Acquired taste
Subtitle: the French origins of modern cooking
By: T. Sarah Peterson.
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 1994
Place of publication: Ithaca
Language: eng
Number of pages: 262
Subjects: Gastronomy -- History; Food -- History; Cookery -- France -- History; France -- Social life and customs
Description: Peterson explores a change in French cooking in the mid-seventeenth century - from the heavily sugared, saffroned, and spiced cuisine of the medieval period to a new style based on salt and acid tastes. In the process, she reveals more fully than any previous writer the links between medieval cooking, alchemy, and astrology.

Peterson's vivid account traces this newly acquired taste in food to its roots in the wider transformation of seventeenth-century culture which included the Scientific Revolution. She makes the startling - and persuasive - argument that the shift in cooking styles was actually part of a conscious effort by humanist scholars to revive Greek and Roman learning and to chase the occult from European life.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [235]-255) and index.