Food in Transition from Venice to Nuremberg: Identifying Food Trends in Premodern Times (13th-17th century)

forthcoming

Using the term “food trends” may seem to suggest a postmodern era in which people seek individuality, even in their eating habits, and new trends are emerging all the time. This project, however, focuses on the past and aims to reveal and to identify food trends in the premodern era. The modern concept of “food trends” allows us to use selected products and to show how certain foreign/novel foods, made available through trade, changed the taste and appearance of familiar dishes, or gave rise to new food creations, food trends already in the premodern era. The project is centred on the Italian-German region and the trading hubs of Venice and Nuremberg from the 13th to the 17th century. In addition to the sources that document the economic exchange between these two cities (such as commercial books, trade monopolies, documents), the associated circulation of knowledge through philosophical writings and medical treatises, the dissemination of religious ideas, and the implementation of new products in everyday culinary life (in cookery books) are of interest. These provide insight into and discussion about food as it was in transition. Three objects – pasta, saffron and Malvasia wine – are used to illustrate food trends as they move from south to north. By doing so, the concept of “food trends” is defined and a new socio-cultural food history is created, incorporating aspects of medical and philosophical history as well as global and economic history and recognising the everyday historical dimension of nutrition, to which gender, social and religious aspects are added as important categories of analysis in this project.