Renaissance Food

“Aristocrats ate, or at least put on their tables, huge quantities of food as a token of conspicuous consumption so that they could display their power to command, consume, and waste more food in one meal than many people might see in a whole year” (Parolin 218).

“middle-class households were increasingly interested in learning about the culinary habits of the wealthy, even if they lacked the resources to imitate those habits themselves” (220).


Hall, Kim. “Culinary Spaces, Colonial Spaces: The Gendering of Sugar in the Seventeenth Century.” Feminist Readings of Early Modern Culture: Emerging Subjects. Ed. Valerie Traub et al. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. 168-190.

Parolin, Peter A. “‘Cloyless Sauce’: The Pleasurable Politics of Food in Antony and Cleopatra.” Antony and Cleopatra: New Critical Essays. Ed. Sara Munson Deats. NY: Routledge, 2005. 213-229.