Episode 150: Cuisine & Empire with Rachel Laudan

Rachel Laudan is taking a culinary approach to world history in her book, Cuisine & Emire! This week on A Taste of the Past, Linda Pelaccio talks with Rachel about the influences of medicine, politics, and religion on cuisine throughout the ages. Learn about humorism, and how this system of belief affected the food that ancient people ate. Find out what agricultural products different religious groups relied on across Eurasia. Why are most cuisines based in grain? Tune in to learn about the New World exploration, and how that inequitable culinary exchange altered the food ways of continents. Where does the United States fit into the culinary landscape? Find out all of this and more on this week’s edition of A Taste of the Past. This program has been sponsored by Heritage Foods USA. Music by SNOWMINE.

“We now expect only one cuisine to every nation. All you have to do is look at the cookbook section in the bookstore to get this idea.” [4:45]

“Everybody now can eat the same kinds of cuisine. In the past, there was a huge distinction between high and humble cuisines.” [15:10]

— Rachel Laudan on A Taste of the Past

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