The Delicious Legacy

Hello!

A brand new archaeogastronomical adventure beckons! Welcome back my curious archaeogastronomers!

What is perry? How is it made? Where do we hear about it firstly? And crucially, why has been almost lost, and now rediscovered, what does the future hold?

Listen and enjoy our latest episode here! With perry and cider maker Barry Masterson!

Links to Barry's work:

Perry: A Drinker's Guide by Adam Wells - published by CAMRA Books -

https://shop1.camra.org.uk/product/perry-a-drinkers-guide/

and all good book stores.

On Bluesky, spamming about pears and border collie pics: https://bsky.app/profile/barmas.bsky.social

On Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kertelreiter_cider/

Cider Review: https://cider-review.com/

CR on Insta: https://www.instagram.com/cider_review/

Love and pears,

Thom & The Delicious Legacy

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Morcilla in Spain, Stornoway Black Pudding in Scotland, Mustamakkara in Finland, Sângerete in Romania...This ancient tradition of using the blood as an ingredient in food and dishes persists in our modern world, despite the rules, regulations and war against artisanal produce from the modern food industry...

Hello!

I'm excited to give you the latest episode of The Delicious Legacy!

And what an epic adventure it is!

I'm talking to Kate Ryan author of "Blood, Guts, and Black Pudding; Ireland’s Dying Art of Blood As Food" a new, comprehensive and the first of it's kind! Documenting the Irish tradition and food history, of consuming blood as nutritious, sustainable food source!

I tell you I was surprised to know many of the facts in the book. I thought live bleeding was a technique that only existed in nomadic cultures of Africa. But apparently it was alive and kicking in Ireland too, till very, very recently!

Join me and Kate and find out all about blood, black pudding, the different variations of pudding (what is dirsheen?) and how this ancient tradition, started dying slowly, and where are we now!

You can get Kate's book and find out more here:

https://ninebeanrowsbooks.com/en-gb/products/blood-guts-and-black-pudding

Love and guts and blood and glory!

Thom

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Hello my curious archaeogastronomers!

New episode is out!

Did women in the ancient Greek world had parties? Dinner gatherings? Symposia? Alone or with their men? And what did they do on their own? Especially in those famous festivals?

So many questions to answer! Enjoy!

Links for this episode:

https://www.hellenic.org.au/post/the-thesmophoria-women-s-ritual-in-the-ancient-world

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ares_Gynaecothoenas

Hipparchia of Maroneia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipparchia_of_Maroneia

https://thestoicmom.substack.com/p/a-role-model-for-saying-no-and-doing

https://www.worldhistory.org/Hipparchia_of_Maroneia/

Seclusion, Separation, and the Status of Women in Classical Athens

David Cohen https://www.jstor.org/stable/643180

This episode was also heavily influenced and drew info from these two papers:

WOMEN'S COMMENSALITY IN THE ANCIENT GREEK WORLD By JOAN BURTON 1998

DINING LIKE DIVINITIES: EVIDENCE FOR RITUAL AND MARITAL DINING BY WOMEN IN ANCIENT GREECE Laurie Ann Kilker 2008

Recommendations for the week:

Gareth Eoin Storey's substack:

https://garethstorey.substack.com/p/we-work-in-marketing

How apple detectives solved the mystery of an ancient tree—and rewrote the history of fruit

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-apple-detectives-solved-the-mystery-of-an-ancient-tree-and-rewrote-the-history-of-fruit/

UN report: Global hunger levels ease for third consecutive year as regional disparities persist

https://www.who.int/news/item/21-07-2026-un-report--global-hunger-levels-ease-for-third-consecutive-year-as-regional-disparities-persist

Darren Turpin from orchard notes, has links library, to highlight the work of fellow fruit-focused writers, organisations, food and drink producers, and anything else of interest he might find out there on t’Internet. Anyway go here:

https://orchardnotes.com/about-notes-from-the-orchard/

Love and lentil soup

Thom & The Delicious Legacy

Support the podcast on Ko-Fi and Patreon for ad-free episodes!

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Hello!

Here's the little teaser of what will the 2nd Serve it Forth Food History festival include on Saturday 17th of October 2026! Me and my colleagues Sam Bilton Neil Buttery and Alessandra Pino discuss some elements from our planned festive day!

There’s a little taster of the other courses of my co-curators ( A Curious Appetite, Neil Buttery and Sam Bilton ) are serving up during the festival which features Eleanor Barnett, Paul Couchman, Sally Grainger, Sudi Pigott and and of course me and Alexandra Sills. Tickets for the online festival are available here.

The Serve It Forth Food History Festival is made possible with the generous support of our sponsors ckbk, Steenbergs, Regency Fiction Writers, Replica, Blackfriars Restaurant and Lindisfarne Mead.

Also in this pod episode, Sam Bilton, ahead of her discussion with Jennie Hood and Professor Giles Gasper about how the Normans changed the way we eat, she had a chat with Kevin Booth, English Heritage’s Head Curator of Collections, about what the skeleton of ‘Conquest Man’ can tell us about the diet and health of the English at the time of the Norman invasion.

If you happen to be in or near Barton on Humber in Lincolnshire on 20 September 2026 between 12pm and 4pm you can see Conquest Man’s skeleton and find out more about this project at St Peter’s Church.

If you’d like to get a sense of what life was like for Conquest Man and his contemporaries during the Norman Conquest, Battle Abbey in East Sussex is hosting its annual reenactment of the Battle of Hastings on 10 and 11 October 2026, the week before Serve It Forth. Hundreds of reenactors take part, recreating Norman and Saxon camps and giving visitors an insight into everyday life for people almost 1,000 years ago. Tickets are now available from www.english-heritage.org.uk/battle

Right, I'm off for some seafood!

