This collection of essays provides an overview of new scholarship on recipe books, one of the most popular non-fiction printed texts in, and one of the most common forms of manuscript compilation to survive from, the pre-modern era (c.1550–1800). This is the first book to collect together the wide variety of scholarly approaches to pre-modern recipe books written in English, drawing on varying approaches to reveal their culinary, medical, scientific, linguistic, religious and material meanings. Ten scholars from the fields of culinary history, history of medicine and science, divinity, archaeology and material culture, and English literature and linguistics contribute to a vibrant mapping of the aspirations invested in, and uses of, recipes and recipe books. By exploring areas as various as the knowledge economies of medicine, Anglican feasting and fasting practices, the material culture of the kitchen and table, London publishing and concepts of authorship and the aesthetics of culinary styles, these eleven essays (including a critical introduction to recipe books and their historiography) position recipe texts in the wider culture of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They illuminate their importance to both their original compilers and users, and modern scholars and graduate students alike.

This eye-opening history will change the way you read a cookbook or regard a TV chef, making cooking ventures vastly more interesting—and a lot more fun. Every kitchen has at least one well-worn cookbook, but just how did they come to be? Invention of the Modern Cookbook is the first study to examine that question, discussing the roots of these collections in 17th-century England and illuminating the cookbook's role as it has evolved over time. Readers will discover that cookbooks were the product of careful invention by highly skilled chefs and profit-minded publishers who designed them for maximum audience appeal, responding to a changing readership and cultural conditions and utilizing innovative marketing and promotion techniques still practiced today. They will see how cookbooks helped women adjust to the changes of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution by educating them on a range of subjects from etiquette to dealing with household servants. And they will learn how the books themselves became "modern," taking on the characteristics we now take for granted.

Country house kitchen gardens were designed as perfect ‘grow your own’ environments and ensured that households were supplied with their own fruit and vegetables throughout the year. This book offers an insight into the digging and sowing of these gardens, as well as exploring how walled gardens contributed towards a sustainable lifestyle and often were a source of not just food, but also of natural medicines. A wealth of contemporary illustrations, material from archives, gardening manuals, seed catalogues, engravings and other documents, paint a vivid picture of the country house kitchen garden and its development over three and a half centuries. This delightful book recounts an important part of our historic houses and their national heritage – to be enjoyed by gardeners and non-gardeners alike.

The Oxford Symposium on Food on Cookery is a premier English conference on this topic. The subjects range 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.

Classic Russian Cooking is a book that I highly recommend. Joyce Toomre has done a marvelous job of translating this valuable and fascinating source book. It's the Fanny Farmer and Isabella Beeton of Russia's 19th century." -Julia Child, Food Arts Joyce Toomre... has accomplished an enormous task, fully on a part with the original author's slave labor. Her extensive preface and her detailed and entertaining notes are marvelous." -Tatyana Tolstaya, New York Review of Books ... should become as much of a classic as the Russian original... dazzling and admirable expedition into Russia's kitchens and cuisine." -Slavic Review What a delightful discovery this is!... an astonishing and immensely appealing work that will serve adventurous readers and curious cooks." -Nahum Waxman, Owner, Kitchen Arts & Letters What a joy to be introduced to Russia's Joy of Cooking by way of a scholar as knowledgeable as Joyce Toomre, who tells us what it was like to be a young housewife in the days of Chekhov and Tolstoy, feasting in Butter Week before the Great Fast, making pirogs and kvass, hazel grouse souffle [acute accent over e] and 'Drunken' plums, gathering berries, pickling mushrooms. A rediscovery of pre-Bolshevik times." -Betty H. Fussell, author of I Hear America Cooking First published in 1861, this "bible" of Russian homemakers offered not only a compendium of recipes, but also instructions about such matters as setting up a kitchen, managing servants, shopping, and proper winter storage. Joyce Toomre has superbly translated and annotated over one thousand of the recipes and has written a thorough and fascinating introduction that discusses the history of Russian cuisine and summarizes Elena Molokhovets' advice on household management. A treasure trove for culinary historians, serous cooks and cookbook readers, and scholars of Russian history and culture. Indiana-Michigan Series in Russian and East European Studies Alexander Rabinowitc

A two-volume set which traces the history of food and nutrition from the beginning of human life on earth through the present.