The Renaissance of Food in Global Perspective

While historians have long traced the many global exchanges in ingredients, peoples, and pathogens that took place in the age of encounters, few have looked closely at actual culinary traditions. What traditions of sixteenth- and seventeenth-centry European kitchens were adapted to local conditions, ingredients, and available technologies and why do they survive long after disappearing from European cuisine? There are surprising culinary rudiments dating back to the Renaissance, stretching from the kasutera of Japan to the capirotada of Mexico. This talk will discuss European cookbooks and cooking traditions and the fascinating ways they influenced cooking around the world, long before the era of transnational conglomerate food corporations