Commerce, Food, and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England and France: Across the Channel (Food Culture, Food History before 1900)

"Tell me what you eat, and I'll tell you who you are" was the challenge issued by French gastronomist Jean Brillat-Savarin. Champagne is declared a unique emblem of French sophistication and luxury, linked to the myth of its invention by Dom Pérignon. Across the Channel, a cup of sweet tea is recognized as a quintessentially English icon, simultaneously conjuring images of empire, civility, and relentless rain that demands the sustenance and comfort that only tea can provide. How did these tastes develop in the seventeenth century? Commerce, Food, and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England and France: Across the Channel offers a compelling historical narrative of the relationship between food, national identity, and political economy in the early modern period. These mutually influential relationships are revealed through comparative and transnational analyses of effervescent wine, spices and cookbooks, the development of coffeehouses and cafés, and the 'national sweet tooth' in England and France."--Back cover Cover 1 Table of Contents 6 Acknowledgements 8 Introduction: The Economics of Taste 10 Emblems of Identity: Poulet au pot and Roast Beef 13 1651–1717: Global Commerce and Cultural Identity 18 Culinary Hegemony as Cultural Export 20 Mercantilism and Non-Traditional Influences on Economic Thought 22 De Gustibus Non Est Disputandum: Analysing the Economics of Taste 24 Bibliography 28 1. Méthode Anglaise: Transnational Exchange and the Origins of Champagne 34 ‘Come, brothers—I am drinking stars!’ (attributed to Dom Pérignon) 38 The Paradox of English Effervescence 41 Probing the Paradox: Necessity is the Mother of Invention 48 ‘Boire à la Françoise’: Baptême et Verjus 52 Taxes, Treaties, Embargoes, and Taste 54 Mercantilist Pressures on the English Palate 62 Bibliography 64 2. Primary Sauces: The Rise of Cookbooks, Cuisines, and Corporations 68 The Medieval Tradition of Conspicuous Consumption 72 The Emergence of Delicate Dining 82 Rejection of Refinement: English Resistance to French Cuisine 92 Disconnected Relationships: Price, Value, Supply and Demand 99 Bibliography 107 3. London Coffeehouse or Parisian Café? 112 Mercantilism, Myth and Grandeur in the Development of Sociable Spaces 113 Before the Coffeehouse and Café: The ‘Turk’s Physick’ and ‘Eccentricity of a Traveller’ 117 Rationalising Luxury in Early Modern Political Economy 123 The Success of the Coffeehouse and the Influence of the Virtuosi 126 Soliman Aga and the Fashionability of Coffee in France 131 An Atmosphere of Grandeur in the Parisian Café 137 Botanical Imperialism vs. the Commerce of Empire 142 Bibliography 145 4. Sugar and Empire: Tea’s ‘Inseparable Companion’ 150 English Production: Naturalising Sweetness 155 French Production: Toward an Empire of Autarky 159 British Consumption: Grandeur through Taxes on ‘Backs and Bellies’ 166 French Consumption: The Sun King’s Sweet Tooth and the Balance of Trade 172 Bibliography 180 Conclusion 184 Bibliography 190 Bibliography 192 Manuscript Sources 192 Printed Primary Sources 192 Secondary Literature 199 Websites 208 Index 210 Tell me what you eat, and I?ll tell you who you are" was the challenge issued by French gastronomist Jean Brillat-Savarin. Champagne is declared a unique emblem of French sophistication and luxury, linked to the myth of its invention by Dom Pérignon. Across the Channel, a cup of sweet tea is recognized as a quintessentially English icon, simultaneously conjuring images of empire, civility, and relentless rain that demands the sustenance and comfort that only tea can provide. How did these tastes develop in the seventeenth century?0'Commerce, Food, and Identity in Seventeenth-Century England and France: Across the Channel' offers a compelling historical narrative of the relationship between food, national identity, and political economy in the early modern period. These mutually influential relationships are revealed through comparative and transnational analyses of effervescent wine, spices and cookbooks, the development of coffeehouses and cafés, and the ?national sweet tooth? in England and France