TY  - BOOK
AU  - Strong,Roy
TI  - Feast: a history of grand eating 
SN  - 0224061380
U1  - 394.1209 
PY  - 2002///
CY  - London
PB  - Jonathan Cape
KW  - Food habits
KW  - History
KW  - Dinners and dining
N1  - Includes bibliographical references and index; Ch. 1; Convivium: When in Rome; The Greek inheritance; The age of Apicius; Cena and convivium; Public and imperial banquets; Disintegration and survival --; Ch. 2; Interlude: Fast and Feast; Cuisine: the silent centuries; The Christian table and the birth of manners; Feast as power; A reconciliation of opposites --; Ch. 3; In the Eye of the Beholder; Cooks, cookery books and cuisine; The tripumph of conspicuous consumption; Manners maketh man; Enter the entremets --; Ch. 4; Renaissance Ritual; The refinement of cuisine; Pliny relived and the reinvention of the dining-room; Convivium revived; The Renaissance banquet; Feast into fantasy; The collation and banquet; Meals and the mystery of monarchy --; Ch. 5; From Court to Cabinet; The triumph of illusion; A culinary revolution; Service a la francaise and tablescapes; The salle a manger and eating rooms; Manners into etiquette; Messieurs, au couvert du Roi!; Food and festival at Versailles; The quest for informality --; Ch. 6; Dinner is Served; From revolution to the return of ritual; The century of Careme; The proliferation of the dining-room and shifting mealtimes; The dinner party; Service a la francaise to service a la russe; The ritual and etiquette of dinner; The way we live now; Postscript: The Eclipse of the Table?
N2  - "Toenails cut while dining, meals served to wax effigies of the dead, napkins concealing singing birds, dishes descending from the ceiling - these are just a few of the more exotic aspects of everyman at table. From the stupendous banquets of the Ancient Babylonians, Feast covers five millennia of formal eating." "Feast offers a fascinating and, at times, highly unusual mirror of society. It gathers together for the first time all the ingredients which contributed to the phenomenon of the celebratory meal: the people, the clothes, the food, the setting, the action and its circumstances." "In an age which has virtually abolished the shared meal as a central feature of daily living, Feast presents a revelatory picture of a world we have lost. Beautifully illustrated, it traces fashions in food and the etiquette of eating, taking the reader from the elegancies of the Roman villa to the austerities of the monastic refectory, from the splendours of the Renaissance banquet to the rigours of the Victorian dinner party."--BOOK JACKET
ER  -