The Triumph of French Cuisine

“Why did French food conquer the world ? Accounting for Taste is an outstanding study of the emergence of the French overseas culinary empire from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Full ot fascinating detail, it also makes a major contribution to understanding processes of cultural competition. The serious study of culinary culture is important because, as a mounting quantity of evidence now demonstrates, changes in the way people cook and eat and enjoy their food are among the most sensitive markers of much wider processes at work in the transformation of social structure, culture, taste, and habitus.”
Stephen Mennel, authors of All Manners of Food

“I welcome and applaud Priscilla Parkhurst Fergusons well-researched and enlightening book on a subject that is near and dear to me and countless others : French cuisine. Representative of a new genre of serious and scholarly books on cuisine as an integral part of culture. Accounting for Taste demonstrates the importance of a field of study that was deemed ‘too trivial’ for academic exploration when I was a college student thirty years ago.”
Jacques Pépin

“A thoroughly well written, cogent, and subtle analysis of important moments and configurations in the development of French cuisine and the fields related to it : gastronomy, cookbooks, home cooking, restaurants, and the like. Accounting for Taste combines the best of humanistic and social science inquiry in its demonstration of the ways that the order of food
participates in a greater cultural model.”
Laurence Schehr, coeditor of French Food

“In Accounting for Taste, Priscilla Ferguson has given us a view of the world of food and gastronomy which will delight anyone interested in the chronicle of French gastronomy or in the broader world of French culture.”
Barbara Ketcham Wheaton, author of Savoring the Past

“Today more than ever in the culinary world we have a curiosity for how cooking has developed. French cuisine has been nurturing chefs and diners alike since its emergence. Priscilla Parkhurst Ferguson sensibly captures the essence of French cuisine by following the steps of its evolution as one of the most influential cultures in the world. Accounting for Taste is truly a remarkable contribution to astronomical literature.”
Charlie Trotter