Philobiblon

Food and Feast as Propaganda in Late Renaissance Italy by Ken Albala pp. 33-45

p. 33 “banquets in Italian courts of the latter 16^th century were extravagant multimedia events meant to astound and overwhelm the senses of participants. They included music, entertainment, perfums and flowers as well as the elaborate displays of food to feast the eyes as well as the palate… The literature was also a superb form of advertisement fo the small Italian courts as they hoped to become the model of sophistication and refined taste for their larger neighbours such as France and Spain. The Italians’ relation to these states was precarious. Much of the peninsula had had either been conquered in the course of the Hapsburg-Valois War or was now tacitly controlled by the larger powers. Marriage alliances were crucial to the survival of many Italian states… These small courts needed the protection of the nation-states, but had little to offer in terms of resources or arms. Instead they offered cultureL art and architecture, literature, gardening and cuisine.”

Giovanni Battista Rossetti’s Della Scalco p. 41 « The meal consisted of five separate courses each comprising between 15 and 19 different dishes in multiples of seven. In total, including the six scenes and the six plates of mad Orlando, there were 621 dishes of food served. .. The banquet probably served about 40. That means for each guest there were about 15 dishes. The service was also in the Iralian fasgion with many small plates covering the table in each course… meals alternate by temperature and method of cooking with different types of food both sweet and savory in every single course.”

“Beer, Women and Grub,” Pubs, Food and the Industrial Working Class by Diane Kirby – pp. 136-153

p. 140 “In the late 18^th and early 19^th century this work in pubs became a distinct occupation, ‘barmaid’. French cafes similar introduced a serving counter which profoundly altered café relations and the place of women. “Women at the counter, either as owner or as server, were at the very heart of ‘café sociability,” historian Scott Haine has observed. The resemblance to barmaids was remarkable. Being a barmaid was a highly sex-specific occupation. Although men also worked in public houses as barmen, the skills required of each were differentiated. Women found ready employment if they were attractive and well-dressed and by the middle of the 19^th century this was becoming the rpime attribute. So too in French cafes. “By the 1840s, almost all writers [on] Parisen mores commented on the desirability, if not the necessity of a pretty woman behing the counter … and the predominately male clientele of the working-class café were resassured to have a woman behind the counter … serving food and drink… Yet in pubs the work itself was a superior form of domestic service and most of the women seeking work behind the bar were former domestic servants who saw the opportunity to improve their chances. The skills required of narmaids were even more akin to running a house as they kept the premises clean and catered to the wants of their thirsty “boys”.

P. 141 “In the colonies of Australia (and New Zealand) the public house developed into a new distinctive entity, as liquor licences allowed pubs to serve spirits and wines as well as beer, and also required licenced premises to provide all the services to travellers which in England were provided by inns. .. licencing laws stipulated that before a licence to retail liquor to urban as well as rural workers would be granted, pubs much provide meal and accommodation services for travellers … the absence of other forms of waged work (such as manufacturing) made hotelkeeping a very attractive option for colonial women. … by 1890 running a hotel was a major avenue of self-employment for women. This meant that young women working behind the bar could expect to become licencees in their own right if they saved enough. It was a means to economic independence from wage labour and it have women working there a certain autonomy. Wages in the colonies were high for barmaids who, compared to other women workers, were paid well and by the early 20^th century were organising into trade unions.”

p. 157 “Cookbooks “are central to the establishment of the socially sanctioned ordering of the public sphere”. In sharing their recipes for good food, women could build a collective image of “the good life”. In the years during which the community cookbook first flourished in Australia, in the Federation era, this was likely to be characterised by substantial cuts of meat, hefty puddings and dainty baked goods. It would probably have an element of romance, most community cookbooks of this era contain recipes for “Kiss Biscuits” and “love Cakes”. Food historian Michael Symons comments on “daintiness” are interesting … in the history of eating in Australia during the period between the two world wars, he finds a polarisation between ‘male’ roughness, characterised by the drinking of bad beer, hakering for the bush, meat pies and wolfing down great slabs of meat, and ‘female’ daintiness, symbolised by the drinking of tea, baked goods and the love of pink things and consumer embellishments. “Daintiness” – which emboied ‘feminine qualities like lightness, prettiness and gentility – was part of a long campaign to subvert the traditional caring concerns of women into petty materialistic preoccupations charges Symons.”

“Community Cookbooks, Women and the ‘Building of Civil Society’ in Australia, 1900-38 bny Sarah Black, pp. 154- 170

P. 160 “Sample menus are common in community cookbooks, and fulfil two main roles. First, they often reflecton the social roles claimed or aspired to by the creators of books. Secondly, they constitute guidelines for appropriate social and culinary behaviour.The great social and geographic shifts experienced by so many as a result of migration to Australia, both in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, created a real need for this kind of information. Women needed to know how to deal with unfamiliar landscapes, new foods, more advanced or (in many cases) more primitive domestic technologies, and new social milieus. How does one know, without being told, the best, easiest, most economical and most highly approved way to provide for 300 adults, plus accompanying minors, dogs and livestock who will shortly be descending on one’s property?”

“Just sugar?” Food and Landscape along Queensland’s Sunshine Coast by Chris McConville, pp. 188-205

p. 194 “In adapting British cuisine to the Antipodes, Australians speedily outdid the sweet tooth of the Old World and by the later 19^th century the Australian colonies were estimated to have had the hishest per-capita sugar consumption in the world Coghlan, the NSW colonial statistician, made the extraordinary estimate that 8.4% of NSW family budghets went on the consumption of sugar… Queensland far outdid all the other colonies. In the period 1890-94 each Queenslander devoured, annually, 141.3 pounds of sugar! In contract Tasmania consumed 82 pounds and Victoria 99.4 pounds.”