Enjoy!

x

Thom

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Hello!

Today's episode explores just a little the Jewish Greek community, culture and food through the centuries.

OK recommendations of the week: Let’s start with the Cookbook of the Jews of Greece by Stavroulakis, Nicholas which you can find on the internet archive dot org and it has been released in 1986. Lots of useful history, cultural context and recipes with the Shepardic names and english translations too. Link in the show notes:

https://archive.org/details/cookbookofjewsof0000nich/mode/2up

At libcom.org the article The Making of the Caribbean People

This lecture was delivered in 1966 in Canada at the Second Montreal Conference on West Indian Affairs.

https://libcom.org/article/making-caribbean-people

Archaeological news from my hometown:

Greece's Ministry of Culture Restores Veria’s Orta Mosque and 15th-Century Twin Ottoman Bath:

https://greekreporter.com/2026/09/05/greece-restores-veria-orta-mosque-twin-ottoman-bath/

Enjoy!

The Delicious Legacy

Don't forget the 2nd Serve It Forth Food History Festival is taking place on Saturday 17th of October 2026. Check this from our sponsor CKBK:

https://app.ckbk.com/features/serve-it-forth-an-online-festival-of-food-history

Support the podcast on Ko-Fi and Patreon for ad-free episodes!

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In the year 1734 three miners were taken aback when they discovered a male body inside Hallstatt salt mine. The body was very well preserved, having been mummified by salt. Accounts of the time say that the dead body, completely embedded into the rock salt deposits, was discovered following a collapse in the Kilbwerk. His shoes and traces of his clothes had been preserved: 'One can even see a bit of cloth on his dress, and the remains of the shoes on his feet'. The mine workers assumed that it was the long-dead body of a miner who had lived before the first official records, that is, more than 400 years earlier, but after thorough analysis and investigation, today’s assumption is that this man was the victim of a mining accident approximately 1000 BCE. The heyday of prehistoric mining was in the late Iron Age between 800 and ca. 400 BCE. At that time, miners would penetrate as much as 200 metres into the mountain, in the Austrian Alps, extracting not gold or precious metals but copious amounts of salt, about half a tonne a day with hand tools, supplying salt to half of Europe 2000 years ago!

Hello!

Today we are busting all the old myths about the salt!

What and how the Romans used it?

What did the Greeks say about it?

Humans, like other mammals, relied on the small amounts of salt naturally present in food to regulate the amount of fluid in the body. Very powerful mechanisms for conserving salt within the body were developed. For 5 million years, our ancestors added no salt to their diet. The addition of salt to food began relatively recently, about 5000 years ago. As people became increasingly addicted to it, salt became the most important object of trade and the economic foundation of several empires. It was used by authoritarian governments to control their people and as the main source of tax revenue.

Join me on another archaeogastronomical adventure!

The Delicious Legacy Podcast

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Hello!

Welcome back to another adventure my curious archaeogastronomers!

Honey from a Weed, Fasting and Feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia the Cyclades and Apulia by Patience Gray is an iconic book about Mediterranean food, traditions centred around the simplest and most common dishes of everyday people.

Patience Gray was an English cookery and travel writer of the mid-20th century. Her two most popular books were Plats Du Jour (1957) – written with Primrose Boyd, about French cooking – and Honey From A Weed (1986), an account of the Mediterranean way of life.

In my opinion this book has to be more universally known and celebrated so here's a start. I will be coming back to explore the author's life and recipes in another episode!

For this episode I explore quickly a few recipes from the book that are Greek and a couple of them more from the island of Naxos.

I hope you'll enjoy!

You can buy Honey from a Weed:

Fasting and feasting in Tuscany, Catalonia, the Cyclades and Apulia

by Patience Gray (1917-2005), Food and Travel Writer

Contributor: Illustrated by Corinna Sargood, Artis

at Equinox Publishing website, digital, print or ebook here: https://www.equinoxpub.com/projects/honey-from-weed

My recommendations for the week include:

Endangered Eating: America’s Vanishing Foods

https://sarahlohman.com/endangered-eating-book/

The Ancient Magic of Malt: Making Malt Sugars and Ale from Grain Using Traditional Techniques:

https://exarc.net/issue-2021-2/at/ancient-magic-malt-making

Love & Fish Soup

Thom & The Delicious Legacy

Support the podcast on Ko-Fi and Patreon for ad-free episodes!

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Hello!

New episode is out and it's all about, the history of sesame seeds, their use in ancient cuisines, especially Greek, their symbolism and spread across the ancient world...And what is halva anyway?! Hint: Tahini & honey...

So today we are travelling to the source of sesame seeds in India, then to Ancient Mesopotamia, and Egypt, and we are examining ancient Greek desserts, and from there we are going all the way to China too!

We are also looking at the role that trade between Arabia-India-China played to the spread of goods in the ancient world.

Enjoy!

The Delicious Legacy

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Hello! Welcome to the recipe of the week on a Sunday by The Delicious Legacy!

Two Greek recipes with onion as the star ingredient one way or another!

Enjoy!

Thom

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This is a recipe and a short story that I wrote about six years ago, which you'll find out listening as to what it is and why, I hope you will enjoy it!

Love,

The Delicious Legacy

Support the podcast on Ko-Fi and Patreon for ad-free episodes!

https://ko-fi.com/thedeliciouslegacypodcast

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Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/the-delicious-legacy.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.