Cookbook Countdown: Top 10 Titles on the History of Food

1: DIY Prehistoric Cooking

If Jacqui Wood’s ancient recipes for the perfect Christmas dinner have inspired you to turn your kitchen clock back, then there's more help at  hand in Prehistoric Cooking, Wood’s first book about old school cooking. In it, she traces the eating habits of our ancestors, starting with hunter-gatherers and going through to the Iron Age. Recipes are scattered throughout the book, based on archaeological findings and Wood's own experimental archaeology techniques.

In a similar vein (though without the hands-on research) is an English Heritage book by Jane Renshaw, Prehistoric Cookery: Recipes and History, which rather nicely concedes that the challenge of recreating recipes from the past has its limits: “some of the ingredients, like mammoth steaks or rhinoceros joints, are difficult to find in the modern supermarket”.

2: Make me Human!

If you want to find out more about how prehistoric tastes evolved, there’s a swathe of academic – and not-so-academic – texts out there. In Continent of Hunter Gatherers: New Perspectives in Australian Prehistory, Harry Lourandos challenges the common belief that the environment was the major determinant of hunter-gatherers. He also argues that the prehistoric period was dynamic and revolutionary Down Under.

The use of fire – which Richard Wrangham covers off in Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human – and the move to farming were two huge steps in the development of dietary habits of early man (and woman). In The Agricultural Revolution in Prehistory: Why Did Foragers Become Farmers?, Graeme Barker explores how and why hunter-gatherers turned to the land for subsistance. In a similar vein is Hunters in Transition, by edited Marek Zvelebil and part of Cambridge University Press’ extensive ‘New Directions in Archaeology’ series. For a thoroughly new and original take on not only ancient hunting but also on its use in the modern world, see Barry Lewis’ Hunting In Britain: From the Ice Age to the Present.

3: British Food  

Taste: The Story of Britain Through Its Cooking by Kate Colquhoun covers everything from the invention of ice-cream to Anglo Saxon feasts and the skinning of eels. No less interesting is Tasting The Past: British Food From The Stone Age To The Present Day in which Jacqui Wood builds on her earlier work exploring prehistoric cooking. Here, she offers a more concentrated study of what Brits ate in ancient times, and how their diets have evolved since. Again, recipes are suggested throughout the book.

4: The Feasts of Rome and Greece

Two things more than anything else have helped us understand what the Romans ate. The first is, of course, archaeological evidence. The second is Apicius, ancient Rome’s resident ‘foodie’. We should respect Apicus for his appreciation of nice food and the innovative way in which he went about experimenting with it. But we should respect him even more for so generously writing down everything he ate and leaving it for us to enjoy. His is the sole surviving cook book from Roman times, and his recipes form the basis of much of what we know about Roman cooking. Apicus: A Critical Edition is an excellent introduction to the man and his food.

One of its co-authors, Sally Grainger, has also produced Cooking Apicius: Roman Recipes For Today, in which she has adapted his recipes for modern kitchens. Grainger is also the co-author (with Andrew Dalby) of The Classical Cookbook, an earlier British Museum release that explores ancient Mediterranean-style food, and includes 50 recipes sourced from from 750 BC to AD 450 (among them Olive Relish and Toronaean Shark. Yum…)

There’s also Mark Grant’s Roman Cookery: Ancient Recipes For Modern Kitchens, which offers simple and easy-to-prepare recipes for each of the day’s main meals. Or if it’s boiled parrot or jellyfish omelettes you’re after, Patrick Faas has both in Around The Roman Table: Food And Feasting In Ancient Rome. There are around 150 more palatable dishes as well. Food And Cooking In Roman Times does all of the above but for learner chefs and kids.

For a more academic spin on Classical cooking, Feeding The Ancient Greek City examines what people ate in ancient Greece, and how they coped with challenges such as food shortages. In Taste Or Taboo: Dietary Choices In Antiquity, Michael Beer discusses why ancient Greeks and Romans opted for a simple diet, why Pythagoreans denied themselves meat and beans, and how poor people still often ate like kings.

5: Food for Pharoahs

The Pharaoh's Kitchen: Recipes From Ancient Egypt's Enduring Food Traditions by Magda Mehdawy and Amr Hussein is out on January 1, 2010, so if you’re in need of a late Christmas present, then it's a must. Or try Magda Mehdawy’s earlier release, the award-winning My Egyptian Grandmother’s Kitchen. Still on kings and queens, Food Fit For Pharoahs: An Ancient Egyptian Cookbook by Michelle Berriedale-Johnson also introduces some of the delights of Egyptian food. It’s illustrated with images of food and feasting drawn from tomb walls and papyri.

