Priscilla Mary Isin is a food historian and researcher. Her publications include A King's Confectioner in the Orient (2003) and Sherbet and Spice (2013), which traces the history of Turkish confectionery and desserts.
"Etiquette, celebrations, food laws and trade, water and sherbet,
coffee houses and taverns are but some of the topics explored.
Işın's meticulous study shines here; she has researched more than
six hundred primary and secondary sources, ranging from archive
documents to endowment deeds and poetry. Over one hundred
illustrations, including beautiful miniatures make this book a
pleasure to look at as well. Işın says her aim has been to hold up
a mirror to life in this large and complex empire through its food
culture. She certainly has accomplished it."-- "Middle East in
London Magazine"
"Probably the finest cuisine in the world, with a subtle and
coherent tradition. Işin's account is comprehensively illustrated
to make a visual as well as a textual record of Turkish social
culture, conveyed through study of some 600 years of food and
drink, and exemplifying the dilemma which Turkey has always faced
in choosing between--or combining--Eastern and Western traditions .
. . There is a fascinating section on the wines sold in Istanbul,
where the taverns were run by Christians or Jews and imbibers could
enjoy vintages from Greece, Spain, Sicily and further Anatolia . .
. There are some modernized recipes in Işin's volume, too, but the
main pleasure of the book lies in the background history and lively
anecdotes of storytellers and puppet-shows entertaining in coffee
houses, or the astonishment of a British visitor at the quantities
of salt fish, nuts, olives, and pickles served merely as
appetizers."-- "Times Literary Supplement"
"[A] most entertaining book. Scholarly--yes, but neither dry nor
boring; quite the opposite in fact. Her account of Ottoman eating
just romps along. It is always refreshing to examine life through
the lens of the food historian. It both focuses on and magnifies
significant historical moments in a particular way and allows for
other interpretations of particular events. A food historian
studies the minutiae of everyday life from a very different
perspective to the normal chronicler, turning up detail which may
have escaped the eye or understanding of the more conventional
scholar who may have little interest in how (or possibly why) food
and its preparation, its meaning, and the eating habits of earlier
eras might relate to the bigger historical picture involving
diplomacy, politics, wars, religion, and hierarchy."-- "Petits
Propos Culinaires"
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