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Tastes and Traditions: A Journey through Menu History de Nathalie Cooke

Tastes and Traditions: A Journey through Menu History

Autor Nathalie Cooke
en Limba Engleză Hardback – 2 iun 2025
A delectable and beautifully illustrated exploration of the deep meaning of the menu across time—at and beyond the table.
 
Menus are invaluable snapshots of the food consumed at specific moments in time and place. Tastes and Traditions: A Journey through Menu History provides glimpses into the meals enjoyed by royalty and rogues, those celebrating special occasions, or sampling new culinary sensations throughout history. It describes food prepared for the gods, meals served during sieges, and tablescapes immortalized in art. It explores how menus entertain adults, link food with play for children, reflect changing notions of health, and highlight the enduring human need to make meals meaningful. Lavishly illustrated, this book offers an engaging exploration of why menus matter and the stories they tell, appealing to food lovers and general readers, as well as professionals in the food industry.
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Specificații

ISBN-13: 9781836390671
ISBN-10: 183639067X
Pagini: 192
Ilustrații: 180 color plates, 10 halftones
Dimensiuni: 190 x 250 x 25 mm
Greutate: 0.93 kg
Editura: REAKTION BOOKS
Colecția Reaktion Books

Notă biografică

Nathalie Cooke is professor of English at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Her books include Canadian Literary Fare, winner of the 2024 Gabrielle Roy Prize, and What’s to Eat? Entrées in Canadian Food History.

Recenzii

"Cooke elucidates the value of the traditional restaurant menu. More than a list of dishes, it is a medium that can amuse, flatter, educate and tantalize diners, elevating the restaurant experience. Cooke’s copiously illustrated book is filled with color images of menus both ancient and modern, including a bill of fare made up solely of emojis (from a boundary-pushing 'immersive dining' restaurant in Bangkok). . . . Tastes and Traditions shows us how menus, unlike the transitory attractions of the QR code, became imbued with human meaning."

"Menus are so much more than a tool to order food, Montreal author Cooke posits in her engaging and informative new book on the history of menus: Among other things, they can be a window into the history, cultural identity and economics of the time in which they were written and designed, she tells us. . . . It’s an extensively—and beautifully—illustrated book that explores how menus entertain, reflect changing notions of health 'and highlight the enduring human need to make meals meaningful,' as she observes."

“Tastes and Traditions will change your mind about the importance of menus. . . . [Cooke] looks at menus back several hundred years, the traditions, the social norms. It's amazing what you can find."

“The traditional restaurant menu, as we learn in this McGill professor’s new book, can be a medium for expression, an artifact of life and trace moments in social change. Illustrated with examples, she covers three centuries of the evolution of dining à la carte.”

“Cooke explores how cartes, beyond affording a collective ‘glimpse behind the proverbial green baize door’, can memorialise historic events, supply cultural encounters (of a generally bastardised kind), promote health, bewitch the young and, generally, dish up feasts for the eyes. Ranging from scrolled banquets served to Louis XV to an emoji-filled offering in Bangkok, these introduce us to Coca-Cola as a cure-all and free cigars dangled as bait, as well as fine artists such as Toulouse-Lautrec dipping their brushes into bills of fare. Nor let us ignore the cartoonish stereotypes, from African Americans setting about watermelons (a rib shack) to a geisha fluttering her eyelashes behind a fan (sushi). Truly, a bellyful of cultural history.”

"However hygienic and handy QR codes may be, th ey will never inspire a book as thoughtful and rich as Tastes and Traditions, an investigation of the aesthetic and cultural semiotics of the printed menu. . . . Readers may find themselves more inclined to cherish the bill of fare next time they eat out—or at least to give it more than a cursory glance."

"Whether printed out, scrawled on a chalkboard or scanned via QR code, menus are more than just a tool to order food, Cooke argues; they can in fact be a window into the history, economics and even cultural identity of the time in which they were made. . . . Whether it's as nebulous as Canada's national identity, or relatively simple as a bar's personal branding, menus are an integral part of people's stories, as much as the food they describe. As Cooke writes in Tastes and Traditions, 'Menus offer us concrete traces, testimony of the stories we told—through our food choices—about who we were and who we aspired to be.'"

"Food for thought. What are menus? What do they contain? And, ultimately, why do they matter? . . . A handsomely illustrated and diverting celebration of a rich if overlooked genre."

"Cooke considers aesthetic, textural, and culinary elements of menus to make a compelling case for their importance not only as a record of cuisine but as a cultural artifact and communication tool. . . . This book will appeal broadly to nonfiction readers who are interested in culinary and cultural history as well as design. An entertaining and beautiful look at the history and significance of menus."

"Tastes and Traditions explores menus as strategic documents—much more than simple bills of fare. Menus, it says, do not always present their wares in a straightforward way; some go off the beaten path, becoming almost as important as the food itself. . . . All are a delight to read through. . . . Menus from across history are shared as an opportunity to 'to take a leap of imagination,' vicariously peering over the shoulders of the guests who read them and experienced the inventive meals they represent."

"This illustrated history of the menu explores how they shed light on culinary trends and reflect evolving notions of what’s healthy."

"A beautifully produced and intellectually rigorous work, Cooke’s Tastes and Traditions proves that menus are not just ephemera. Rather, they are narratives of taste, time, and transformation."

"Cooke’s illuminating book reveals . . . our relationship with menus via their whimsical, sophisticated, and sometimes downright disturbing designs. . . . With a cover featuring a Henri Gervex Parisian Belle Époque café scene, Cooke’s book may seem imposing. But who hasn’t experienced that moment when thumbing through a menu, whether at a comfort food diner or fine dining establishment, of anticipation building with each tempting dish? (Though this simple pleasure might vanish faster than yesterday’s special—thanks, QR codes.) This universal experience gives Cooke’s book broad appeal."

"Every page in this book is a work of art, stimulating the imagination as well as the appetite."

"This is a book for all of us who’ve been tempted to swipe a memorable menu. Brilliantly illustrated and argued, this is a tantalizing history of the restaurant menu as a cultural artifact. From the 'menu French' of fine dining restaurants to the racist imagery of notable American chains, Tastes and Traditions explains how menus give meaning to our meals."

"This dazzling volume guides us through several centuries of menus that reflect changing tastes and societal norms. Cooke’s incisive text and visual juxtapositions illuminate the evolution of menus over time. From luxury trains to refugee ships, from high-end restaurants to prison bills of fare, the menus in Tastes and Traditions go far beyond gastronomy to explore important issues of aesthetics, social history, marketing and desire."