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#history of food
vol-au-vending-machine · 11 months
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Historians are puzzled as to how early humans invented bread.
But I want to know who the hell invented jelly. What lunatic had the time, the curiosity, and the resources to spend answering the obscure question "if you boil pigs' trotters for 8 hours, what happens?"
Never mind inventing calculus, how bored do you have to be to invent jelly?
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gwydpolls · 1 month
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Time Travel Question 44: Medievalish History 8 and Earlier
These Questions are the result of suggestions from the previous iteration.
This category may include suggestions made too late to fall into the correct earlier time grouping. Basically, I'd already moved on to human history, but I'd periodically get a pre-homin suggestion, hence the occasional random item waaay out of it's time period, rather than reopen the category.
In some cases a culture lasted a really long time and I grouped them by whether it was likely the later or earlier grouping made the most sense with the information I had. (Invention ofs tend to fall in an earlier grouping if it's still open. Ones that imply height of or just before something tend to get grouped later, but not always. Sometimes I'll split two different things from the same culture into different polls because they involve separate research goals or the like).
Please add new suggestions below if you have them for future consideration. All cultures and time periods welcome.
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newhistorybooks · 8 months
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"White Burgers, Black Cash comes crashing through everything you thought you knew about fast food to land as the definitive history of how this industry has become so entrenched in Black communities. Built on a staggering body of evidence, this riveting and accessible exploration of fast food’s troubled racial transformation is necessary reading for anyone concerned about inequitable food environments. A masterpiece."
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la-merlaison · 1 month
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Louis XIII and his cooking adventures 🍴🥞
When it comes to our Louis XIII cult, I often refer to the king's iconic omelettes, but what about his other stuff? For example, he really loved sweets (like beignets or jams), but could he also cook them? The answer is YES, and that's not even all yet!
Louis was a curious child who's head was already filled with various interests and cooking became one of them when he was only ten years old at the time (which is quite unusual for a king). First ever case of the king cooking was recorded on february 11th of 1611, when he was preparing milk soups for the Duchess of Guise / Catherine of Cleves. So milk soup, most likely, could be Louis' very first dish made by himself!
Of course many kids have a sweet tooth and our precious omelette king was not an exception which I guess is why he started to learn how to cook mostly from recipes of sweets. Also, take a shot every time I say "sweets" or "cooking" (don't..) 🕊️
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So, among 17th century royal sw- *ahem* DESSERTS we had in our menu – a jam, quince jelly, beignets (basically french donuts) and marzipans. In a well-known, among many of y'all Louis stalkers, journal of his doctor Jean Héroard I found some clear evidence of Louis XIII cooking some of these himself, so here it is feat. me periodically panicking over my own translation because my half-french friend is too busy atm and I don’t wanna bother them:
June 6th, 1611 — «He walks through the corridor from the study to the paneled gallery where he had an oven for making jams, he is amused to see how it's done.» I know it's not exactly him cooking, but I just wanted to leave it here :")
October 15th, 1612 — «Madame comes to see him; he has fun making jam with Mademoiselle de Vendôme»
January 29th, 1613 — «He often has fun making almond milk and marzipans at Madame's house.»
March 6th, 1615 — «It was very cold; he goes to the kitchen, makes omelettes, beignets, fried eggs; it was he who made them and ate a little of that he tasted.» Pretty sure the last few words could be translated better because it's always rather my terrible french or a little confusing way of Héroard's writing, so feel free to correct me.
February 3rd, 1616 — «He is preparing a small snack of dry jam for the queen, who must come to him at two o'clock. After going back to bed, he happily forms various battalions of his little silver men.»
February 5th, 1622 — «He leaves Saint-Germain, goes to Pontoise, where he enjoys making and eating beignets; while dining at Cormeille, he suddenly goes to the goblet in which he makes little cream puffs.» The original text says «petits choux au lait» and I have no idea what could that exactly be, but it seems like some sort of little éclair-like buns made of milk? Little cream puffs?? Maybe by «choux au lait» Jean meant «choux à la crème» which were invented back in 1540 in France.
I know you've been waiting for the quince jelly too, but unfortunately I couldn't find anything about the jelly :c Though, judging by what we've got here It's still quite possible Louis could cook quince jelly as well, hmm... Anyways, if you know something I don't know of the jelly mystery, hit me up!
In the future, this great love for desserts will be inherited by his son Philippe I, Duke of Orléans (brother of Louis XIV), who is also a very interesting character in history!!
In conclusion I must say that Louis not only had a sweet tooth, but also a big love for trying out different things, all this curiosity and pure excitement, even when it comes to something so simple and familiar like food, will never ever stop to fascinate me :"D
Btw speaking about Louis 'trying out different things', I of course still have a lot to share on this as well! Stay tuned and have a good day/night 💘💘💘
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"In the absence of the bird that usually graces the Christmas dinner we were obliged to use coon, or rather several coons, with entrees of venison and wild goose. At the request of the young men, who said it would not be a Christmas feast without them, we fried doughnuts in coon's fat, and they were much relished."
from "Christmas in Early Winona" in The Frontier Holiday edited by Glenn Hanson
What Changes for Kirsten doesn't tell you is that Minnesota pioneers at least once, for Christmas dinner, ate raccoons, and also fried donuts in their grease.
Why Minnesota pioneers, why?
