Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History by Rachel Laudan (review)

Not long ago, people in different disciplines like sociology and history often lamented the scanty attention scholars paid to food and felt obligated to explain the intellectual validity of food studies. That is no longer the case. The outpouring of publications on food in recent years has turned food into a hot topic among both scholars and those who write for general audiences. The new publications are noticeable not because of their increasing numbers but also because many are characterized by extraordinary scholarship and offer valuable insights. Rachel Laudan’s Cuisine and Empire is one of them. Demonstrating the author’s extraordinary knowledge of existing historiography, the book represents a remarkable synthesis of the growingly extensive literature in food research and writing. In covering changing patterns of food consumption in the past five thousand years, the author sets her book apart from other studies of global food history by focusing on cuisines, which she defines as “styles of cooking” (pp. 1, 4), and their expansions across national and cultural boundaries. She examines the “successive waves” (p. 4) of the world’s major groups of culinary traditions. Such an examination gives the book a very easy-to-follow structure, and it also helps readers develop a comprehensive chronological view of the world in gastronomical terms.

The first two chapters cover the ancient world and provide perceptive insights into the paramount importance of food in the evolution of human society. In illuminating the significance of grains, for example, she notes that “although not all grain cuisines supported cities in 1000 b.c.e., it was only grain cuisines that did so” (p. 35). In her discussions of ancient cuisines, the author made a fruitful effort to compare them and points out the connections among them, an effort that remains evident in the rest of the book. For instance, she reminds us of the debates that lavish Persian feasts stirred up among Greeks and notes the influence of Hellenistic cuisine on Roman high cuisine.

Chapters 3–5 look at the formation and development of those cuisines that the author characterizes as “Buddhist,” “Islamic,” and “Christian.” Together, these three chapters not only magnify the intimate connection between food and religion but also how the emergence of world religions complicated the expansion of cuisines. The author shows, for example, how Buddhism transformed cuisines in Asia, turning rice into a prominent staple. She also demonstrates how the spread of Islam changed food traditions in central and western Asia. Equally important, she reminds us that activities in religious expansion or cultural contact did not always result in culinary exchange. The Jesuits, for instance, did not become agents of culinary exchange in spite of their extended significant presence in China. She also points out, quite boldly and insightfully, that in purely culinary terms, “there was no Columbian Exchange” (p. 202) because the culinary transfer between Europe and the New World remained a one-way street for a long time.

The last three chapters are focused on the appearance and evolution of what the author calls “modern cuisines” from the mid seventeenth century throughout the twentieth. In tracing the origins of the modern cuisines in chapter six, the author identifies the “middling cuisines” (p. 208), which bridged high and low cuisines, as a critical moment. She also identified diverse factors that contributed to this development, including new religious and political ideas and new developments in sciences. Chapter 7 discusses modern cuisines in many different parts of the world from the early nineteenth century to the early twentieth. Here, the author evidently regards modern cuisines as those of the urban middle and working classes, which stood in contrast with the humble rural cuisines.

Written in lucid and accessible prose, Cuisine and Empire is enjoyable to read. As another reason that makes the book enjoyable, the author includes maps and tables that visually illustrate her arguments about culinary expansions and beliefs. The book also reminds readers that many of the significant food issues...