Wow! eBook
Cheese: A Global History
Author(s): Andrew Dalby (Author)
- Publisher: Reaktion Books
- Publication Date: 25 Sept. 2009
- Language: English
- Print length: 128 pages
- ISBN-10: 1861895232
- ISBN-13: 9781861895233
Book Description
If you ever wondered how cheese was invented - and where, and when, and even why - then Cheese is the book for you. If you ever guessed that Roquefort, Cheshire and Gorgonzola might not be quite as ancient as their publicists claim, this book will confirm your guess. Until now there has been no global history of cheese: here it is at last, succinct, authoritative with the fallacies removed. Cheese is one of the most ancient of civilized foods and one of the most nourishing: it could even be the product with which trade began. In bite-sized chapters well-known food historian Andrew Dalby tells the true and savoury story of cheese, from its prehistoric invention to the moment of its modern rebirth. Here you will find the most ancient cheese appellations; the first written description of the cheese-making process; the luxury cheeses of classical Rome; the medieval rule-of-thumb for identifying good cheese; and how Samuel Pepys saved his parmesan from the Fire of London; you will also discover which cheese was prescribed to patients at New York's once-celebrated Pilsener Sanatorium. Packed with entertaining cheese facts, anecdotes and images, Cheese also features a selection of authentic recipes, from a two-thousand-year-old junket to an eighteenth-century Welsh rarebit.
Editorial Reviews
Review
'Andrew Dalby travels easily from the sheep's- and goat's-milk cheeses of The Odyssey to the white Wensleydale preferred by Wallace and Gromit and that's just along the literary and fictional trails. Dalby also identifies the rightful place of cheese in different cultures . . . the many images used to illustrate Cheese are wonderfully evocative . . . mere shavings from a monk's head, as Dalby describes his chronicle, yet satisfying when enjoyed at room temperature.' --Washington Post
'The history of each foodstuff is set out compactly and with erudition . . . Andrew Dalby takes a stab at sheep in Iranian mountains as being the first providers of smelly, spreadable cheese some 9,000 years ago. But in each case, it's when the history moves closer to current day that revelation and delight meet.' --Diplomat magazine
These are food memoirs, salacious and exotic, colorful, powdered, sweet, greasy and globe-trotting . . . sharp and speedy little reads, spotted with off-kilter llustrations' --Chicago Tribune
About the Author
Andrew Dalby is a linguist, translator and historian, based in France. He is the author of many books including Bacchus: A Biography (2005), Flavours of Byzantium (2003), Food in the Ancient World from A to Z (2003) and Dangerous Tastes: The Story of Spices (2000), which was named Food Book of the Year by the Guild of Food Writers. He has also written Empire of Pleasures (2000) and Siren Feasts: A History of Food and Gastronomy in Greece (1996) which won the Runciman Award.