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eleventhjove · 2 years
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James Hemings (1765-1801), an enslaved chef who worked under Thomas Jefferson. He was the first American to train as a chef in France and is credited for introducing macaroni and cheese into American culture. In 1802, Jefferson served "macaroni pie" at a state dinner, which was very likely Hemings' recipe, and the dish grew in popularity from then on.
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arctic-hands · 7 months
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"Europeans are the master race!" We didn't even figure out that we could put our secondary staple foods like meat and cheese in between slices of our primary staple food of bread until the Seventeen Hundreds, Common Era
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silelda · 11 months
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These patina were a cross between a modern lasagne and middle school Sloppy Joes, though the ingredients include things like turtledove and sow's udder, which I guess is also like middle school Sloppy Joes.
Tasting History by Max Miller
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Granita di limone
One cannot speak of Sicily and lemons without a mention of lemon granita, an intensely refreshing sweet-sour frozen confection of sugar mixed with water, lemon juice and rind. Sicilians' passion for granita is such that many eat granita even for breakfast, often accompanied by a soft roll called brioscia, or brioche. In a traditional cafe or bar, with or without brioche, in every season and at any time of day or night, waiters serve up elegant glass dishes with pale yellow scoops of the island's signature delight, granita di limone.
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On Sicily's eastern side this passion is connected not only to the coast's prolific lemon groves but also to Europe's most active volcano, Mount Etna. Along with plumes of smoke and slow-moving lava flows, the mountain is known for its snow. Before refrigeration, snow provided an astonishing and invaluable source of cold in the relentless scorch of summer. In ancient times Greeks and Romans packed snow into caves on Etna's slopes and withdrew it as needed to chill their wine. Snow merchants profited from Etna's natural cold power into the 1940s, collecting snow from the grottos every night and hauling it in horse-drawn carts down the mountain to Catania, where it was used to preserve food and make ice cream.
The island's earliest Arab residents must certainly have employed Mount Etna's snow for their delicious slushy drink called sarbat or sharbat. A cold fruit-sugar syrup, it was consumed between courses to refresh the palate and likely evolved into the sweet ice we call sorbet or sherbet. Yet it is only legend that sorbet and gelato were born in Sicily during the Arab reign, since real ice cream was not made until the endothermic principle of putting salt on ice was introduced around 1650. Granita, however, is not a true ice cream but a kind of frozen lemonade, and its origin is probably much older, enjoyed long before ice cream was invented. Lemons and sugar, both native to India and Persia, formed a natural marriage of sweet-tart tastes, and the most natural concoction one could make was simply to combine the two.
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– Toby Sonneman, Book - Lemon: A Global History
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gwydionmisha · 4 months
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Ancient Roman Garum Revisited
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farbverduemmer · 5 months
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Watching the latest video of Max Miller's Tasting History on sachertorte I felt that the story told from its creation to Max trying the original, however true, makes for a funny little parable.
A young Franz Sacher is pressured by the prince and chancellor himself to make a cake that must compete with the elaborate, artful and downright baroque tortes and pastries of the time. But being so young and untrained he instead bakes a simple chocolate cake with an almost obscenely bare and undecorated chocolate glaze – a symbol that this cake shines not with its glamourous appearance but with its taste. A folktale-like story about the earnest simplicity of the working class outliving the hollow superficiality of the aristocracy; one that the city of Vienna, as well as the Café Sacher prides and advertises itself with today.
Nearly two centuries after its creation, the original Sachertorte served at the Café Sacher boasts a near-inedibly solid chocolate glaze. By chasing the perfect featureless appearance that made the torte famous, the Café has opted to include egg whites in the glaze to create a smooth matte surface in sacrifice of the actual eating experience. The hollow superficiality of baroque maximalism merely replaced with the hollow superficiality of modern minimalism.
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When I bang on about Grima and Rohan and the importance of bread, this is what I’m on about
I don’t think Rohan did heavy handed sumptuary laws nor would they have done humour based food consumption (no Galen, so…) but rank and income and performance of class would still have informed what and how they ate
I forgot also that like Grima also probably ate a lot of gruel and pottage growing up, also darker breads and breads of mixed cereals then when he started working for Theoden he got the fancy white bread and it was all oooh la la
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gwydpolls · 6 months
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Time Travel Question 24: Ancient History XII and Earlier
These Questions are the result of suggestions from the previous iteration.
This category may include suggestions made too late to fall into the correct grouping.
Please add new suggestions below if you have them for future consideration. All cultures and time periods welcome.
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newhistorybooks · 2 months
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“Native foods are ubiquitous but unacknowledged. An expert historiography based on thorough research in environmental and social histories, Native Foods frames the rich, emergent, experiential literature on Indigenous foodways in the United States, ending pointedly with a critique of the neocolonial quest for native superfoods to save us from the travails of Euro-American civilization.”
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hagleyvault · 2 years
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We’re welcoming the month of April today with a rare 1943 photograph from the testing laboratory of an obscure and now-defunct branch of the Heston Industrial corporation’s Soy-Lentil Division. The experimental food sciences team, which worked with ocean plankton, was shuttered in 1973 after encountering catastrophic problems in its supply lines.
This ‘square meal wrapped in cellophane’ product information photograph is part of the Hagley Library’s collection of DuPont Company Product Information photographs (Accession 1972.341). To view more material from this collection online now, click here to visit its page in our Digital Archive.
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mycosylivingroom · 2 years
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