Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food

Thomas M.F. Gerry is a professor of English at Laurentian University and
the editor of Arachne, Laurentian University’s bilingual
interdisciplinary journal of language and literature.

“Near a thousand tables” is a phrase from a particularly gloomy part
of William Wordsworth’s “Guilt and Sorrow,” where the poet fancies
himself near to “a thousand homes” and as many tables, but unable to
partake of their comforts. The quotation reflects Fernбndez-Armesto’s
approach to the meanings of food, which he states explicitly with regard
to cooking: “Culture begins when the raw gets cooked…. Cooking is
not just a way of preparing food but of organizing society.”

A key feature of Near a Thousand Tables, according to its author, is
that it treats food history as “a theme of world history, inseparable
from all the other interactions of human beings with one another and
with the rest of nature.” The book is organized under eight headings
that Fernбndez-Armesto characterizes as “revolutions”: the
invention of cooking; food as rite and magic; from collecting food to
herding; gardening; food as an indicator of social rank; food as a trade
commodity; “challenging evolution” by farming in different
environments; and the industrialization of food in the mass age.

Near a Thousand Tables offers a variety of pleasures. I was especially
heartened, for example, to find one of my preferences historicized by
the book’s opening paean to oysters live from the shell: the “food
that unites us with all our ancestors … the dish you consume in what
is recognizably the way people have encountered their nourishment since
the first emergence of our species.” Near a Thousand Tables makes an
important scholarly contribution to the study of food, and does so in a
lively, engaging way.