Feeding France
New Sciences of Food, 1760–1815

Feeding France shows how chemists navigated the French Revolution to become the first public food experts in an industrialising world.

E. C. Spary (Author)

9781107031050, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 20 May 2014

428 pages, 28 b/w illus.
23.6 x 15.8 x 3 cm, 0.72 kg

'Emma Spary has emerged as one of the most insightful historians dedicated to a new kind of history of science in which science is inextricably bound up with social, cultural, and material realities. This book is a brilliant addition to her expanding oeuvre.' Elizabeth A. Williams, Isis

Feeding France is the first comprehensive study of the French food industry in the decades surrounding the French Revolution of 1789. Though the history of gastronomy and the restaurant have been explored by scholars, few are aware that France was also one of the first nations to produce industrial foods. In this time of political and social upheaval, chemists managed to succeed both as public food experts and as industrial food manufacturers. This book explores the intersection between knowledge, practice and commerce which made this new food expertise possible, and the institutional and experimental culture which housed it. Ranging from the exigencies of Old Regime bread-making to the industrial showcasing of gelatine manufacture, E. C. Spary rewrites the history of the French relationship with food to show that industrialisation and patrimonialism were intimately intertwined.

1. Economic eaters
2. The kingdom of bread
3. The matter of nourishment
4. Health foods and the medical marketplace
5. The potato republic
6. Making more out of meat
7. Political palates
8. The empire of habit
Conclusion
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX], Modern history to 20th century: c 1700 to c 1900 [HBLL], European history [HBJD]