A Revolution in Taste

Modern French habits of cooking, eating, and drinking were born in the Ancien Regime, radically breaking with culinary traditions that originated in antiquity and creating a new aesthetic. This new culinary culture saw food and wine as important links between human beings and nature. Authentic foodstuffs and simple preparations became the hallmarks of the modern style. Pinkard traces the roots and development of this culinary revolution to many different historical trends, including changes in material culture, social transformations, medical theory and practice, and the Enlightenment. Pinkard illuminates the complex cultural meaning of food in her history of the new French cooking from its origins in the 1650s through the emergence of cuisine bourgeoise and the original nouvelle cuisine in the decades before 1789. This book also discusses the evolution of culinary techniques and includes historical recipes adapted for today's kitchens.
Pinkard traces the development of modern French habits of cooking, eating, and drinking from their roots in the Ancien Regime.
Susan Pinkard holds a Master's degree and a Ph.D. in Modern European History from the University of Chicago. Since 2005, she has been a full-time visiting member of the Department of History at Georgetown University. She spent most of her earlier career as a university administrator, serving as Associate Dean and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, and as Senior Lecturer in History and Assistant Dean in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Northwestern University.
"...a wealth of lore and trivia..." --Publishers Weekely (starred review)
"...lucidly argued and carefully researched..." --The New York Times Book Review
"...this book is a valuable contribution to European food history." -Stephen Mennell, Amercian Historical Review
"Factual, well-researched, and informative, this book is a fascinating survey of French cuisine during the Enlightenment. Brilliantly narrated and thoroughly documented, it is a must for the culinary historian as well as the cook." -Jacques Pépin, chef, cookbook author, and host of PBS-TV cooking series
"Pinkard performs careful analytical work with culinary texts familiar to many food historians, offering critical readings and counter-evidence (particularly about the nature of kitchen work) to demonstrate how social practices and cultural beliefs influenced changes in taste."
Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Sydney Watts, University of Richmond
"Susan Pinkard has crafted an engaging narrative of change and revolution in France, not only in food, but also in social, cultural, philosophical, and scientific matters, and her description of early modern French cuisine reminds us that our modern ideas about food are not so new after all." -Sarah Kernan, eHistory
"For historians and food lovers interested in discovering the origins of modern French cuisine, this volume is a delight. Pinkard writes evocatively about developments in early modern Parisian cooking in a way that satisfies all the senses." -Sara Beam, Canadian Journal of History
"The 'radically different turn' (pg. 3) that she sees culinary sensibility taking in the seventeenth century which produced modern French cooking can only be understood against the non-modern practices that preceded it as well as those, presumably modern, that followed." -Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson, Gastronomica
"[A] lively account..." --The New Yorker
"It is difficult to write about the history of food in a way that interests both gourmets and historians, but Susan Pinkard rises to the challenge. Her vivid descriptions, menus and recipes are combined with a perceptive and persuasive account of the rise of French cuisine, firmly placed in its cultural context." -Peter Burke, University of Cambridge
"Susan Pinkard surveys changing ideas of artifice, naturalness, wholesomeness, and taste in the rise of one of the world's great cuisines. A Revolution in Taste is as lively as it is learned." -Steven Shapin, Harvard University