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Sample Food and Drink in Ireland

20 May 2016

To celebrate the publication of our new book Food and Drink in Ireland, we are sharing two chapters, which will be free to download for a limited time.

The Royal Irish Academy is proud to announce the publication of its new book, Food and Drink in Ireland, edited by Elizabeth FitzPatrick and James Kelly. The book is a multidisciplinary collection of essays that explores the cultivation, consumption and culture of food and drink in Ireland from the beginnings of settlement in the Mesolithic to the present. 

Here is a taste of what the book contains:

‘“Whipt with a twig rod”: Irish manuscript recipe books as sources for the study of culinary material culture, ca. 1600 to1830’, by Madeline Shanahan, explores the development of recipe writing as a genre in mid- to late-seventeenth-century Ireland. This essay was highly commended by the judges of the 2015 Sophie Coe Prize as being a significant contribution to the field of food history.

The essay can be downloaded here.

‘Drink and society in twentieth-century Ireland’, by Diarmaid Ferriter, examines debates, controversies and trends in relation to the consumption of alcoholic drink in twentieth-century Ireland. In doing so, it includes reflections on drunkenness, temperance, alcoholism, licensing legislation, the drinks industry, the impact of the Catholic Church, the extent to which debate about alcohol was gendered and the role of alcohol in stereotyping Irish identity.

The essay can be downloaded here.

Both essays are free to download until 20 June.

Food and Drink in Ireland is now available in all good bookshops. It can also be purchased direct from the Royal Irish Academy; you can place your order here.

Contributors: Graeme Warren; Jessica Smyth and Richard P. Evershed; Alan Hawkes; Cherie N. Peters; Susan Lyons; Fiona Beglane; Madeline Shanahan; James Kelly; Regina Sexton; Ian Miller; Rhona Richman Kenneally; Diarmaid Ferriter; Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire; Frank Armstrong. Introduction by Stephen Mennell.

Food and Drink in Ireland will be launched by Prof. Louis Cullen, MRIA on Wednesday 1 June as part of the Dublin Gastronomy Symposium.

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