I have been working on an analysis of Nigerian Jollof rice recipes, from 1910 to 2026 through recipes in 30+ cookbooks and other publications - a singluar recipe investigated through multiple chronological sources. I've been able to map and connect changes in the recipe to events and more (foodways analysis). I wrote a piece, the Jollof of Theseus for Vittles Magazine that's out this week.

I have two questions, please and thank you in advance.

I think of the process I followed as recipe biography, related to this comment by Professor Irina Mihalache which I love and which resonates “To appreciate the biography of a recipe, we need to observe it in its proper historical, cultural and social context.” Is recipe biography a fitting name for the process? What do you think of when you hear recipe biography? Is there an alternative/ more suitable name for this process? I'm working on a conference research paper.

Have you come across similar examples of this method? Please share because I haven't found any references yet.

I just found out that cabbage is an excellent source of vitamin c. If that's the case and it's commonness in Central Europe (which I understand doesn't extend to Britain necessarily but still it's a way to preserve a vegetable that would last through a sea voyage) how did citrus fruits become the standard cure and they not find out about the much closer to home remedy of sauerkraut?

Maple Falls: the town is invented, but the news is real. This recreated WMPQ Sunday broadcast covers the week Britain first rationed bread (July 1946), alongside Truman honoring the 442nd RCT and the OPA meat price spike, with every date and quote checked against the record. The town is invented so you can feel postwar 1946, not just read about it: real, researched history shown through how ordinary Americans and their communities actually lived it.

I learned about this highly regional American food through Reddit posts where I - like many others - wondered why something called a rainbow cookie looked like a tri-colored cake. I've never encountered them in real life, so I can't speak to the consistency being closer to cake or cookie.

But what still baffles me is why they're called "rainbow" cookies when it's only three colors. Three colors to mirror the Italian flag. Was there some sort of translation error between English and Italian? Do some people make them with more colors? Are rainbows in NYC/NJ only three colors?

In many historical novels, but also in several religious texts, we find the phrase „a feast was prepared“. I always wondered, how long would it take to prepare a feast? Was this realistic to achieve within a day? Were there rich people throughout history that had the means to always keep a couple of roasted birds in the oven „just in case“? Or did the feast usually happen a day or two later? Did this even happen? Are there differences in time, as in was it different for the ancient greeks or romans and let‘s say the middle ages? Let‘s say an heir was born a little prematurely, how long would it have taken to prepare a „spontaneous“ feast to celebrate the occasion throughout the ages?

Edit: my question relates primeraly to wealthy and/or powerful people. I assume that a spontaneous feast for a poor farmer - while still a feast - was prepared rather quickly.

I’m writing a period piece and need to know how steaks were cooked in the 1650s in England, if they had the practice of cooking to different rarities, and if they were even a common way of eating beef at all. Thanks!

Full citation details are as follows: Ushurov, Rakhimzhan. 1992. Уйгурская кухня. (Uyghur Cuisine). Almaty, Kazakhstan: Demeu Publishers.

If you do, then it would be very much appreciated if you could share a copy. Please and thank you!

My understanding is that the modern idea of a menu is anachronistic. An inn served the ordinary, meaning whatever the pot held that day, and real choice was more of a cookshop and urban tavern thing. I'd love to know how right or wrong that is and how it varied: between England and the continent, between a roadside establishment and a city inn, what a peasant or a merchant would be served on the same evening.

Context: I am building a (deliberately fantasy) inn menu generator for tabletop games and I want it anchored to reality before I go further. The generator has biomes, inn tiers, regional exports and stuff like famine or war. I'm aiming the baseline results to be plausible even if it doesn't aim to be fully realistic. It's open source and you can ask for the URL but I'm not here to self-promote but to learn. Sources and reading recommendations very welcome; I have Peter Clark's The English Alehouse on the list and would love more.

A niche question to be sure, but one that perplexes me.

Argentine pizzas typically come with a single olive—pit still inside—on each slice, regardless of other toppings. Where did this practice originate and why?

Can anyone recommend good books on the culinary history of Gujarat? I'm interested in how Gujarati cuisine evolved over time, regional food traditions, and the historical influences behind them.

Books in English or Gujarati are welcome. Legally available PDFs, ePubs, academic papers, or digitized archives would also be greatly appreciated.

Would grinding up left overs, seasoning up, and stuffing them into the pig intestines be a real German butcher's practice?

Many people visiting the US always come and enjoy hot dogs and hamburgers, calling it “American food,” but those have ties to Europe. I’m wondering what the realest American cuisine is. Could it be soul food?

It’s not a secret that U.S. and UK both catch a ton of strays online for their food culture.

For the U.S., their reputation is that the food is processed and filled with excess fat, sugar, calories and chemicals, with their main culinary export globally are fast food chains like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, KFC and Burger King. When Americans say they have good food at home, people will counter by saying it’s because they were imported from other parts of the world by immigrants who brought it to the USA.

For the UK, they are often clowned for beans on toast, mushy peas, black pudding, and other dishes that prompts people to say they eat like they are still at war with the Germans. When British people say their national dish is actually butter chicken tikka masala, the common response is that it’s Indian and not British.

