2013 read #140: Food: A Culinary History, edited by Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari.

Food: A Culinary History, edited by Jean-Louis Flandrin and Massimo Montanari
English edition by Albert Sonnenfeld
557 pages
Published 1996; English edition published 1999
Read from September 13 to November 10
Rating: ★★ out of 5

This, my friends, is a textbook example of sunk cost fallacy. I should have given up on this book almost two months ago. Right from the start I could tell we were gonna have some issues, this book and I. In his preface, Sonnenfeld seems to take great pride in his editorial decisions, which involved leaving out silly stuff like data and charts and graphs and such things -- useless, really, in a compendium of scholarly papers. Without supporting data, the various essays 1) were incredibly dull, and 2) read like just-so stories. I can't even bring an example to mind, because nothing in this book stuck with me, possibly a result of academic prose filtered through translation for that twice-tedious texture, so I'll just do what this book does and expect you to accept my assertions on my say-so.

All I can really say with confidence after reading this tome in its entirety is that Greeks liked symposia, affluent Romans praised the virtues of garden vegetables, medieval cuisine was based on the idea of regulating humors (and tended to sound pretty gross), French cuisine abandoned the medieval dietetic theories in favor of tastiness in the early modern period, and one of the French Republics (the third?) boosted "local cuisines" as a component of nationalism and republican unity. I was delighted, all those months ago, when I first found this book; I love history, and I love food, and the history of food sounded like an excellent field to study to catch up on. But it turns out that this book is most definitely not where you want to start. For one thing, despite its comprehensive title, Food: A Culinary History is intensely parochial, rarely giving more than passing mention to any developments outside of France and (to a lesser extent) Italy. A better title would be Assorted Papers on the History of French Cuisine, and Also Some Italian Stuff Is in There, and Like Three Chapters on Greek Drinking Parties and One on Kashrut and One on McDonald's.

The few times the various authors stumble into a subject that might be interesting, they mention it only in passing and continue blathering on about something stupid again. An article on "The Invasion of Foreign Foods" talks briefly about the industrialization of banana cultivation, which one would think would be an opportunity for a fascinating (though grim) examination of the various abuses committed by Dole, Chiquita, et al. out of sight in tropical hinterlands. Instead, the author admires the "enterprising spirit of a handful of pioneers" of banana agribusiness, and the "efficiency" of the companies these captains of industry created. It presents a skewed perspective, to put it mildly.

So yeah. I should have abandoned this book weeks and weeks ago. But no, I just had to keep at it, because I had to have it on my book tally after putting in so much time and reading so many pages. I wonder, though -- is there a good, well-written, well-documented, far-reaching history of food out there for me to read? There has to be, right?