A pan of beans, a piece of bread, a jug of wine; and to make all three more tasty three onions: this is the poor meal of a peasant, eaten at the corner of a table. But are we sure this is such a poor meal as it appears to us? This picture was depicted at the end of the sixteenth century of Annibale Carracci, a time of famine and epidemic, and for a peasant of this time, this was perhaps a typical meal rather than poor.
Without food you cannot live. But food is also an occasion for meeting and to party, a symbol of abundance and well being. For this reason many artists have often inserted images in their own creations. Today there are also chefs who use food to create images. From  Omero to Boccaccio, from Leonardo to Kant, from Tolstoj to Gadda, Neruda, Calvino: thoughout literature, ancient, medieval, rinascimente. Barocc and all the contempory European literature has evolved to form a history of cuisine culture, using the customs of different tables, the likes and dislikes they have produced images of society.
Food is so important in the life of man and also has a fundamental role in religion. In the new Testament, for example, there are at least four moments where Jesus uses food to teach us: The Wedding Feast at Caanan, when Jesus transformed the water into wine; The Multiplication of The Bread and The Fish; The Last Supper and The Supper of Emmaus.
Behind the tastes, the smells, are born a number of significances; sitting at the table, but also staying at the cookers, exists a number of symbols and languages that constitute the varied panorama of the culinary science.
Our body, our psychology, education, culture, atmosphere, and history, are fundamental elements in order to travel over again and to understand the route of the pleasure, since conditions not only the preparation and the presentation of the food, but also the visual, olfactory perception and the choice of some flavours in place of others. Ignored elements exist then often but not little important which the desire, the creativity, the desire, the imagination that transform foods and their preparation in a true one and just language. Who loves to cook generally discovers, search, studies, ago experience, second acts its acquaintances, and tries, thanks to the fantasy, to create in order to favour the necessity to communicate be of mind and passions. We would not have to scandalize therefore, when we feel to define the culinary an art.
The history of the feeding, therefore, is a rich history of surprise, alimentary civilizations that they change, a world of tastes, flavours and scents still all to discover. A world that possesses its history naturally, its uses and customs, its artists, its legends, traditions, and because not, its heroes, scientists, philosophers, musicians and poets.