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Some students choose a college for its food, a reason why
the Princeton Review now publishes a “Best Campus
Food” list. In 2008 Wheaton College topped the list after
its food manager, who previously worked at the Ritz-
Carlton in Boston, created menus with lavender-infused
pork chops and cumin-lime chicken with avocado cream
sauce. The next year Virginia Tech climbed over Wheaton,
chiefly because of the freshness of its herbs and spices,
grown by the school’s horticulture department. In 2009
Sodexo, a food management company that tracks trends
in student tastes, noted that college students craved spicy
foods such as garlic-ginger chicken wings, Vietnamese pho
(a peppery soup), green tea, pomegranate smoothies,
crab cakes, and samosas. The lesson for college food ser-
vices was simple: Make it spicy!
If students choose a college because of the tastiness
of its fare, imagine how early modern Europeans (whose
diet chiefly consisted of bread, porridge, boiled meats,How do you rate your college’s food?