Contributors include the Chinese expert Fuschia Dunlop, the Greek cookery writer Aglaia Kremezi, the celebrated food writer and cultural historian from America Laura Shapiro, the Australian food historian Barbara Santich, the Israeli commentator and historian Susan Weingarten, and the English anthropologist David C. Sutton.
Titles of some of the papers include: The Pillsbury Bake-Off: Stuffed and Wrapped in 1950s and 1960s America; Chicken Kiev: Material, Social and Discursive Wrappings; Samuel Pepys’s Venison Pasties; Barbarian heads and Turkish dumplings: the Chinese word mantou; A Knish Is Just a Knish–or Is It? The Evolution of a Street Food to Haute Nosh and Before Dolma:A Taxonomy of Medieval Arab Stuffery.
Contents
Plenary Papers | |
---|---|
Paperbark Cooking: Cultural Transformation | Barbara Santich |
The Pillsbury Bake-Off: Stuffed and Wrapped in 1950s and 1960s America | Laura Shapiro |
Turning a New Leaf in London: Paan Culture in the Former Metropole | Jaclyn Rohel |
Plenary Panel: Wrapped and Stuffed: Provocative Misinterpretations on a Theme | |
The Audacity of Unwrapping and Rewrapping, Unstuffing and Restuffing Virtually Everything (Including, Especially, Cheese) | Harry G. West |
Picture a Stuffed Goose | Emma-Kayne Abbots |
Chicken Kiev: Material, Social and Discursive Wrappings | Benjamin F. Coles |
Wrapping and Stuffing Food Relationally: Pleasure, Place, Production and Power | Michael Goodman |
Symposium Papers | |
‘Sarma’ and ‘Dolma’: Rolled and Stuffed Dishes as Therapy Tools for the Anatolian Women in the Kitchen | Nilhan Aras |
Pasteis de Tentugal: Serendipity or Cultural Syncretism? | Paula Arvela |
The Haggis Addressed | Adam Balic |
Lasagna: A Layered History | Anthony Buccini |
Samuel Pepys’s Venison Pasties | Taissa Csáky |
Art and Alchemy: The Authentic Air-Cured Sausages of Europe | Jan Davison |
Barbarian heads and Turkish dumplings: the Chinese word mantou | Fuchsia Dunlop |
Mantı and Mantou: Dumplings across the Silk Road from Central Asia to Turkey | Aylin Öney Tan |
A Knish Is Just a Knish–or Is It? The Evolution of a Street Food to Haute Nosh | Elizabeth Field |
All Wrapped Up: A History of Mummy Eating | Len Fisher and Janet Clarkson |
Rich Man’s Fowl, Poor Man’s Fowl: What’s under the Wrapper? | Alexandra Grigorieva |
Modernist Stuffing and Wrapping Techniques and Applications | Peter Hertzmann |
Siberian Stuffed: A Profusion of Pel’meni | Sharon Hudgins |
Yufka: Food for the Cook’s Imagination | Priscilla Mary Işın |
From Lettuce to Fish Skin: Korean’s Appetite for Wrapped and Stuffed Foods | Join Kyung Kim |
Maultaschen: No Show and a Lot of Substance | Petra Kopf |
The Most Frugal of the Phylo-Wrapped Pies, or How to Feed a Crowd with a Handful of Meat | Aglaia Kremezi |
Italian Stuffed vs. Maghreb Wrapped: Perugia’s Torta al Testo Against the Kebab | Zachary Nowak |
Before Dolma: A Taxonomy of Medieval Arab Stuffery | Charles Perry |
Bog Butter | Benedict Reade |
The Magic of Dumplings: Bringing Pierogi into the (New) World | Frank Sciacca and Naomi Guttman |
The Case for Casings | Allyson E. Sgro |
A Case for Culinary Mongrelism | May Rosenthal Sloan |
‘Four and Twenty Blackbirds Baked in a Pie’: A History of Surprise Stuffings | David C. Sutton |
Food for Feasting or Food for Fasting? Rabbinical krepelach | Susan Weingarten |
ISBN-13 978-1-903018-99-6
Published Aug 2013
368 pages;
246×174 mm;
paperback; 25 b&w illustrations
Price £30