Food and Diet in Early Europe: Farm to Table in the Renaissance

Catalog description

What did medieval and Renaissance Europeans choose to eat? What did they have to eat? Before the age of mass transportation, was all food locally sourced? In an era when most medicines were plant based, what did it mean to eat a balanced diet? “Feed a cold, starve a fever.” Why? In this course we will examine food, foodways, and diet in European culture, thought, and society with a focus on the later Middle Ages and Renaissance, and with a mix of primary sources and modern scholarship on food, cuisine, religion, and diet.