Latest posts

Inventing the Restaurant: From Bone Broth to Michelin (podcast)
There always have been taverns, inns, takeout places. If you have an urban society, you need to have places where people who, say, are from

Humans Were Roasting Starchy Root Vegetables 170,000 Years Ago
The inhabitants of the Border Cave in southern Africa were cooking starchy plants 170,000 years ago. “This discovery is much older than earlier reports for

The Surprisingly Interesting History of Margarine
The pure foods movement of the 1920s helped undermine natural butter and elevate the status of margarine. In 1923 Congress passed a law that made

U.S. growers got their first date plants from Morocco, Syria and Algeria
Dates in this country hark back to 1898, when the U.S. Department of Agriculture began sending teams of botanists and horticulturalist around the globe to

History of pizza
Pizza as we now know it came into being in late 18th-century Naples. Naples had become one of the largest cities in Europe and was

Thousands of historic watercolor paintings of fruit now online
More than 7,500 watercolor paintings, lithographs and line drawings of fruits and nuts commissioned by the U.S. Department of Agriculture from 1886 to 1942 are
Books about history of Chinese food in America
Fruit crate labels



Books about history of food and the African-American experience
In the 10 years from 1945 to 1955, the number of work animals on U.S. farms dropped two-thirds


The work of Italian painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526-1593) was forgotten after his death until the late 19th century.

Self portrait in the National Gallery Prague
Featured Food Historian: Anna Zeide
Interviews with Anna Zeide
“Canned Food History: A Conversation with Anna Zeide.” Interview with Emily Contois on the Nursing Clio website (2018)
“What Canned Food Stands For: A Conversation with Anna Zeide.” Interview with Faron Levesque on the Edge Effects website (2018)
“A History of Canned Food with Anna Zeide.” A 52-minute audio interview with Nan Enstad on radio station WORT 89.9 FM in Madison, Wisconsin (2019)