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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Pastoral Romance

By Brent Cunningham

The exalted status of the American farmer has long been removed from reality of feeding a nation.

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Map

Food Chains

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

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Miscellany

In the 1790s in the United States, the average American over the age of fifteen consumed almost six gallons of pure alcohol per annum. The modern figure is 2.8.

1838 | Auteuil

Procuring Impossibilities

Easy entertaining with the Count of Monte Cristo.More

1749 | London

Today’s Menu

Henry Fielding presents a bill of fare to a literary feast.More

1609 | Jamestown

Of Such a Dish as Powdered Wife

John Smith remembers the “starving time.”More

Charts & Graphs

Melting Pots

The evolution of “national” dishes.

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American rock musician Ted Nugent.

Photograph of English novelist Charles Dickens.

American professor and journalist Deborah Blum.

Photograph of Charles Baudelaire

Photograph of American editor Brent Cunningham.

Painting of Benjamin Franklin reading a batch of papers next to a classical bust.

American chef, author, and television personality Anthony Bourdain.

Black and white engraving of Roman author Petronius.

Bad men live that they may eat and drink, whereas good men eat and drink that they may live.

—Socrates, c. 430 BC

Irish author Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington.

Socialite, actress, model, and Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick.

Marguerite Gardiner & the Sedgwick Sisters

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