"...in twenty meals, The taste of Empire tells the story of how the British created a global food trade that moved people and plants across countries...Taking us on a wide-ranging culinary journey from the American frontier to the Far East, from sixteenth-century Newfoundland fisheries to present day celebrations of Thanksgiving, Lizzie Collingham uncovers the decisive role of the British Empire in shaping our modern diet."--Dust jacket.

Part I. Chapter one, in which it is fish day on the Mary Rose, anchored in Portsmouth harbour (Saturday 18 July 1545): how the trade in Newfoundland salt cod laid the foundations for the Empire -- Chapter two, in which John Dunton eats oatcake and hare boiled in butter in a Connaught cabin (1698): how Ireland was planted with English, became a centre of the provisions trade and fed the emerging Empire -- Chapter three, in which the Holloway family eat maize bread and salt beef succotash, Sandwich, New England (June 1647): how the English chased the dream of the yeoman farmer but were forced to compromise -- Chapter four, in which Colonel James Drax holds a feast at his sugar plantation on the island of Barbados (1640s): how the West Indian sugar islands drove the growth of the First British Empire -- Chapter five, in which la Belinguere entertains Sieur Michel Jajolet de la Courbe to an African-American meal on the west coast of Africa (June 1686): how West Africa exchanged men for maize and manioc -- Chapter six, in which Samuel and Elizabeth Pepys dine on pigeons à l'esteuvé and boeuf à la mode at a French eating house in Covent Garden (12 May 1667): how pepper took the British to India, where they discovered calicoes and tea -- Part II. Chapter seven, in which the Latham family eat beef and potato stew, pudding and treacle, Scarisbrick, Lancashire (22 January 1748): how the impoverishment of the English rural labourer gave rise to the industrial ration -- Chapter eight, in which a slave family eat maize and possum on Middleburg plantation, South Carolina (1730s): how the American colony of South Carolina was built on African rice -- Chapter nine, in which Lady Anne Barnard enjoys fine cabin dinners on a voyage to the Cape of Good Hope (February to May 1797): how the Empire stimulated the growth of the provisions industry -- Chapter ten, in which Sons of Liberty drink rum punch at the Golden Ball Tavern, Merchants Row, Boston (a cold evening in January 1769): how rum brought the American colonies together and split Britain's First Empire apart -- Part III. Chapter eleven, in which Kamala prepares a meal for her family, near Patna, Bihar (February 1811): how the East India Company turned opium into tea -- Chapter twelve, in which Sarah Harding and her family grow fat eating plenty of good food in Waipawa, Hawke's Bay, New Zealand (29 July 1874): how hunger drove the explosion of European emigration in the nineteenth century -- Chapter thirteen, in which Frank Swannell eats bean stew, bannock and prune pie in British Columbia (15 November 1901): how the industrial ration fed those who pushed out the boundaries of empire and processed foods became magical symbols of home -- Chapter fourteen, in which the Reverend Daniel Tyerman and Mr George Bennet attend a tea party in Raiatea, the Society Islands (4 December 1822): how the spread of European provisions colonised taste -- Part IV. Chapter fifteen, in which diamond miners cook up an iguana curry at a rum shop in Guyana during the rainy season (1993): how non-Europeans migrated to work on plantations producing tropical foods for the British -- Chapter sixteen, in which the Bartons entertain the Wilsons to tea in the London Road slum district of Manchester (May 1839): how the wheat for the working-class loaf came to be grown in America and the settler colonies -- Chapter seventeen, in which Prakash Tandon enjoys a Sunday roast with this landlady's family in a Manchester council house (1931): how foreign food imports improved the working-class diet and made Britain dependent on its Empire -- Chapter eighteen, in which the recipe for irio changes (Kenya, 1900-2016): how the Empire impacted on subsistence farming in East Africa and introduced colonial malnutrition -- Chapter nineteen, in which infantryman R.L. Crimp eats bully beef and sweet potatoes in a forward camp in the North African desert (September 1941): how the Empire supported Britain during the Second World War -- Chapter twenty, in which My Oldknow dreams of making an Empire plum pudding (24 December 1850) and Bridget Jones attends Una Alconbury's New Year's Day Curry Buffet Lunch (1 January 1996): how Christmas fare took the Empire into British homes.