Dangerous Tastes

"Dangerous Tastes offers a fresh perspective on these exotic substances and the roles they have played over the centuries. The author shows how each region became part of a worldwide network of trade - with local consequences ranging from disaster to triumph."--BOOK JACKET.

"Dangerous Tastes offers a fresh perspective on these exotic substances and the roles they have played over the centuries. The author shows how each region became part of a worldwide network of trade - with local consequences ranging from disaster to triumph."--BOOK JACKET.

For centuries, the food and culinary delights of the Byzantine empire - centred on Constantinople - have captivated the west, although it appeared that very little information had been passed down to us. Andrew Dalby's "Tastes of Byzantium" now reveals in astonishing detail, for the first time, what was eaten in the court of the Eastern Roman Empire - and how it was cooked. Fusing the spices of the Romans with the seafood and simple local food of the Aegean and Greek world, the cuisine of the Byzantines was unique and a precursor to much of the food of modern Turkey and Greece. Bringing this vanished cuisine to life in vivid and sensual detail, Dalby describes the sights and smells of Constantinople and its marketplaces, relates travellers' tales and paints a comprehensive picture of the recipes and customs of the empire and their relationship to health and the seasons, love and medicine. For food-lovers and historians alike, "Tastes of Byzantium" is both essential and riveting - an extraordinary illumination of everyday life in the Byzantine world.

 During the 17th century, England saw foreign foods made increasingly available to consumers and featured in recipe books, medical manuals, treatises, travel narratives, and even in plays. Yet the public’s fascination with these foods went beyond just eating them. Through exotic presentations in popular culture, they were able to mentally partake of products for which they may not have had access. This book examines the “body and mind” consumerism of the early British Empire.

Will she surrender to the stranger at Orchid Cay? For Lily Fielding, the small, safe Caribbean island is all she's ever known. But the appearance of an intriguing newcomer is about to change everything for this unworldly vicar's daughter, for the sensual awakening he promises is both intoxicating and illicit… Raphael Oliveira should resist the temptation that beautiful Lily presents; after all, he knows that wherever he goes, danger follows… Although, once she is under his spell, Rafe's intense passion and dark past threaten to destroy them both!

Olives, bread, meat and wine: it is deceptively easy to evoke ancient Greece and Rome through a few items of food and drink. But how were their tastes different from ours? How did they understand the sense of taste itself, in relation to their own bodies and to other modes of sensory experience? This volume, the first of its kind to explore the ancient sense of taste, draws on the literature, philosophy, history and archaeology of Greco-Roman antiquity to provide answers to these central questions. By surveying and probing the literary and material remains from the Archaic period to late antiquity, contributors investigate the cultural and intellectual development towards attitudes and theories about taste. These specially commissioned chapters also open a window onto ancient thinking about perception and the body. Importantly, these authors go beyond exploring the functional significance of taste to uncover its value and meaning in the actions, thoughts and words of the Greeks and Romans. Taste and the Ancient Senses presents a full range of interpretative approaches to the gustatory sense, and provides an indispensable resource for students and scholars of classical antiquity and sensory studies.

While much has been written about the concept of terroir as it relates to wine, this book expands the concept into cuisine and culture more broadly. Bringing together stories of people farming, cooking and eating, the author focuses on a series of examples ranging from shagbark hicory nuts in Wisconsin to wines from northern California