“Tasting Difference demonstrates that most experience other cultures and traditions through the mouth. By eating foods from distant lands, one can experience the other from the comfort of home. What humans accept and do not accept as palatable is a rich area of study, and Tasting Difference is an important contribution to the discussion.”
—Choice
“Overall, the book contributes to developing conjectures on why certain communities and bodies cannot be incorporated into the body politic of the nation or the globe, together with explicating how this exclusion is affected by a complex network of taste and feelings that foodstuffs evoke.”
—Gastronomica
“Tasting Difference makes an important contribution in showing that early modern discussions of food involve a more visceral or 'hyperembodied difference'... than other representations of foreignness.”
—Wendy Wall, Northwestern University, author of Recipes for Thought
“A breathtaking tour of Early Modern authors' obsession with bizarre foods, from spices to sugar and coffee to human flesh. The appetites that would fuel colonial empires were nascent in the literary imagination and Shahani does a superb job exploring the meaning of consuming otherness in this fascinating new study.”
—Ken Albala, University of the Pacific, author of Grow Food, Eat Food, Share Food
“Tasting Difference offers a profound contribution to our understanding of early modern life by revealing the ambivalence surrounding the introduction of "exotic" foodstuffs to Europe. Shahani's use of literary texts to demonstrate how food as both substance and metaphor constructs racialized difference is wonderfully original.”
—Darra Goldstein, Founding Editor, Gastronomica