Still Life with Ham, by Philippe Rousseau, c. 1870. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Collection, Wolfe Fund, 1982.

Food

Volume IV, Number 3 | summer 2011

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Still Life, by Carstian Luyckx, c. 1640. Columbus Museum of Art.

Preamble

The Midas Touch

By Lewis H. Lapham

The times change, and with them what, where, and how people eat.

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Kitchen Scene, by Peter Wtewael, c. 1620. The Metropolitian Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1906.

Death in the Pot

By Deborah Blum

Before the regulation of the food industry, there was very little preventing us from eating poison.

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Map

Food Chains

Tracing the world travels of tomato, pepper, and coffee.

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Miscellany

As to why he didn’t drink water, an inebriated W.C. Fields purportedly responded, “Fish fuck in it.”

1729 | Dublin

To Preserve the Nation

Jonathan Swift’s modest proposal.More

1949 | Los Angeles

M.F.K. Fisher on the Basics

Learning to honor bread and salt.More

c. 1690 | Mexico City

If Aristotle Had Cooked

Contemplating the philosophy of the kitchen.More

Charts & Graphs

Melting Pots

The evolution of “national” dishes.

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Photograph of African American abolitionist and U.S. diplomat Frederick Douglass.

Photograph of American novelist Willa Cather.

American poet Allen Ginsberg.

English author Evelyn Waugh.

Spanish soldier and author Bernal Díaz del Castillo.

Photograph of journalist, author, and professor Michael Pollan.

French author Anthelme Brillat-Savarin.

Irish author Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington.

We should look for someone to eat and drink with before looking for something to eat and drink, for dining alone is leading the life of a lion or wolf.

—Epicurus, c. 300 BC

Australian poet and essayist Les Murray.

Ovid & Les Murray

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