Reading Food: A Culinary History from Shakespeare to Martha Stewart

Tony Soprano's fear of meat has a long history. The simple act of tasting chocolate in the eighteenth century has class and racial overtones. Wall's book will look at a dozen or so foods, implements, and practices to assemble a broad picture of how food and dining have come to mean what they mean today. Part literary history, part anthropology, part popular culture study,Reading Foodis an informative and readable addition to the literature on what we eat.

Introduction: Reading FoodChapter One: Jell-O: Mortality and Malleability in the KitchenChapter Two: The Spice of Life: Colonizing Globe and BodyChapter Three: Who's Got Milk?: Breastfeeding and the DairyChapter Four: The Fork: Emily Post Comes to DinnerChapter Five: The Pig: Dirt and Religion in the HouseholdChapter Six: Carving: Blood in the KitchenChapter Seven: Showing Off: Feasting and HospitalityChapter Eight: Just a Spoonful of SugarChapter Nine: Syrup: The Bliss of Keeping and ForgettingChapter Ten: Coffee BreaksChapter Eleven: Is Meat What's for Dinner?Chapter Twelve: 'You say Tomato': Ethnicity, Class and FoodAfterward: Celebrity Recipes, the Gourmet, and Appetite