In this richly illustrated book, leading food historian Gillian Riley demonstrates how works of art can provide us with detailed information about the preparation and preservation of food that is missing from the history books. Artists of all periods and in all places have portrayed the tools and environments of the gastronomic world of the drying, salting or smoking of meat, fish or vegetables, for example and the enjoyment of eating, from the simplest peasant meals to the grandest banquets. These works allow us, as twenty-first-century viewers, to appreciate the colours, imagine the smells and salivate over the recipes of the foods, kitchens and dishes of the past.
