Rachel Laudan

In the late eighteenth-century “a taste for low-acidity olive oil became a mark of the affluent Mediterranean bourgeoisie” according to Massimo Mazzotti in “Enlightened Mills: Mechanizing Olive Oil Production in Mediterre¡anean Europe,” Technology and Culture (1994). The pungent flavor of traditional olive oil pleased the poor but was not for “delicate tables.”
It’s always interesting [...]

I’m always looking out for anything that sheds light on grinding with a saddle quern (or a metate as it would be called in Mexico). Museums often have some dusty exhibits in a corner. Just a couple of days ago I was in the marvelous Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. In an exhibit [...]