Food History Eras: From Neolithic Farming to Modern Cuisine

Food history in twelve eras. The Neolithic brought the first farming; ancient and classical Greece and Rome built the first great kitchens; the medieval world had spices and feasts; the Renaissance and Baroque courts refined table manners and made sugar sculptures; the colonial era moved potatoes, tomatoes and chocolate across the oceans.

The Victorian and Edwardian ages saw the first celebrity chefs and cookbooks for the middle class, the industrial era canned and mass-produced food, and modern and contemporary cooking brought fast food and fine dining. Victorian is the only diagonal word.

Food History Eras Vocabulary: 12 Words to Find

Words run across, up and down, and diagonally; 6 of the 12 read backwards. The longest word is Contemporary, with 12 letters.

Ancient: The ancient world of Egypt, Greece and Rome, when bread, wine and olive oil became staples.
Baroque: The 17th and early 18th centuries, when royal courts held lavish banquets with sugar sculptures.
Classical: The age of classical Greece and Rome, whose banquets and recipes we still read about.
Colonial: The era of European colonies, when potatoes, tomatoes, chocolate and sugar crossed the oceans.
Contemporary: Today's cooking, which mixes traditions, technology and ingredients from all over the world.
Edwardian: The years 1901 to 1910 in Britain, known for long, elaborate dinners and grand hotel restaurants.
Industrial: The age of factories, when food began to be canned, refrigerated and mass-produced.
Medieval: The Middle Ages, when spices were luxuries and feasts were served in many courses at once.
Modern: The 20th century, with supermarkets, fast food and the rise of restaurant chefs.
Neolithic: The New Stone Age, when people began farming crops and keeping animals, about 12,000 years ago.
Renaissance: The 15th and 16th centuries, when Italian cooks wrote influential cookbooks and the fork spread.
Victorian: The reign of Queen Victoria, 1837 to 1901, when afternoon tea and Christmas dinner took their modern shape.

How to Solve the Food History Eras Word Search

"Contemporary" is the longest word, 12 letters, and runs upward; it has the only P and Y. "Baroque" has the only Q, and "Edwardian" the only W. "Colonial" and "contemporary" both start with CO.

Food History Timeline Activities

Put the twelve eras in order on a timeline.
Give one era to each pair of students and ask them for one food from that time.
Discuss which foods traveled between continents in the colonial era.