We didn't always eat the way we do today, or think and feel about eating as we now do. But we can trace the roots of our own eating culture back to the culinary world of early modern Europe, which invented cutlery, haute cuisine, the weight-loss diet, and much else besides. "Aguecheek's Beef, Belch's Hiccup" tells the story of how early modern Europeans put food into words and words into food, and created an experience all their own. Named after characters in Shakespeare's "Twelfth Night", this lively study draws on sources ranging from cookbooks to comic novels, and examines both the highest ideals of culinary culture and its most grotesque, ridiculous, and pathetic expressions. Robert Appelbaum paints a vivid picture of a world in which food was many things - from a symbol of prestige and sociability to a cause for religious and economic struggle - but always represented the primacy of materiality in life. Peppered with illustrations and a handful of recipes, "Aguecheek's Beef, Belch's Hiccup" will appeal to anyone interested in early modern literature or the history of food.

About the Author
Robert Appelbaum is professor of English literature at Uppsala University, Sweden.

Reviews
"Robert Appelbaum explores, chapter by chapter, the different ways in which early modern authors write about food....[He] persuades us to ask searching questions about brief culinary asides in 16th-century literature and to recognise the false clues by which some commentators have been misled....Readers learn almost as much about early modern food as about the literature that digests it." (Times Higher Education Supplement)"



Book Information
ISBN 9780226021270
Author Robert Appelbaum
Format Paperback
Page Count 376
Imprint University of Chicago Press
Publisher The University of Chicago Press
Weight(grams) 624g
Dimensions(mm) 23mm * 17mm * 2mm