Food in Early Modern England Phases, Fads, Fashions, 1500-1760 [Hardcover]

What did ordinary people eat and drink five hundred years ago?? How much did they talk about food?? Did their eating habits change much?? Our knowledge is mostly superficial on such commonplace routines, but this book digs deep and finds surprising answers to these questions.? We learn that food fads and fashions resembled those of our own day.? Commercial, scientific and intellectual movements were closely entwined with changing attitudes and dealings about food.? In short, food holds a mirror to a lively world of cultural change stretching from the Renaissance to the industrial Revolution.? This book also strongly challenges the assumption that ordinary folk ate dull and monotonous meals.

PrefaceList of IllustrationsAbbreviationsIntroduction1. Setting the Scene Before 15002. The Food Scene Surveyed, 1500-15503. The Widening World of Food, 1550-16004. Science and the Search for Food, 1600-16405. War and the Search for Food, 1640-16606. Food in the Commercial Age, 1660-17007. Food in an Industrialising Age, 1700-17608. Regional and Social Patterns of Diet, 1500-17609. A Closer Look at Some Foods: Bread; Meat of Farmyard Animals and Rabbits; Eggs and Bird Meat, Farm-Fed and Wild Fish; Vegetables and Herbs; Fruit and Nuts; Drinks; Condiments and Spices.ConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex