There was a fine range of papers submitted to this Symposium in 1989. The keynote talks were by Keith Botsford in the staples of Italian cooking; the staple foods of the classical world, by Andrew Dalby; and a speculation on whether cuisines based largely on processed foods have any staples at all, by Erica Wheeler.

This volume of papers presented at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery follows the pattern of previous collections. The Symposium entitled Food and Memory was held in September 2000 at St Antony's College, Oxford uner the joint chairmaship of Alan Davidson and Theodore Zeldin.

This is the seventeenth volume of the ongoing series of papers and submissions to the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery, the longest running food history conference in the world. The subject this year revolves around milk and milk products, their uses in food and cookery through the ages and, as important, their substitutes. This broad definition gives rise to a very wide range of essays and studies. including: The hierarchy of milk in the Renaissance and Marsilio Ficino on the rewards of old age.; Low-temperature cheese-making, ancient wisdom not outdated; Artisnal and regional cheeses of Greece; Condensed milk and culinary innovation; The art of making Brie de Meaux Fermier; Animal husbandry and other issues in the dairy industry; The origins of the New York dairy industry; The origin and history of the ice-cream cone; Milk and its by-products in ancient Persia and modern Iran; Mother's milk; Milk and its products in ancient Rome; The cheeses of Hokkaido and other milky issues in a ricist society; Cato's Roman cheesecakes; The origins of Bechamel sauce; Medieval Arab dairy products There are upwards of 30 papers by academics from Britain, America and other countries.

This is the eighteenth volume of the ongoing series of papers and submissions to the Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery, the longest running food history conference in the world. The subject this year is more peculative than is often the case and contributors have ranged widely over a topic which allows them to explore the sychological bases of food consumption and the development of cookery, as well as more obvious excursions down memory lane in pursuit of food and drink. There are upwards of 30 papers from food historians based in Britain, United States, Japan and the Far East, Australia, and Northern Europe.