[UCP Books]: Vegetables: A Biography
“Lovely as a display of vegetables at the local supermarket may appear, few shoppers have any idea of the unique histories behind each of those leaves, tubers, or roots. Bloch-Dano surveys ten vegetables common within Europe. Some, such as the pea and the tomato, are all too familiar; others, such as the cardoon, strike a chord only for a serious foodie. Tracing the origins of vegetable names from classical times forward, Bloch-Dano displays her erudite command of culinary history with both literary and historical anecdotes. . . . Digesting the contents of this little book yields a trove of trivia with which to impress shoppers and vendors alike at the farmers’ market.”
Booklist
VEGETABLES
A Biography
Evelyne Bloch-Dano
| Publication Date: April 23, 2012 | 978-0-226-42438-5 |
| International publication date: April 30, 2012 | $20.00/£13.00 |
“This allusive, impressionistic, quintessentially French tour of the kitchen garden takes us from aphrodisiac artichokes to Zola’s gritty market stalls, with many a literary and gustatory detour. Lazy summers in grandmother’s garden, the frenzy for fresh winter peas that gripped the court at Versailles in 1660, the global travels of the chili pepper, the contested history of Cinderella’s pumpkin—it’s all here, and it’s all fun.”
Jane S. Smith, author of The Garden of Invention: Luther Burbank and the Business of Breeding Plants
Evelyne Bloch-Dano is the author of many books, including Madame Proust: A Biography.
Please contact Levi Stahl at (773) 702-0289 or lstahl@press.uchicago.edu for more information.