Fish And Fishing In Ancient Egypt by Douglas Brewer and Renee Friedman is an excellent study of how fish made it out of the Nile and onto plates. It explores the economic and religious significance of fishing, as well as fishing methods (many of them depicted in paintings and reliefs), and the types if fish enjoyed by the ancient Egyptians (including the electric catfish Malapterurus electricus with his 200-volt sting. Ouch.)

6: General Food History

An Edible History Of Humanity by Tom Standage explores the role of food in the shaping of civilisations and societies. From the emergence of farming in ancient times to today's use of sugar cane and corn to make ethanol, Standage argues that food has been a “kind of technology, a tool that has changed the course of human progress”.

A History Of Food by Maguelonne Toussaint-Samat is a comprehensive study of the evolution of food and cooking, from hunting and gathering to today, which HK’s food reviewer says “goes quite well with a cup of tea and a biscuit".  Also of interest is Food And Drink In Archaeology 2, which is the result of a University of Nottingham Postgraduate Conference that discussed a range of issues relating to food production and consumption across various archaeological periods. Inside Ancient Kitchens, edited by Elizabeth Klarich, meanwhile, also takes a global approach, comparing studies of prehistoric diets and eating habits from Peru to the Philippines.

7: Washing it all Down

There’s no-one more qualified to tell you what to toast your Roman banquet with than biomolecular archaeologist Patrick McGovern. The man is the world’s leading authority on the history of wine and how to reinvent it ancient-style.  Start with his first book Ancient Wine: The Search For The Origins Of Viniculture before progressing on to his latest Uncorking The Past: The Quest For Wine, Beer, And Other Alcoholic Beverages. It’s guaranteed to inspire a new generation of home-brewers.

It wasn’t wine or beer, though, that sparked the American Revolution; it was tea. That episode in relatively recent history is covered in The True History of Tea, as is the leaf’s journey from Asia in ancient times to the tea pots of the modern Western world. The 233,858 members (and counting) of Facebook’s ‘A cup of tea solves everything’ group can’t be wrong.

8: Hot and Spicy

Fire And Spice: Parsi Cookery by Joyce Westrip is the first book to be published on Parsi cooking outside of India. It honours an aromatic cuisine that arrived in India from Persia some 1,300 years ago. Spices: A Global History sees Fred Czarra trace the origins of spices from ancient trade through to their use in modern kitchens.
John Keay’s does likewise in his excellent, indepth The Spice Route: A History.

9: Stuff on the Side

In The Untold History Of The Potato, the humble spud journeys down the coast of the Americas 15,000 years ago to arrive on kitchen tables the world over today. John Reader explains how. For mashed potato fans everywhere.

‘The food of life’ is given no less detailed coverage in Six Thousand Years Of Bread: Its Holy And Unholy History by H. E. Jacob, which takes us from prehistory to the Bible (“Give us this day our daily bread…”) and onto Egypt. It’s not just an academic study, however; Jacob also describes his own experiences in a Nazi concentration camp, where he subsisted on bread made of sawdust.

In Salt: A World History, Mark Kurlansky explains the politics of salt throughout history, from its influence in establishing trade routes and cities, through to its financing of wars and provocation of revolutions.

10: Chocoholics Rejoice

It’s chocolate, of course, deserving of a category all of its own. Chocolate: History, Culture, and Heritage, edited by Louis Grivetti and Howard–Yana Shapiro, is the result of the formation in 1998 of the Chocolate History Group – a University of California-based project to document the history of chocolate (what a great gig!) The 57 essays in the book look at chocolate from its pre–Colombian days through to modern times. Bet you can’t read them all without having to pop down to the shops for a bar or two.

Read 4 comments, or leave your own

About The Author

Lynette Eyb

Last three pieces by this author:

Did Ryszard Kapuściński Follow Herodotus' Example and Make Things Up? | Top 10 Ancient Sites in Syria | People Power Could Signal the End of Uluru Tourist Climb

Lynette Eyb is the books editor of Heritage-Key.com. She trained in Australia as a journalist before moving to London, where she wrote for and edited various magazines. She has travelled extensively, exploring the ancient wonders of China, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, the UK and Ireland along the way. Lyn lives in Bordeaux with her partner and their young daughter.