In this continuing series, the topic of vegetables embraces a wide range of pieces from English, American and overseas scholars. Their treatments encompass both a broader consideration of the vegetable diet and the history of the cultivation and consumption of specific varieties. Cookery and consumption are not highlighted at the expense of cultivation, so there are some interesting essays on allotments, market gardening in the Paris region, early-modern vegetable gardening in England and the development of markets in India. The theme has been treated with admirable latitude in contributions on vegetables and diplomacy, vegetable carving, and vegetables in Renaissance art. Essays include: (Don't) Eat Your Vegetables: A Historical Semiotics of Carving Legumes (Julia Abramson); The War of Vegetables: The Rise & Fall of the English Allotment Movement (Lesley Acton); The First Scientific Defense of a Vegetarian Diet (Ken Albala); Mukimono & Modoki: Japan's Culinary Trompe l'oeil (Elizabeth Andoh); The Bitter - and Flatulent - Aphrodisiac: Synchrony and Diachrony of the Culinary Use of Muscari Comosum in Greece and Italy' (Anthony Buccini); Eat Your Greens: Traditional Leafy Vegetables for Better Nutrition (Jeremy Cherfas); 'We Talked About the Aubergines: Some Minor Pleasures of European Diplomacy (Andrew Dalby); Akkoub ( Gundelia Tournefortii - Tournefort's gundelia): An Edible Wild Thistle from the Lebanese Mountains (Anissa Helou); Is There Salvation in Sweetness? Sugar Beets in America (Cathy Kaufman); The Potato in Irish Cuisine and Culture (Mairtin Mac Con Iomaire & Padraic Og Gallagher); Sweet As Notes on the Kumara or New Zealand Sweet Potato as a Taonga, or Treasure (Ray McVinnie); Wild Thing: The Naga Morich Story (Michael & Joy Michaud); 'Per rape et porri et per spinachi': Re-examining the Realities of Vegetable Consumption at the Monastery of Santa Trinita in Post-Plague Florence (Salvatore Musumeci); Les Maraichers - Market Gardeners of the Ile de France (Lizbeth Nicol); Keeping the Home Fires Burning: Culinary Exchanges, Sustainability and Traditional Vegetable Markets in India (Krina Patel); The Los Angeles Vegetable Cult (Charles Perry); From the Plate to the Palate: Visual Delights from the Vegetable Kingdoms of Italy (Gillian Riley); But Did the English Eat Their Vegetables? A Look at English Kitchen Gardens and the Vegetable Cookery they Imply, 1650-1800 (William Rubel); Renaissance Italy and the Fabulous, Flamboyant Inslata (June di Schino); Pomtajer (Karin Vaneker); A Vegetable Zodiac from Late Antique Alexandria (Susan Weingarten).

In this continuing series, the topic of morality embraces a wide range of essays from English, American and overseas scholars who ponder contemporary questions such as eating foie gras, advertising junk food, and master and servant relationships as well as historical studies concerning fasting in the Reformation, food in Dickens' novels, the ethics of early gastronomy and Jainism and food. In nigh on forty essays the whole question of the interplay between our eating habits and ethics is covered from multiple angles. The rise of ecological awareness and the intimate connection between food habits and the big questions of life such as global warming make the topic one of the most popular among present students of foodways.This volume will be a significant edition to the present debate. Some of the essays are as follows: Holly Shaffer, "The Morality of Luxury Cuisine in Lucknow, India"; Marcia Zoladz, "Cacao in Brazil"; Andrew F. Smith, "Marketing Junk Food to Children in the United States"; Raymond Sokolov, "The Myth of Roman Decadence at Table; Cicilia Leong-Salobir, "The Colonial Kitchen and the Role of Servants"; Ken Albala, "The Ideology of Fasting in the Reformation Era"; Bruce Kraig, "Why Not Eat Pets?"; Rachel Ankeny, "The Moral Economy of Red Meat in Australia"; Tracy Thong, "Traders and Tricksters in Ben Jonson's "Bartholomew Fair""; Robert Appelbaum, "The Civility of Eating"; Rachel Laudan, "The Refined Cuisine of Plain Cooking"; and Lilo Lloyd-Jones, "The Glutton, Voluptuary and Epicure in Early Gastronomic Literature". The book follows the standard form of academic proceedings and the readership is therefore specialised. This is the twenty-fifth volume in the series.