Is Spaghetti and Meatballs Italian? No, but this is as entertaining a history as you’re likely to find.
Food is very much part of culture and it is very rare to find a man or woman who is not interested in what is happening in the kitchen, or what is being put on the table. So it is an immediate connector that changes from country to country,” Anissa says.
Sugar, Salt, and Fossil Fuels | Rachel Laudan
Excellent dingdong on the benefits of industrial production of food. Or, at least, ingredients for food.
Just realised that Tumblr does a much better job of handling podcasts than I originally thought. So I’m going to add my backlist — all three of them — over the next few days.
Show notes etc at Eat This Podcast.
Bog Butter
Peat diggers in Ireland and elsewhere have occasionally unearthed objects, usually made of wood, that contained some kind of greasy, fatty material with a “distinctive, pungent and slightly offensive smell”. Butter. Centuries-old butter.I’ve started a new podcast series that I hope people will find interesting. The first episode is up now, and I hope to do a new one every two weeks. Comments welcome.
(via The History Dish: Pepper Cakes, Aged Six Months « Four Pounds Flour)>
However in the context of such a well researched film, one scene really disappointed me. This dealt with the preparation and service of food for a meal at which the artist entertains his patron. And I am afraid it was truly awful. There were many contemporaries of Vermeer who specialised in nothing but pictures of tables laden with food. As a result the Dutch table of this period is the most scrutinised in the history of art. Surprisingly this incredible wealth of evidence was entirely ignored by the filmmakers. At one point a servant cleans and lays out a ridiculous set of nineteenth century silver gilt forks and spoons. In 1665 most Dutch dinner guests turned up wearing their own cutlery at their belt or girdle. Sets like the one above of forks and spoons just did not exist. Because you carried it with you, your dining equipment was an expression of your status and each guest’s was different. Some were extremely decorative and were probably used to show off, rather like the way that some people flaunt their mobile phones today. The kind of knives used by Vermeer’s family and guests probably looked more like the Dutch seventeenth century examples below.(via Food History Jottings: Dining with Empresses, Cardinals (and Vermeer))
At last, someone who feels about food in movies the way I feel about agriculture in movies
(via The Linnean Society of London: Podcasts)
On the history of coffee.
Almost two centuries ago, he says, meat was one reason why immigrants found America so amazing. “When the Irish come in the 1840s, they write letters back saying ‘I eat meat every day,’” Horowitz says. “And they get letters back saying, ‘You must be kidding. It can’t be true.’”
Back in Europe, says Horowitz, the growing of livestock was often organized and regulated in a way that funneled meat straight to the wealthy or the landed aristocracy. In the new world, though, meat was much easier to find. Grazing lands were close to cities; sometimes right inside cities. Farmers quickly realized that raising animals was a good business. Cities set up markets for them. “And the result is a flourishing of the livestock industry, very early in American history.”
