Laudan's Cuisine And Empire: Chapter Analysis

In Laudan’s Book, Cuisine & Empire, she puts an interesting spin on world history. Instead of talking about the conquests of empires or the longevity of empires; she looks about how different cuisines shaped empires. From traditional foods for empires to the introduction of different spices, she goes into detail on how trade routes like the Silk Road changed traditional dishes. In this paper I’m going go through the importance of only one chapter, though every chapter in this book explains how food changed the world. I’ll be talking about chapter 5: “Christianity Transforms the Cuisines of Europe and the Americas, 100-1650 C.E.” The chapter starts with Laudan talking about the Last Supper, in which Jesus said, “take, eat: this is my body.” Jesus was talking about bread being his body, which makes bread to be an important food item in Christianity. Along with wine being the blood of Christ, wine became important to Christians. Christian cuisine grew from the Jewish cuisine but had to build itself distinct from traditional Jewish dishes and Roman cuisine as well. Christians had to struggle for their own identity from Jews and other religions. I guess you could say the made this distinction by eating pork, which was taboo in the Jewish religion as …show more content…
Lauden makes a great connection in the importance of Christian cuisines and how they shaped the world. This chapter is an important chapter because it combines all of the cuisines of the previous chapters and brings it ahead with the creation of the Christian religion. With Europe on the rise for exploration and the need to feed the booming population and the need for spices from the Far East, the New World was discovered. It is amazing looking at this historical view of how food shaped the world, it puts in perspective on how lands were discovered and why they were explored. Lauden does an amazing job with the perspective of food and how is shaped the