Food and the Rites of Passage

BAPTISM, MARRIAGE, CHILDBIRTH, DEATH: The book consists of six essays by recognised food-historians, each tackling one of these milestones.

This book is the eleventh volume in the series ‘Food and Society’ produced by the Leeds Symposium on Food History. Prospect produced last year’s proceedings, Feeding a City: York; this book is uniform with that. There are plentiful black and white illustrations throughout; the book is fully indexed and annotated. BAPTISM, MARRIAGE, CHILDBIRTH, DEATH: these are the milestones of life, invariably marked by a feast or comforting rituals founded on food and drink. Some of these habits flourished, then died away – think of the cups of wine passed around the gossips gathered at a lying in; others have gone on to be industries in their own right – the wedding cake, which has slowly but surely evolved from the giant flat discs of bride cake illustrated in the sensational full-colour cover of a fête in Bermondsey by Hofnagel in the seventeenth century, to the many-tiered and icing-bedaubed monuments of today.