Dishes that once filled tables and then vanished, from Babylonian stews to Roman fish sauce. What they were, who ate them and why they disappeared.
3 stories · All stories
Almost every ancient Roman recipe we have comes from one late cookbook, Apicius. It is a book of honey, pepper and fish sauce, and it was not written by the man whose name it carries.
The Forme of Cury, written about 1390, holds 196 recipes from a king's cooks. Read closely, they undo several popular ideas about what medieval Europe ate.
Four household dishes, from Italian bread soup to Jewish schmaltz, show how family recipes survive, change or vanish when nobody writes them down.
One food history story, delivered every week.