Culinary history is much more than a collection of fascinating stories and fun facts about your favorite foods. It is a unique window into human history, providing insight into how our society has evolved over time. Culinary history is the art of preparing, cooking, and presenting food, usually in the form of meals. Those who work in this field, especially in restaurants, are often referred to as chefs or cooks, but can also be referred to as culinary artists.
Table manners are also considered a form of culinary art. Today, culinary arts students study a wide range of topics, including butchery, chemistry and thermodynamics, visual presentation, food safety, human nutrition and physiology, international history, food manufacturing and more. Culinary arts training is available today and many people are excited to pursue this course. It is important to note that culinary history is not simply an account of what a particular town ate at a given time.
Nor is it about telling entertaining stories about food or surveying cookbooks. Rather, it is an informed analysis of how food expresses the character of a time, a place, a society and a culture. In other words, culinary history goes beyond anecdotal gastronomic folklore and descriptions of cuisine at a given time to incorporate historical dimensions. By studying culinary history, you can learn about the importance of other civilizations and how their food differs from that of other cultures.
This will help you gain a greater understanding of other cultures and develop empathy for people in general. Food recipes are passed down from generation to generation and ingredients and spices are modified over time to create original dishes. The discipline adds to historical studies a biological dimension that investigates the important coevolution of culinary and cultural components, cuisines and human populations. Studies establish connections between medical, biological and social sciences and the humanities and are largely based on anthropology, economics, psychology, folklore, literature and fine arts, as well as on history.
These studies examine dietary beliefs and practices related to age or gender, the impact of these practices on infant mortality (as well as pregnancy outcomes), and the circumstances in which those beliefs and practices change. Culinary history studies the origins and development of food, cooking equipment and techniques, the presentation and consumption of foods, and the meaning of these activities for the societies that produce them. Anthropological nutritional studies also analyze the so-called diseases of civilization (diabetes, coronary heart disease, hypertension and various types of cancer) that seem to have accompanied the “westernization” of the diet (including the increase in fat consumption) in most places where it has occurred (revised at Messer 198). The recent history of food aid can be found in the Brown University Global Programme Against Hunger biannual Hunger Report (Messer 1996b), the Annual Disaster Report of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the Institute's research publications from Development Studies, Sussex (Maxwell) and Buchanan-Smith (199).Finally, many people with perspectives on political-economic and ethnic studies within anthropology, political science, economics, sociology and history are increasingly interested in the history of food and cuisine because of the ways in which they shape and are shaped by society forces. Recent studies explore how major transformations in agricultural technologies and available plant varieties such as grains from the “Green Revolution” or the expansion of global agricultural trade and aid can influence nutrition, health and culture in developing areas. Evolutionary biocultural studies of the consumption of milk (McCracken 197) or sugar (Messer 198) are two examples of anthropological studies on ways of eating that also fit into the category of culinary history (Ritenbaugh 197).
Studies go back in time to elucidate cooking techniques that begin with elemental hunting, excavation processing and use of fire (Gordon 1987; Stahl 198) or extend to present day food for future generations (Messer 1996b).Boston University's Metropolitan College programs offer courses taught at Radcliffe College seminars as well as courses in NYU's Food Studies Program which combine culinary history with cultural studies. Theory is an important dimension for these studies but historical discussion must be moderated by an understanding of craftsmanship in order to interpret sources accurately. All these analyses demonstrate that eating cooking thinking are essentially philosophical operations although most culinary studies tend to focus on sensory technical or instrumental dimensions of nutrition (Curtin & Heldke 199). The field includes global regional & period-specific studies (Newman 1990) which trace ecological & political causes (trade & aid) for food shortages & analyze motivations & relative effectiveness for emergency & other assistance.
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