Alex Johnson - Menus that Made History

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MENUS ARE MUCH MORE THAN MERE LISTS OF DISHES. FROM THE DAWN OF MANKIND TO THE PRESENT DAY, THESE EVERYDAY AND OFTEN OVERLOOKED ITEMS HAVE EXTRAORDINARY STORIES TO TELL. THEY OPEN DOORS TO SCENES OF EXTRAVAGANCE AND AUSTERITY, MIGRATION AND ASSIMILATION, WAR AND CONQUEST.

The word menu itself comes from a French term indicating something small or detailed, and further back from the Latin minutus, used to describe an item that has been reduced in size. Four thousand years ago, in ancient Mesopotamia, people were putting together divine menus on clay tablets for their gods (who apparently enjoyed roast goat, cakes and plenty of salt, washed down with substantial amounts of alcohol). In China, menus for high days and holidays are found during the Song Dynasty (9601279), including various impressive selections in one semi-anonymous civil servants twelfth-century memoir, Dreams of Splendour of the Eastern Capital. The earliest European menus appeared in France in the eighteenth century: huge broadsheet-sized pieces of paper, crammed with hundreds of dishes in tiny print that made them look like a prototype classified ads section.

Since then, we have seen the arrival of highly decorated menu cards, menus that come in their own leather binding with tassels, handwritten menus, childrens menus, even edible menus. And as with other ephemera such as football cards, postcards or film posters, people are starting to realise that menus offer us the chance to understand the past in ways weve never previously considered.

We eat to survive and we eat to celebrate. But this is not really a book about food its about understanding what these culinary snapshots can tell us about certain times and places in our global history.

With over 40,000 years to pick from, its been tricky weighing up which selections to serve and which to send back, whittling it down to the most fascinating. Yes, there has to be a place for ridiculously over-the-top royal banquets. But weve spread the net far wider than that. From Aztec cannibals to Swiss vegetarians, and from the first meal in space to the last one on the Titanic, the following pages even feature menus that were never actually cooked and served the Cratchits of Dickens A Christmas Carol only ever celebrated 25 December on the page.

Before the middle of the nineteenth century, very few of these menus were written down. So while the more modern ones may have been propped up against the salt and pepper pots, others have been pieced together from instructions to kitchens, accounts in diaries and even scientific research into the dental plaque of ancient corpses.

Together, they form an la carte selection that reveals something unexpected, curious or just plain shocking about the people who prepared them, the people who ate them and the worlds they lived in. After youve read this book, youll never look at a pineapple in the same way again.