Jane Austen Lamb

You can imagine any of Jane Austen’s heroines sitting in a great English manor eating a meal like this, which comes from a recipe printed in The Professed Cook in 1776.

Mead

Oldest fermented drink in the world and all you need is alcohol yeast, honey, and patience! Actually, a lot of patience… waiting 6 agonizing weeks to uncork was the hardest part.

Roman Tuna and Garum

Roast tuna from a 4th century Roman cookbook featuring the all-around popular Roman condiment, garum, and its all-around not-so-great taste

Saturnalia and the Origin of Christmas

We celebrated Saturnalia on New Year’s Eve!

Mock Turtle Soup

You’ve probably heard of Mock Turtles from reading Alice in Wonderland, but it turns out it’s actually a real dish.

Tudor Meat Pies

This recipe comes from the time of our favorite Medieval England misogynist, Henry VIII, and was prepared often at Hampton Court, his main castle.

Catherine de’ Medici and Liver

Maybe it’s better that this recipe hasn’t made it to modern times, but this dish was a favorite of Catherine de’ Medici’s in her quest to just finally have some damn kids.

Sikbaj, the Origin of Fish & Chips and Ceviche

Little known fact – sikbaj is the ancestor of ceviche and fish & chips. For two fish dishes that don’t resemble each other at all, it started out as a sweet and sour beef stew in 6th century Persia, where it was the favorite dish of Khosrau I.

This is How It Started

This project started out when Hong had to take a summer course on food and I started reading one of his textbooks, The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu by Daniel Jurafsky. It’s actually a fascinating book that goes into various historical food oddities like how ketchup actually originated from Southeast Asia and how the word entree came into use. As I was reading a chapter on how ceviche and fish & chips originated from this medieval Arab stew that was a favorite of Shahs of the Sassanid Empire and had ballads sung about it by sailors, I was like ‘Hey this recipe is surprisingly achievable! HONGHONGHONG, WE NEED TO COOK THIS AND SING ABOUT IT.’

(Hong was down for everything up to the singing part. I will be solo-ing that part.) (I’m also doing most of the writing and Hong will be doing the – ‘Liz, that sounds really stupid, take that out’)

I’ve always been very interested in history, but for all the indirect contact I get with historical recreations, black and white photos, and diagrams, it’s not the same as if I could only have a time machine and see everything. But cooking and eating food that people actually ate historically can be something AKIN TO THAT.

And so we’re on a food time machine: cooking, cutting, and burning our way through history.