HIST 410: Comparative Food History

Books

Selected Reference Books
Search the following Reference books to find background information on food topics:

Cambridge World History of Food Authoritative guide to the history of food and nutrition." REF TX 353 .C255 2000 vols.1-2.
Encyclopedia of Food and Culture Articles on food and its place in human culture and society. in print REF GT 2850 .E53 2003 vols. 1-3.
Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America "Covers the significant events, inventions, and social movements in American history that have affected the way Americans view, prepare, and consume food and drink." Also in print REF TX 349 .E45 2004.
Encyclopedia of North American Eating and Drinking Traditions, Customs, and Rituals Short entries on foods and beverages, eating or drinking establishments, and eating or drinking events. REF GT 2853 .U5 G39 1996.
An A-Z of Food and Drink This dictionary from Oxford University Press gives the origin, meaning, and development of a host of gastronomic terms. REF GT 2853 .U5 G39 1996.
Food in the Ancient World Covers cooking and food preparation, food by ancient civilization, eating habits, and concepts of diet and nutrition.
Food in the United States, 1820s-1990 Addresses this period of inventions and new technology, the beginnings of classic American food brands, regional foodways, and diet fads.

Find Books

To find books on food history at the library, search the catalog from the library's home page. The catalog searches broad descriptions of books.

Browse by subject using relevant subject headings, such as the following:

cooking
diet
prehistoric peoples food
beverages
dinners and dining
drinking customs
food cultures in America (African American, Latino, and Jewish)
food habits
food history
food in literature
food preferences
food relief
food religious aspects
food social aspects
food supply
food writing
hunger

As you browse subjects, look for subheadings such as "correspondence," "sources," and "personal narratives." These indicate primary sources. See this table for a complete list of useful subheadings which indicate primary source material.

For books on the history of a specific food item, try a subject search for that food item or that food item plus "history." See these examples:
- chocolate
- spices history
For books on the history of a specific country's food, try adding "history" to the end of the subject. You can also append the name of the country to the end of "food habits." Examples:
Search by keyword using your own terms and use the limits on the left-hand side of the results screen to focus your search. Examples:
- "food habits" history (use quotation marks for exact phrases)
- food Rome (limit search results to "place": Rome on the left)

Use call numbers to browse the stacks for similar books.

Find books in other libraries using Link+

Click on the

icon in the catalog to search for books and videos in over 40 libraries in California and Nevada. Link+ items arrive in 3-4 days to arrive. They can be checked out for 3 weeks and renewed for an additional 2 weeks through your library record.

Find books searching the full text of books using Google Books

Because Google Books searches the full text, you can often get good results with more narrow, specific searches and find books you might not have found in the catalog. Example:

grain Rome

You can also find the full-text of many older books (pre-1922) and limit your results by date of publication. See these examples:

tobacco industry (1800-1900)

spice trade (1700-1800)

Articles

Search the following databases to find relevant newspaper, magazine, and journal articles. If the full-text of an article is not available, click or the USF: Find Full-Text link or check to see if your article is available at the USF libraries. Alternatively, you can search the library's Journal Finder by journal name.

Historical Abstracts Citations and abstracts for publications covering world history (excluding the U.S. and Canada).
America: History and Life Citations and abstracts for publications covering all aspects of U.S. and Canadian history, culture, and current affairs.
Humanities International Complete 2,300 journals covering all aspects of the humanities, including Area Studies, Arts, Ethnic Studies, Gender, History, Language, Literature, Philosophy, Politics, and Religion.
Iter: Gateway to the Middle Ages and Renaissance Citations to publications covering European Medieval and Renaissance history and culture.
JSTOR Multi-disciplinary digital archive of back issues (JSTOR generally lacks the latest three years) of hundreds of scholarly journals.
Fusion Search across the majority of the library's books and articles. Add more keywords or use the limits in the results screen to reduce the number of your results.

Find additional sources by checking footnotes and bibliographies in books and articles.

Full-Text Historical Sources

ProQuest Historical Newspapers: New York Times (1851 - 2008) Full page and article images of the New York Times.
ProQuest Historical Newspapers: San Francisco Chronicle (1865-1922) Full page and article images of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Eighteenth Century Collections Online Digital images of every page of 150,000 books, in every academic discipline, published in the United Kingdom during the 18th Century.
Early English Books Online (EEBO) Contains digital facsimile page images of virtually every work printed in England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and British North America and works in English printed elsewhere from 1473-1700.

U.S. Congressional Publications

ProQuest Congressional Includes full-text Congressional reports, documents, prints, bills, Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports, the Congressional Record, selected testimony in hearings before Congress, Public laws, and Statutes at Large.

Menu Collections

City College of San Francisco, Alice Statler Libary Menu Collection An overview of the Menu Collection at the Alice Statler Library, which includes menus from restaurants in San Francisco and Northern California from 1920 to the present. Images of some of menus are available.
Cornell University, The Nestle Library, Menu Collection. A database of the menus held in the Rare Menu Collection, as well as a description of the collection. Images of selected menus are available online.
Los Angeles Public Library, Menu Collection A database of the menus from selected California restaurants held in the Rare Books Division of the Los Angeles Public Library. Images of actual menus are available.
University of Washington, Historic Menu Collection A digitized collection of menus from some of the most famous restaurants in the Puget Sound area from 1889-2003.

Cookbook Collections

Feeding America – Michigan State University Library and the MSU Museum Online collection of some of the most influential and important American cookbooks from the late 18th to early 20th century. Browse or search the collection.
Professor Martha Carlin's Home Page. Resources from a history professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwakee.

Medieval Cookery Website Includes recipes, menus, and a list of recommended (secondary source) books on medieval cooking.
Cindy Renfrow: Author of books on ancient and medieval cooking and brewing. Includes recipes, bibliographies, and links to primary source material.
The Medieval and Renaissance Food Homepage from the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), an international organization dedicated to researching and re-creating the arts and skills of pre-17th-century Europe. Page includes links to bibliographies and primary source material from 1300-1600.
Monumenta Culinaria et Dietetica Historica Culinary and dietetic texts of Europe from the Middle Ages to 1800 by Thomas Gloning. Many sources are in German.

Web Sites

Food Timeline Created by Lynne Olver, reference librarian with a passion for food history. "Information is checked against standard reference tools for accuracy. All sources are cited for research purpose. As with most historical topics, there are some conflicting stories in the field of food history. We do our best to select and present the information with the most documented support." The timeline is from a European perspective and includes links to recipes and food history information on the web.
Library of Congress: Food History Selected guide to works on food history. Focus is works published in English, during the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, and mainly in the United States. Includes a variety of sources at the Library of Congress including books, bibliographies, journals and journal articles, as well as web sites of possible interest.
Food and Nutrition -- HEARTH: Home Economics Archive Project of the Mann Library at Cornell University, this site includes a brief introductory essay and bibliography of books from the early 1800s - 1950 on cooking, home cooking, nutrition and dietetics, food science, marketing, and food purchasing. Focus is on the United States.
World Food Habits English-language bibliographies on the anthropology of food and nutrition from a global perspective, maintained by Robert Dirks, Emeritus Professor of Anthropology, Illinois State University.