Review of Cuisine and Empire in the Times Literary Supplement
I was delighted today to have this review of Cuisine and Empire in the Times Literary Supplement by Peter Thonemann, a classicist at Oxford. Just scroll down to the middle of the right hand column.
- Hunger is best sauce. Or the republican culinary tradition
- Happy Raisin Christmas and a Sultana New Year
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Congratulations with this review.
Food is culture, so it is. Wheat and barley, as is mentioned in the review. In Holland in my youth – born in 1952 – it was wheat and rye. Wheat grows on clay, rye grows on sand. We – farmers on the sand – had wheatbread, but we should take a slice of ryebread after every slice of wheatbread (or on it). My parents used to buy ’12 ponders’ of this bread; my generation bought ‘4 ponders’ or ‘a half 4 ponder’ and now it is a healthy delicatesse, bought per 6 or more slices.
I heard the owner of a watermill in Limburg saying: under the line Maastricht-Vaals it used to be wheat they milled; above rye. Rye bread was for the workers in the coalmines: compact bread, giving much energy. So: just the subject rye and wheat in bread in our little country is worth a whole study.
Other subject: the diversity, the processed food. Partly halleluja, partly not halleluja at all. We used to have no package at all, just paper boxes that we, children, re used – playing a store – while at this time I spent one refuge sack a week. Well, this is another subject, I know.