Celebration

The Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in 2011. In keeping with this happy event, celebration was the subject of this year's meeting. Symposiasts have taken their usual broad and generous approach to the topic. So papers range in geographical relevance from highland Equador through Transylvania, Anatolia, Congo-Brazzaville, Iceland, and old Los Angeles. Chronologically too, several periods are addressed: ancient Rome, Ptolomaic Egypt, Ottoman Turkey, Georgian Dublin, and Victorian London. The occasions of celebration considered run from wedding breakfasts, birthday parties, Easter, harvest festival, and Passover, while the sorts of celebration include banquets, drinking bouts, the Icelandic thorrablot, and election day feasts. Authors include from America, Jonathan Brumberg-Kraus, Anthony Buccini, Sharon Hudgins, Charles Perry; from Turkey, Aylin Tan and Priscilla Mary Isin; from England, Robert Appelbaum, Andrew Dalby, Christopher Grocock, Gillian Riley, David C. Sutton, and from Israel, Susan Weingarten.