| Prosper
Montagné, Larousse Gastronomique, new ed. (1988; originally
published in French, rev. and corrected ed., 1967), is the most
authoritative contemporary encyclopaedia of food, wine, and cookery,
from prehistoric stages to the modern day. It may be supplemented by
Waverley Root, Food: An Authoritative and Visual History and
Dictionary of the Foods of the World (1980); Jean-François Revel, Culture
and Cuisine: A Journey Through the History of Food (1982; originally
published in French, 1979); Margaret Visser, The Rituals of Dinner:
The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities, and Meaning of Table Manners
(1991); and Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat, A History of Food (1992;
orginally published in French, 1987), a history of foodstuffs, cuisine,
and the social history of eating.Early works, many of them now classics,
include Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste; or,
Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy, trans. by M.F.K. Fisher
(1949, reissued as M.F.K. Fisher's Translation of the Physiology of
Taste, 1986; originally published in French, 2 vol., 1826), a
classic that set the stage for thinking about dining as an experience
and a form of art and offered philosophy and aphorisms that became the
foundation of modern gastronomy, in a translation by a distinguished
American essayist on gastronomy; André L. Simon, A Concise
Encyclopaedia of Gastronomy, 9 vol. (1939–46, reissued in 1 vol.,
1981), a complete history; Urbain Dubois and Émile Bernard, La
Cuisine classique, 2 vol. (1856), the finest expression of the
Golden Age of the French grande cuisine; Alexis Soyer, The
Pantropheon (1853, reprinted 1977), a world history of food
preparation with many arbitrary but important observations on
gastronomy; Abraham Hayward, The Art of Dining, ed. by Charles
Sayle (1899), on 18th- and 19th-century gastronomy, chefs, and related
subjects; George H. Ellwanger, The Pleasures of the Table (1902,
reissued 1969), a popular book with considerable original material on
eating and drinking habits; and P. Morton Shand, A Book of Food
(1927), a highly personal approach to gastronomy, manners, and foods
throughout the world. Chinese cuisine is treated in Pearl Kong Chen,
Tien Chi Chen, and Rose Y.L. Tseng, Everything You Want to Know About
Chinese Cooking (1983); and K.C. Chang (ed.), Food in Chinese
Culture: Anthropological and Historical Perspectives (1977).
George
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