Global Food History

Pilcher, Jeffrey M.

doi: 10.1080/20549547.2023.2167794pmid: N/A

Scholliers, Peter

doi: 10.1080/20549547.2022.2110786pmid: N/A

The paper studies the working-class consumption of fresh pastry and viennoiseries in the decades before the Great War. These goods had been the privilege of the rich up to the 1880s. Investigating the diffusion of fresh pastry and viennoiseries, viewed here as an example of inclusion of a bourgeois good into working-class consumption, may clarify the pace of dissemination of new consumer goods among broad layers. The production of pastry by the socialist cooperative Vooruit (Ghent, East-Flanders) is studied, which gives a political dimension to the paper. Based on original documents, the paper concludes that prior to 1914 there were three successive waves of diffusion of pastry sales by this cooperative, shaped by price policy, advertisement campaigns, the organization of the sales, and the desires of consumers. The socialist cooperative largely contributed to the diffusion of hitherto luxury goods among the working classes.

Otter, Chris

doi: 10.1080/20549547.2022.2138068pmid: N/A

This article analyses the formation of the logistical system designed to supply and deliver milk in twentieth-century Britain. The article explores several themes: the painful, monotonous lives of cattle; the affective relations forged by milkmen; the acceleration of milk distribution; the rise of multiple chokepoints; and the increasingly encapsulated nature of modern milk. The system was a vast technology of niche construction, producing new milieux for cattle while increasing human milk consumption and providing novel environments for animal behavior, notably the emergent capacity of some birds to open milk bottles. The article, finally, draws attention to two major tensions within the system: that between the treatment of cows and the affection with which milkmen and bottled milk were frequently held; and that between the genuine advances toward seamless milk distribution and the endless irruption of chokepoints. These tensions suggest that logistics is a more contradictory process than is sometimes assumed.