With the proliferation of food history courses and avid interest among scholars and the general public, the need for a solid comprehensive collection of key primary texts about food of the past is urgent.

This collection spans the globe from classical antiquity to the present, offering substantive selections from cookbooks, fiction, gastronomic and dietary treatises and a wide range of food writing. Offering a solid introduction to each period with extensive commentary and suggestions for interpretive strategies, this reader provides extracts undigested, for the student who needs immediate and direct contact with the ideas of the past.

Readings illustrate the various ways religion, politics, social structure, health and agricultural policy shaped what people ate in the past and offer instructive ways to think about our own food systems and how they have been shaped by historical forces.