In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Spain  Food  James Amelang Felipe Fernández-­ Armesto’s essay hits the nail right on the head. Three times in particular his aim is especially sharp. First, when he visualizes the two-­ way trade in foodstuffs between early modern Europe and the Americas as a world-­ historical shift in biological transfers in which Spain, as the greatest transoceanic power, played a leading role. Second, when he then cautiously backs away to insist that the greatest effects of this exchange were long-­ term, as opposed to immediate, and that once again this is nowhere better seen than in Spain itself. And finally, when he notes that as far as most historical studies are concerned, the cornucopia faces in only one direction. It is the eastward drift of a wide range of products from the New World to the Old that has attracted the lion’s shareofattention. Fernández-­Armesto’s brief but pungent summary of how a different manifest of foodstuffs moved and was met in its westward passage provides a welcome correction to a historiography that, while relatively young, nevertheless has more than its share of complaisant assumptions. Granted, there is some room for demurral. One problem arises from the (largely unavoidable) tendency to discuss food traditions in national terms. If one shifts scales and focuses instead on regional levels, a different picture emerges. Thus while Fernández-­ Armesto is right when he asserts that New World foods did not broadly affect diet throughout Spain until the eighteenth or even nineteenth century, some notable exceptions can be detected at a lower, regional level. Thus, among the foods he specifically mentions as being adopted late are potatoes and maize. This certainly was true of Spain as a whole, which means that as emblematic a dish as the potato omelette, known now as tortilla española, has rather shallow historical roots. Yet at least one area stood out from the general trend. In the northern regions of Galicia, Asturias, and parts of the Basque country, both crops not only were cultivated earlier than in the rest of the country. Their precocious adoption also had telling consequences. Especially important were their direct contribution to markedly higher rates of population growth beginning in the later seventeenth century— that is, exactly the same “northern European” impact that Fernández-­ Armesto alludes to elsewhere in his text. Still, focusing exclusively or even predominantly on these and other implants deriving from the transatlantic connection would wreak as much havoc with the food historyof Spain as with that of the Americas.The introduction and (as Fernández-­ Armesto rightly insists) the limited, even hesitant local absorption of most New World foodstuffs are only part of the story. Early modern Iberian diet is better grasped from a different perspective, as forming an integral part of a European-­ wide and especially Mediterranean system of exchanges. And it is in this direction that one should look when searching in particular for the sources of innovation in what bygone Spaniards ate, and how they ate it. These changes can be approached on two levels. The best-­ documented (and visually depicted) food regime was that of the privileged classes (Fig. 51). Cookbooks and other sources for elite and especially court cooking shed much light on international influences on Spanish cuisine . The most visible transformation in elite consumption patterns saw a shift in the geographic origins of outside stimuli from a late medieval pan-­Mediterranean focus toward northwestern Europe; that is, from northern Italy to France, especially Paris. On this level, Spain’s food history differed little from that of the rest of western Europe. Throughout the continent early modern elites consolidated a fairly homogenous pattern of food preparation and consumption . However, this cosmopolitan bent was flexible enough to permit certain local touches. And it is precisely herewhereone finds the most prominent Iberian contribution to the diet of the privileged throughout Europe. Spain served as the gateway through which the continent as a whole first learned to consume chocolate, in the form of a hot and fairly expensive beverage. It was in fact the most visible symbol of Spanish cuisine outside the peninsula. At once refined, exotic, and stimulating, chocolate maintained its reputation for “Spanishness” well into the nineteenth century, when it began its modern transformation into industrially produced candy bars. Popular foodways—the other and much less familiar berth in the history of consumption—were immune to the fashions of the table d’hôte. Food habits at this level were marked by...

Share