Rachel Laudan

Every few weeks on this http://www.cookbook-l.com/ Lillian Clark, of Louis and Clark booksellers, posts a thematic, ruminative listing of some of the cookbooks she has for sale. Mainly American, some European, always interesting. http://www.vub.ac.be/FOST/fost_in_english/ is the website of the Social and Cultural Studies of Food group at the Vrije Universiteit in Brussels. And http://www.iehca.eu/home.htm is [...]

Beer of cacao pulp? That’s what the residues on pots in Puerto Escondido in Honduras suggested to John S. Henderson and Rosemary A. Joyce of Cornell and the University of California, Berkeley respectively. They reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that people there were fermenting the pulp about 1100 BC. If [...]

Many countries still have drinks that go back deep into the past. One such is taxcalate from Chiapas in the far south of Mexico. Here’s the powder base: ground toasted maize, ground cacao, and ground achiote (Bixa orellana, used in many societies for color and also flavor). It turns the mixture a bright orangey color. [...]