Food and the Rites of Passage: 11 (Food and Society, 11) - Hardcover

This book is the eleventh volume in the series Food and Society’ produced by the Leeds Symposium on Food History. Prospect produced last year’s proceedings, Feeding a City: York; this book is uniform with that. There are plentiful black and white illustrations throughout; the book is fully indexed and annotated. BAPTISM, MARRIAGE, CHILDBIRTH, DEATH: these are the milestones of life, invariably marked by a feast or comforting rituals founded on food and drink. Some of these habits flourished, then died away think of the cups of wine passed around the gossips gathered at a lying in; others have gone on to be industries in their own right the wedding cake, which has slowly but surely evolved from the giant flat discs of bride cake illustrated in the sensational full-colour cover of a fête in Bermondsey by Hofnagel in the seventeenth century, to the many-tiered and icing-bedaubed monuments of today.

Baptism, marriage, childbirth, death: these are the milestones of life, invariably marked by a feast or comforting rituals founded on food and drink. Some of these habits flourished, then died away - think of the cups of wine passed around the gossips gathered at a lying in; others have gone on to be industries in their own right - the wedding cake, which has slowly but surely evolved from the giant flat discs of bride cake illustrated in the sensational full-colour cover of a fete in Bermondsey by Hofnagel in the seventeenth century, to the many-tiered and icing-bedaubed monuments of today. The book consists of six essays by recognised food-historians, each taking in turn one of these milestones, sometimes (but not always) with a certain north-country bias: Peter Brears writes on funerals; Dr Layinka Swinburne writes on childbirth; Laura Mason on wedding cakes; Ivan Day on old marriage customs; and Professor Tony Green on the sociology of the modern wedding celebration. There is also an overview of Irish food customs, with reference to these rites, by the well-regarded young Irish food historian, Regina Sexton.