Food preparation and meals in a gendered perspective

This chapter analyses food preparation and meals in Western Europe between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries, focusing on their gendered dimension. It first illustrates that not every house had a kitchen or a fireplace. Many poor, especially in cities, could not afford a dwelling where one could cook. The chapter argues that in early modern times, the cooks employed at the courts and by the aristocracy in Italy, Spain and France were generally men; a feminization of the preparation of food started in France from the eighteenth century onwards. It addresses meals in a gendered perspective, arguing that they were not necessarily occasions for families to meet. The chapter builds upon several scholarly approaches about food, the history of food and food-ways as well as women’s and gender history.