Multidisciplinary Approaches to Food and Foodways in the Medieval Eastern Mediterranean Edited by Sylvie Yona Waksman (Archéologies 4). Lyon: Maison de l’Orient et de la Méditerranée 2020. Pp. 508. €65. ISBN 978-2-35668-070-9 (paper) (original) (raw)
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MULTIDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO FOOD AND FOODWAYS IN THE MEDIEVAL EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN, 2020
field of research: food and foodways in the medieval Eastern Mediterranean. It presents the output of the POMEDOR project "People, pottery and food in the medieval Eastern Mediterranean" funded by the French National Research Agency. POMEDOR focused on changes in transitional periods, such as the Crusades and the Turkish conquests, as viewed through archaeological and archaeometric studies of pottery. The volume offers a wider scope, with research based on archaeobotany, archaeozoology, biological anthropology, and the study of archaeological structures, texts and iconography. Last but not least, it reveals the recipes conceived for a "Byzantine" dinner, held at the Paul Bocuse Institute during the final conference of the POMEDOR project. Dans ce volume, archéologues, archéomètres et historiens contribuent par différentes approches à un domaine de recherche émergent : les pratiques alimentaires en Méditerranée orientale médiévale. Il présente les résultats du programme ANR POMEDOR « Populations, poteries et alimentation en Méditerranée orientale médiévale », qui abordait l' évolution de ces pratiques lors de périodes de transition, telles que les croisades ou les conquêtes turques, principalement au travers d' études archéologiques et archéométriques de céramiques. Cet ouvrage couvre un champ plus large, incluant l'archéozoologie, l'archéobotanique, l'anthropologie biologique, l' étude des structures archéologiques, des textes et de l'iconographie. Enfin, il dévoile les recettes conçues pour un dîner « byzantin » clôturant le programme POMEDOR, organisé à l'Institut Paul Bocuse.
Archivio Storico Italiano, 2024
Recensione del volume di Marie D’Aguanno Ito, Orsanmichele. A Medieval Grain Market and Confrayernity, Leiden-Boston, Brill, 2023 («The Medieval Mediterranean. Peoples, Economies and Cultures, 400-1500, 131»).
In this paper two letters from Eustathios of Thessaloniki describing recipes (mainly for cooking game birds) have been selected for detailed study. These recipes are described as being linked to special cooking and serving utensils (cooking pot, plate) and the food as being cooked in “a pastry pot”. In both cases a particular stuffed and roasted bird is an excuse for Eustathios to play with rhetoric and seemingly to satirize the customs of his day in order to amuse the recipient of the letters. He creates a recipe-riddle (“What is plate and cooking pot and food and bread and table all at the same time?”) and provides the answer:it is none other than the roasted bird within a crust and a crispy dough that function both as the cooking and the serving vessel. In letter 4 Eustathios relates a difficult journey through snow to reach the country house of a friend, Nikephoros, where wonderful meals await him. In describing his adventure through the snow he borrows elements from the wandering of the Hebrews during their Exodus from Egypt. In letter 5 (provided in translation), the description of the roasted bird wrapped in crust, a recipe in which the food is tableware and the tableware is edible, leads Eustathios to a classic quotation about eating plates and tables, one that refers to the founder of Rome, Aeneas. In the two letters, filled to excess with dietary allusions and references to the Bible and the Classics, Eustathios, whether in the guise of Moses or Aeneas, attempts his own journey to reach the Promised Land of Byzantine gastronomic and rhetorical achievement.