culinary history

Prologue “Have you ever had American cuisine?” “No.” “Well, neither have they.” (joke loosely translated from the original French) American food, where it is discussed at all in food circles, is discussed purely as a joke. This is perfectly understandable, particularly from the viewpoint of my...

Much like potatoes in Northern Europe, tomatoes are such a staple of Mediterranean cuisine that it's easy to forget they only started eating them after the Columbian exchange. Up until very late 15th century - at the absolute earliest - there were no tomatoes in Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece...

I've never been able to understand why noodles aren't a bigger fixture in North Indian cuisine. You'd think bordering a bunch of regions that really like noodles (East Asia, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and South India) would mean they'd be pretty prominent, but for some reason, they're not all...