Acquired Tastes

How modern food helped make modern society between 1870 and 1930: stories of power and food, from bananas and beer to bread and fake meat. The modern way of eating—our taste for food that is processed, packaged, and advertised—has its roots as far back as the 1870s. Many food writers trace our eating habits to World War II, but this book shows that our current food system began to coalesce much earlier. Modern food came from and helped to create a society based on racial hierarchies, colonization, and global integration. Acquired Tastes explores these themes through a series of moments in food history—stories of bread, beer, sugar, canned food, cereal, bananas, and more—that shaped how we think about food today. Contributors consider the displacement of native peoples for agricultural development; the invention of Pilsner, the first international beer style; the “long con” of gilded sugar and corn syrup; Josephine Baker’s banana skirt and the rise of celebrity tastemakers; and faith in institutions and experts who produced, among other things, food rankings and fake meat.

Magazine articles and self-improvement books tell us that our food choices serve as bold statements about who we are as individuals. Acquired Tastes reveals that they say more about where we come from and who we would like to be. Interviews with Canadian families in both rural and urban settings reveal that age, gender, social class, ethnicity, health concerns, food availability, and political and moral concerns shape the meanings that families attach to food. They also influence how parents and teens respond to discourses on health, beauty, and the environment, a finding with profound implications for public health campaigns.

In Acquired Tastes, Peter Mayle, the erudite sojourner and New York Times bestselling author of A Year in Provence, sets off once more, traveling the world in search of the very best life has to offer. Whether telling us where to buy the world’s best caviar or how to order a pair of thirteen-hundred-dollar custom-made shoes, advising us on the high cost of keeping a mistress in style or the pros and cons of households servants, he covers everything the well-heeled—and those vicariously so inclined—need to know to enjoy the good life. From gastronomy to matrimony, from the sartorial to the baronial, Acquired Tastes is Peter Mayle’s most delicious book yet—an irreverently spiced smorgasbord of rich dishes you’re sure to enjoy. Praise for Acquired Tastes “Mr. Mayle is a writer who never fails to entertain. If he were told to go forth and write about doorknobs, he would return with a witty, perceptive essay.”—The New York Times Book Review “One of the finest modern writers on matters that deal with taste.”—Craig Claiborne “Much, much fun—and best read with a magnum of Dom Pérignon and a four-pound tin of Beluga caviar.”—Kirkus Reviews “Witty and stylish . . . These hilarious essays are vintage Mayle.”—James Villas, author of The French Country Kitchen “This delightful celebration of the little (and not-so-little) extravagances that make life worth living scintillates with wit, brio and trenchant observations”—Publishers Weekly “Intriguing.”—Chicago Sun-Times

Dubbed the undisputed “Indiana Jones of food science,†Professor Massimo Marcone ventures into the bizarre world of food delicacies with this follow-up to his much lauded previous book, In Bad Taste. Part travelogue, part scientific journal, Pass the Food goes where no other book has gone before. Dr. Marcone describes his journeys into remote regions around the world, often risking life and limb in his quest to explore and explain why people eat what they eat. Whether it's shark-fin soup, maggot-infested cheese, ant eggs, scorpions, fried grasshoppers, or seal-flipper pie, Marcone approaches his subject with the zeal of a scientist, but also with flabbergasted amazement at what human beings are willing to eat to sustain themselves. His investigations lead to fundamental questions: Why do people eat this food, and what makes it a delicacy? Is it a delicacy simply because it is rare or odd? Why is it so expensive? Is it truly quantifiably different or better than their more conventional varieties?

Revenge is said to be a dish best eaten cold, but when plump, spinsterish academic, Alicia Binns, is betrayed by her best friend, TV producer Vanessa, Alicia discovers she has a taste for revenge not only eaten cold, but smothered in chocolate and whipped cream.The worlds of tabloid TV and academia collide in a tale of lust, sexual fantasy and revenge.Reviews:'Tom Sharpe in Tights' - Marie Claire'Summer sizzler' - Woman's Own'A light-hearted comedy with bonk busting tendencies' - Time Out'Acquired Tastes' was originally published in 1996 by Mandarin Paperbacks, an imprint of Reed International Books. This is a revised edition.

A stunning commemoration of 200 years of collecting, study, and debate at this venerable Boston institution

Peterson explores a change in French cooking in the mid-seventeenth century - from the heavily sugared, saffroned, and spiced cuisine of the medieval period to a new style based on salt and acid tastes. In the process, she reveals more fully than any previous writer the links between medieval cooking, alchemy, and astrology. Peterson's vivid account traces this newly acquired taste in food to its roots in the wider transformation of seventeenth-century culture which included the Scientific Revolution. She makes the startling - and persuasive - argument that the shift in cooking styles was actually part of a conscious effort by humanist scholars to revive Greek and Roman learning and to chase the occult from European life.

May the best chef win... After four years at the country’s top culinary school and several years as head chef in her mother’s restaurant, Rowan Townsend has built a notable reputation. Her farm-to-table collard greens have long been bringing everyone to the yard, but limits on the restaurant’s size have led to long waits. Looking to expand the restaurant, she enters a televised chef competition. The problem? Her infuriatingly-talented nemesis from culinary school also enters. To the culinary world, Knox Everheart is restaurant royalty. As much as Rowan wants to deny it, he’s a gifted chef. Rowan knows her arrogant arch-nemesis is confident he’ll win—he’s certainly given her a run for her money more times than she’d like to admit. But this time, she’s ready to show him who's boss. Their rivalry soon sparks fireworks in the kitchen and, as the competition heats up, so does Rowan’s attraction to Knox. And somewhere between pasta and gumbo, they both need to decide what’s worth fighting for.