"Food in History," by Reay Tannahill, Revised Edition, Crown Publishers, NY, 1988. This 409-page hardback provides an overview of the history of food stuffs. It begins with the domestication of animals (the dog was first in about 11,000 BC) and goes all the way to modern day subjects such as the green revolution.
Concise sections cover almost every food topic. Sugar, the potato, honey, the tomato, soybeans, rice, corn, spices, tea, the horse, salt, and even pasta are included. Pasta may go back to the Etruscans as claimed, but clearly tomato sauce is newer. The tomato originated in North America and did not arrive in Europe until the Sixteenth Century.
The list of foods originating in the Americas is impressive: the potato, the tomato, corn, avocados, pineapples, haricot, kidney and butterbeans, lima beans, scarlet runners, French beans, chocolate, peanuts, vanilla, red peppers, green peppers, tapioca, and the turkey plus tobacco, rubber, chewing gum and quinine.
Many of the topics could make an entire book. Comprehensive coverage would make an multi-volume encyclopedia. Here, we get a two or three page overview with references. The story of the potato is told in two pages; the Irish potato famine gets two more.
The book covers the globe including China, India, Egypt and South America. The author is from University of Glasgow. British topics seem well covered, but the discussion extends to America too. The story of canning is described in considerable detail, and so is frozen foods, but Clarence Birdseye (modern frozen foods) and JR Simplot (instant mashed potatoes, dehydrated onions, and frozen french fries) are omitted.
This book is a nicely done overview of the subject. It is a handy quick reference to the subject and an excellent starting point for further research. References, bibliography, index.
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