For 24/7 research help LIVE CHAT from the library homepage or call/email/text us.
SP 2025 Research Help Desk Schedule
Some Good Starting Places
Encyclopedia of Food and Culture
Robert Bond's Food History Resources
Websites
MiraCosta Library eBooks
This book focuses mostly on Europe. Excellent set of articles on a variety of topics.
This book is one of the best histories of world cuisine out there. The first part is organized according to religious tradition, while the modern period focuses on the globalization of food.
This is an excellent introduction to the history of food by one of the leading food scholars today. Chapter 1 is an excellent overview of pre-modern food history.
This handbook has many interesting articles on all aspects of the study of food. You might want to look at this handbook to discover all of the ways you can study food. For example, you can look at food and gender.
The Food History Almanac covers 365 days of the year, with information and anecdotes relating to food history from around the world from medieval times to the present. The daily entries include such topics as celebrations; significant food-related moments in history from the fields of science and technology, exploration and discovery, travel, literature, hotel and restaurant history, and military history; menus from famous and infamous meals across a wide spectrum, from extravagant royal banquets to war rations and prison fare; birthdays of important people in the food field; and publication dates for important cookbooks and food texts and “first known” recipes. Food historian Janet Clarkson has drawn from her vast compendium of historical cookbooks, foodt exts, scholarly articles, journals, diaries, ships'logs, letters, official reports, and newspaper and magazine articles to bring food history alive.
This reference brings a fresh social and cultural perspective to the global history of food, foodstuffs, diet, cuisine, and culinary exchange from primitive human society to contemporary times. Comprehensive in scope, this resource covers the evolution of food production, distribution, trade, nutrition, and health, as well as such contemporary global issues as famine and food aid, farm subsidies, food safety, genetic engineering, and the organic movement.