“Food, glorious food” – what would we do without it? And what would publishers do without the plethora of books from celebrity chefs, dieticians, health experts – we have even had Fanny Hill's Cook Book (1970)! The online catalogue of the UK's largest public library at www.birmingham.gov.uk lists 410 titles at 641.5 alone, without going into further sub‐divisions. But that is understandable; it is a topic with a significant impact on the human race for the whole duration of its development.
The Food Timeline at www.foodtimeline.org starts before 17000 bce with “water & ice” and before we get to 9000 bce we have already dealt with salt, shellfish, fish, eggs, insects, rice, emmer grain, einkorn grain, almonds and sheep. Not a very appetising menu, but doubtless nutritious and healthy for those at the time.
The momentous breakthrough comes at 6500 bce with the domestication of cattle and it is significant that this web site then quotes the first edition of the book under review, indicating Davidson's importance in the literature of the subject. The first edition was published in 1999 and was greeted with acclaim from reviewers and those responsible for awarding literary prizes including “Best Culinary History Book” in the Versailles World Cookbook Fair Awards. Now we have the second edition, edited by Tom Jaine assisted by Jane Davidson and Helen Saberi.
There have been many changes in food studies and food matters in the past six years. This edition retains almost all the work from Davidson's first edition, 80 per cent of which he wrote himself, and contains 907 pages as opposed to the 892 of the original, which interestingly cost £40 as does the edition under review. Jaine has attempted to ensure that the new contributions continue in the same style and in this he has been successful; the new and amended entries are identical to the extent of being indistinguishable.
Davidson, who died in 2003, will doubtless be pleased that his jokes from the original text have been retained, as has his idiosyncratic attitude on certain subjects. Many new topics are included in this edition, from the serious – agriculture, archaeology, food in the arts, globalisation, neuroanatomy and the Silk Road – and on lighter matters such as confetti, doggy bags, elephant and potluck.
The main rival to this tome is The Cambridge World History of Food (Kiple and Ornelas 2000), a two‐volume boxed set which was published in 2000. This covers the full spectrum of foods that are hunted, gathered, cultivated and domesticated and culminates in a dictionary that identifies and gives brief histories of over 1,000 plant foods. However the Cambridge production comes in at £155 and is, perhaps, designed for those more affluent celebrity chefs.
