Sunday, July 25, 2021

Historical Food sites

Lately I have been spending more time keeping my cat, Empire, from gnawing the keycaps off of my computer keyboard, and making modern recipes for me and my spouse, than thinking about historical food.

But I do not want to neglect this blog!  So I started looking for new historical food sites, and found some interesting ones!  For purposes of this entry I've stuck to blogs that have been recently updated, and are not currently in "abandoned" status.

Historical Foodways.  This seems to be an old site (the earliest posts I found date from 2011) that has recently seen some new and interesting posts.  It is a fascinating and eclectic mix of articles adapting genuine historical recipes from very various periods.  The latest post is a history of the daiquiri.  Fascinating reading.

Realm of History.  This is a general history blog, but in its culture section I found a fascinating article about food:  9 of the oldest food recipes from history still in use today.   The article uses the term "recipe" loosely--it might be better titled, "9 of the oldest types of dishes still in use".  For example, the two oldest they list are stew (meat and vegetables in broth) and tamales, but cheesecake, curry, pilaf and isicia omentata (a fried meat patty made in late Roman times that the author compares to burgers) also appear in the list.

Kitchen Historic.  This is another old blog that has been recently revived and redesigned.  Recipes featured go back to the medieval period, but most seem to be 20th century, and the more recent ones paint a telling picture of the quirky experiments of our times.  Consider, for example, Applesauce with Red Hots (1959), Jello and Chiquita Bananas (1970s), and Poinsettia Salad/Fruit-Salad Dressing (1928).  If you loved reading cookbooks as a kid, as I did, you'll enjoy this site.

Silver Screen Stars.  This blog has an interesting premise; recipes of movie stars, past and present.  These are snapshots of popular food culture of their day, made more interesting by movie-star associations.  Some are good, some are terrible, or elsewhere in between.  Some of these came from cookbooks originally published by the stars themselves.

The Historical Cooking Project.  Too eclectic to describe.  So large and oddly organized that I cannot figure out when the most recent post was made.  Worth reading at least once.  

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