Rachel Laudan

One of the questions that interested me when I started thinking about food history was why Western (or French) High Cuisine appeared so suddenly in the mid seventeenth century. This resulted in an articled in Scientific American called Birth of the Modern Diet (pdf). A fuller version with all the footnotes and more details appeared in Petits Propos Culinaires with the title A Kind of Chemistry (pdf).

A move to Mexico meant that it was impossible to resist exploring the history of Mexican food.

Why do Mexican moles resemble Indian curries? Is it just coincidence? My answer is no in The Mexican Kitchen’s Islamic Connection. I was thrilled that Mexican photographer, Nacho (Ignacio) Urquiza, agreed to take the photographs for this article.

And again on Mexican food history, here’s a paper on Chiles, Chocolate and Race that I wrote with Jeff Pilcher. It shows hows the Spanish hung on to their food in the colonial period. Not much of that mixing that so many cookbook authors talk about.

For a meeting of the International Association of Culinary Professionals in Puebla, Mexico I put together a booklet, Puebla in the Global Gastronomic Geography (pdf), to explain why Puebla is the epicenter of Mexican cooking.

Were semitas, a bread found on the US-Mexico border, specifically Jewish? I tackle this question in Semitas, Semitic Bread, and the Search for Community. I conclude that semitas are not a specifically Jewish bread. I am continuing to add to this article and the new information about the history of semitas can be found in Semitas.

I have also looked a broader issues.

What counts as simple, natural food? Why is the good cook the moral cook? Here is a paper that I gave at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery in 2007 called Refined Cuisine or Plain Cooking. And here’s the Handout for Refined Cuisine or Plain Cooking (pdf) that gives a one-page summary of the argument.