Rachel Laudan

I’m off in a moment to a conference on food history at UC Davis which promises to be very interesting.  It  brings together food historians, many young and up and coming, with some of the top people in world history, mainly chairing and commenting.  I’m on the opening panel with Laura Shapiro (of American food [...]

Thanks for all the comments.  I’m just off on a trip right now but just to warn you that when I return I will be posting on fire, water, and salt.
These we all now take as essentially free in cooking.  That’s just off the scale in world history.  In most places and most times, these [...]

Hey, what about a new facebook group?  Spaghetti Renegades? Any better ideas?
But seriously, this is an interesting example.  If this tiny group (me, Karen, Ji-Young) is anything approaching a random sample, then Americans just don’t cook spaghetti in lots of water.
So one more reason as a historian not to trust cookbooks alone.  Frugal Americans don’t [...]