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2/11/17 Featured as a Postgraduate Pioneer by the University of Cambridge. Interviewed on my research into the Cambridge colleges’ kitchen accounts

Published May 12, 2019 at 885 × 432

https://www.cam.ac.uk/news/postgraduate-pioneers-2017-5

https://www.cam.ac.uk/news/postgraduate-pioneers-2017-5

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It's feeling wintery today! 🍵 Anne Costner Vallayer, White Soup Bowl 1771 🍞 Image public domain

A still life showing a fruit bowl, with apples and grapes, wine, and preserved fruits from the House of Julia Felix, Pompei (before 79AD)🍈🍇 The Romans often decorated their homes with images of food, depictions which had both decorative and symbolic significance as perhaps signs of hospitality for the guest or as sustenance for the dead 🍽️ The pomegranate may have referred to Proserpina, who in the myth cyclically returned to the earth, and so acted as a symbol of rebirth 🍼 Image: Naples, Museo Archeologico, wikimedia commons.

The Loggia del Pesce /Fish's Lodge in #Florence 🐟 Commissioned by Duke Cosimo I de' Medici to Giorgio Vasari to house the fish market in Florence. It is decorated with 8 medallions that depict different fish and fishing activities. A scroll is inscribed with the words that translate as: 'The fish market which until now was held in the periods of Lent near Ponte Vecchio, now the most illustrious and eminent Cosimo de' Medici, second Grand Duke of Florence and Siena, and his son Francesco, a great Prince, have built another at far greater expense and with more magnificence to the previous one, so that, from now on, fish can be sold here. 1568'. 📜 It was destroyed during the urban renovation of Florence in the 19th century, which its decoration going to San Marco museum. In 1956 the loggia was reconstructed using much of the original materials. 🐟 More #foodfacts on my hidden history maps via link in bio ⬆️

For a summary of my article on food in the Protestant Reformation in England and how religion is so tied to food consumption, see the latest blog on the Historical Journal website (follow link in bio)!🍽️⛪ This painting is a rare example of an English family portrait around the dining table, showing William Brooke, (10th Baron Cobham), his wife Frances, their six children, and her sister Joanna 1567. Sitting orderly in traditional Elizabethan dress, the family is surrounded by exotic foods and fresh fruit 🍒🍐 Brooke himself was a powerful statesman and his relationship to the religion of the English Church and State was a complicated one - but that's another story!

La Cuciniera Piemontese (The Piemontese [Female] Cook) was the first published cookery book in Italy to be (supposedly!) written by a woman, published in Vercelli in 1771 👩‍🍳 The frontispiece shows a charming depiction of a woman carrying a plate of food to a group of people sitting around the table 🍲 It includes localised recipes like 'Vercelli style soup' and Roman-style cabbages 😋 Female authorship of cookery books came much later in Italy than in England, where Hannah Woolley published in the 1670s, and where elite Elizabethan and Stuart women cooked and shared recipes for sweetmeats and medicines made in the still-room 🍬

Fave dei morti or beans of the dead for All Soul's Day! Beans have long been associated with the dead, and in the medieval period they were cooked and consumed in the house where it was thought the dead came to visit. The tradition continues today in some parts of Italy, but rather than consuming beans people eat tastier bean - shaped biscuits 👻🍲 Find a recipe via the link in bio ⬆️

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