宗教对饮食的影响

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting in a bar, quietly sipping my favourite Belgian beer and quite sacrilegiously I offered up a bit of a prayer for the divine intervention that made it taste so good. I know it's wrong. But it got me thinking, thinking about all the amazing ways that monks, nuns, all sorts of religious groups have affected the history of our food, not just the beers but some of the world's most magnificent cheeses, liqueurs, stuff that's been responsible for a lot of very earthly pleasure. And it seems that it's not just in the actual production of food and drink they've influenced us. In the medieval landscape, religious institutions had a huge influence at seats of learning as advocates for good animal husbandry. As most monasteries had herb gardens, they also wrote down as so recorded many of the medicinal advantages of herbs. The days of huge monasteries commanding an area may be over but as we'll hear, there're still lively, innovative and profitable businesses in Britain and abroad with the sisters and brothers making the most of online sales to reach new customers. I spoke to the food historian Annie Gray.

The history of religious institutions is so so long in this country. And the first institutions were founded somewhere in the sixth century. So inevitably because monastic institutions were huge landowners, even as the great landowners had an influence on our cuisine and on the way which the country developed, so too did those monastic institutions. So you really in some ways can't untangle the history of food from the history of religious institutions.