Getting down from the table: Early modern foodways and material culture

Abstract

This chapter considers how studying the material cultures of food production and consumption away from the table -- in the sugar refineries of east London, the kitchens of London and Germany, and the shrivelled remains of a Tudor banana -- might diversify the studies of food history. By moving away from recipe books and dinner table settings, it argues for the significance of early modern foodstuffs and their related material cultures in relation to domestic knowledge, faith practices, and the economics of colonisation, as much as to 'who ate what when'.