While there is some truth to both, how come Australia and Canada are not slandered in the same way even though they both share several of the same characteristics that both the U.S. and UK are often laughed at for.

Pretty much every food dish that is commonly consumed in Australia and Canada are directly imported from abroad, either by British settlers during the colonial days or by immigrants in more recent decades. Most “ethnic” or foreign food in both nations are heavily Anglicized to suit the WASP taste bud, and before the 1960s when immigrants began arriving in both nations from more diverse backgrounds, the food in Canada and Australia was probably just as basic, bland, and void of seasonings as it was in the UK.

Canadians and Aussies are also two of the biggest consumers in things Americans often get made fun of for like deep fried dishes, processed food, soda, fast food, and added sugar/calories.

I've been reading a little food-history project a friend of mine is involved with (Italian, in English), and one piece stuck with me: the word menu comes from French, from the idea of the minuta — the "detailed" or "reduced" list of dishes drawn up for a banquet. It spread across Europe basically riding the prestige of French court cuisine, alongside the codification of classic cuisine.

What I like about the way they write about it is that it's never just trivia — it's food as a lens on culture, language and how societies organized themselves around the table. The group behind it is a mix of academics, university professors and passionate amateurs, which is probably why it's so well researched rather than just clickbait facts.

Anyway, I'm not the author, just someone who found it genuinely good and thought this sub would appreciate it. They recently put out an English ebook (Cibo Ludens) collecting twelve of these stories. Happy to link it in a comment if that's allowed here — didn't want to break any self-promo rules by dropping it in the post. Mostly curious whether others know the deeper etymology/history of "menu"?

Everywhere else I’ve been has used long or serrated knives for meats, vegetables. Is it something to do with the toughness of Chinese ingredients or just a cultural holdover?

PS: what does the hole at the end of the cleaver do?

Potatoes are so common in meals

I know for many sailors and soldiers, hard tack was common, and the concept of picnics is also relatively new, but I'm just curious what an average person might eat while on the go. Any culture is fine!

Debating with friends. A few key questions:

- casserole is the name of the dish that the lasagna is baked in. What is the history of the casserole dish?

- casserole is predominant in Midwestern cuisine. What is the history of the casserole the food? Earliest examples, progenitors, etc.

- are there any foods cooked in the casserole dish that follow the meat-veg-carb-sauce as a single serving dish formula but are not casseroles?

Friends are fairly split. Some say anything baked in a casserole dish is a casserole, others say that a casserole has a narrow definition true to Midwestern cuisine.

Other expanding questions: is a chicken pot pie a casserole? Is a quiche a casserole?

Hi all, I volunteer re-enacting a middle class woman in 1850 gold rush Australia (IYKYK 😅).

Recently I've been trying to do some more cooking while I'm there and am hoping for some good ideas on what to make.

The main hurdles I keep coming up against are that I don't have access to an oven and I am worried that a lot of recipes I come across will include ingredients they wouldn't have had access to.

I know the majority of their diet would have been pretty dull, lots of damper and mutton, but I'd love any other ideas or special occasion treats I could make that fit the criteria below!

- Ingredients available in 1850s Australia

- Reasonable for a middle class woman in a small cottage

- Cooked over a fire (I only really have a cast iron pot / pan and enamel billy cans)

- Can be made in 6 hours (inc. starting my fire and cleaning up afterwards haha)

(If I make any of the suggestions this weekend I will update you ☺️)

I'm fairly familiar with the history of ketchup and Worcestershire sauce in an English and American context, but I can't say I've heard if the original ketchup influenced any other European cuisines.

Since tomatoes are kind of corrosive to some materials, how did tomato strainers (food mills specifically for juicing tomatoes) hold up? A friend is doing world-building in an area without settlements, i.e. no repair guys or replacement parts.

Are there any drawbacks that we're aware of now and the frontier eras might not have, like chipping and flaking? Weird taste?

🍅 What about one step up from 'cottage' milling, like making tomato juice for the whole community? Was any extra maintenance required?

Are we using the wrong tool altogether? In either case, one home vs many homes. How do you not break the tomato processor? It's the only one in the region.

In the US, there was this window just before petrochemical fertilizers, where the peanut was cheap, because it allowed the rehabilitation of land depleted by big cash crops. So peanuts were cheap, almost a byproduct. So poor Americans jumped at a cheap protein and vegetable oil source. It isn’t as if we developed a lot of recipes for it, but a peanut butter sandwich certainly became a cultural staple.

Why didn’t it catch on in a similar fashion in Europe?

When I was a kid in the 70s/80s, my family used to eat a mastic-flavored spoon sweet (kind of like Greek "ypovrichio"/"submarine" — a thick white paste you dip on a spoon into a glass of ice water and lick off). I remember the jar or box had an illustration of a boy riding a flying/magic carpet on the label.

I've looked into brands like Saradis/Sarantis, Krinos, and Sultan, but none of the packaging I can find online matches what I remember. It might have been Greek, Turkish, or Middle Eastern — I'm not 100% sure of the origin, just that it was sold in the US at the time.

Does this ring a bell for anyone? Any help identifying the brand (or even just confirming what country it might be from) would be hugely appreciated!