For a long time, I have been interested in both cooking and history, so I suppose that it is only natural that I would develop an interest in food history. My interest further increased when I discovered Guns, Germs, and Steel, a brilliant anthropological study by Professor Jared Diamond. This may seem like a jump between two topics, but there is a connection. The conclusion of the study is that certain geographic factors and local resources widely affect when (or even if) a society makes the transition from foraging for food to active food production and how rapidly and fully this change takes place. Essentially, it is all about what foods are available and how they are obtained. Hence, the study of food history and anthropology are intertwined. What is eaten, both by the elites and the common people, says a lot about the society. Ideals and norms about food share an insight into the ideals and norms of the world they were produced in. In the process, we can learn from history and often learn a bit about ourselves.

With that in mind, and inspired by the BBC series The Supersizers (available on Youtube, I highly recommend it), I will hold a feast of the time period being studied in each post. However, due to budget, time, and space restrictions, I will simplify and “tone down” the feasts to something that I can manage. Since I don’t have unlimited access to the state treasury, a kitchen large enough to roast a dozen oxen alongside all manner of fowl and fish, dozens of servants to staff the said kitchen, a feasting hall large enough to feed a few hundred people, or a convenient place to buy such historic delicacies as peacocks, swans, or flamingoes, I am unable to create a perfect representation of such feasts. However, with a bit of research into foods and cooking methods and some improvisation to fill in the gaps, I believe that I can, with a few substitutions for prohibitively expensive or hard-to-find foods, create a reasonable idea of the food and its culture using my average middle class kitchen to prepare a feast for my parents and a few friends and neighbors. After all, food prices relative to income are much lower than in the past, and many onetime luxuries are now commonplace. Thus, I can create what would have been considered a fairly good meal by a moderately wealthy family of the age with summer job income while still saving most of it for college expenses. Considering that, despite some of the issues of modern life, we live much better than our ancestors did even a hundred years ago. Now that is something to celebrate. So please, join us while we celebrate how the past made us who we are today. We have food.