Cuisine & Empire, Cooking in World History by Rachel Laudan; University of California Press, 2013, paperback, 2015.
By Oliver B. Pollak in Richmond, California
Book reviewers are old style “influencers.” They read and review new books offering their opinion about content, style, prose, topic, preface, introduction, chapter organization, conclusion, significance within the context within existing literature. Some parse the dedication, acknowledgement, illustrations, documentation, bibliography, footnotes. They identify likely readers, the target audience. Reviewers rarely reach the Index unless a non-fiction book does not have one.
Cuisine & Empire is surprisingly new to me in 2026. How did I miss it? I am a literate foodie who frequents restaurants. Good food is contemplative. A Spanish or Italian supper starting a 9 pm is a delight, a 3¼ hour Michelin experience, a thrill. We donated our menu collection to the Omaha Public Library. I retired from teaching World History and food history in 2012. I continue to subscribe to the American Historical Review and The New York Times. I never saw this book reviewed, in a library, bookstore, as a footnote or in a bibliography. I wrote for online Urban Spoon, published food articles in magazines and chapters in books, and belong to BACH, Bay Area Culinary Historians. Karen is a proud gourmet cook. Had I seen the book earlier I would have purchased it pronto.
I have enjoyed at least 57 national cuisines with multiple regional permutations, eaten Bouillabaisse, Cioppino, and Mohinga in their countries of origin and been blessed by the diverse immigrant diaspora preserving their food traditions, such as Kurdish restaurants in Scotland, and pupusas and empanadas in their new homes.
Scholarly analysis would include ferreting out reviews from 2013-14, seeing how often the book has been cited in books and articles, and viewing the author’s many YouTube presentations. This is not a classic timely book review.
I will tackle appraising the book published over a decade ago in a backwards manner, starting with the fulsome 25-page alphabetical Index from A&P to Zoroastrianism using its 359 pages of text, 77 pages of notes and bibliography, as a reference work, an encyclopedia.
Readers will be familiar with references to Bible, Fasting, Halvah, Hebrew, Jews, Judaism, Kasha, Kreplach, Passover, Pita, Vareniki, Walmart, and Whole Foods Market.
The Index devotes 11 lines to “culinary philosophy,” Jewish appears on the line following Buddhist, Christian and Islam. As we approach Yom Kippur readers will appreciate that nine pages are devoted to fasting. “Nomads” described the food habits of Hebrews, early Persians, and Mongols.
While bacon and pigs are briefly mentioned, a much deeper story can be found in Forbidden: A 3000-Year History of Jews and the Pig (New York University Press, 2024) Jordan D. Rosenblum. Gil Marks, the author of the 650-page Encyclopedia of Jewish Food (John Wiley & Son, 2010) provides further reference.
My special interests include Burma (I presented a paper in Marseilles on Burmese cuisine); Coffee (Karen and I had a cottage industry selling whole beans in the 1970s, I make a nice latte named Olly); I savor Anchovies (under fish), Eggplant and Okra; Oatmeal and Porridge about which I started a book in 2008 and lost interest at about 25,000 words; and, it is obligatory in 2026 to mention, that Homer’s Odyssey included cooked meats.
This is the 43rd volume in the California Studies in Food and Culture, a program started in 2002, published by the University of California Press. Darra Goldstein, the editor, has guided over 80 volumes. According to the Humanities Department of the San Francisco Public Library WorldCat indicates the book is held by at least 451 libraries. One hundred and six copies are available online for $11 to $136.90 plus $37 for shipping, the latter from Truganina, a suburb of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
Erica Peters, food historian and author of Appetites and Aspirations in Vietnam: Food and Drink in the Long Nineteenth Century (2011) and San Francisco: A Food Biography (2013) scores Laudan’s works as a “10 out of 10 in the field of important works of food history.” This is magnificent study of comparative and cross-cultural food discovery, sharing, preparation, consumption and human sustenance. Archeologists, anthropologists, historians, nutritionists, dieticians, and those interested in the history of food, taste, and cultural appropriation will benefit from this volume.
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Oliver B. Pollak, Ph.D., J.D., is a professor emeritus of history at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, a lawyer, a member of the Institute for Historical Study, and a San Diego Jewish World correspondent based in Richmond, California.