Everyone knows the saying about what the world’s “oldest profession” is, but you will find a very close runner up in the kitchen. The history of those who cook professionally to make their living goes way, way back to the origins of civilization itself.

It’s another epic journey across the ages, this time with a focus on my own chosen profession and day job. This is the long, ancient history of chefs (and restaurants).

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Theme music by the incredible Michael Levy of Ancient Lyre.  “An Ancient Lyre” and much more is available from all major digital music stores and streaming sites.

Have you ever wondered if there’s more to history than dates and major events, what some of the stories and daily lives of regular people looked like? Do you need a reminder that history is populated with real people, who had lives just like we do?

Come take a sweeping journey back into the past as we explore the entire history of civilization, but on a more intimate level, examining as closely as we can the daily lives, challenges, and of course foods, of your average subsistence farmer living in any time and culture.

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Theme music by the incredible Michael Levy of Ancient Lyre.  “An Ancient Lyre” and much more is available from all major digital music stores and streaming sites.

Bret Devereaux, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry; Bread: How Did They Make it

Rachel Laudan; Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History

Robert Garland Ph.D Colgate University; The Other Side of History: Daily Life in the Ancient World

Special thanks to the show’s patrons:

JAKE PENZELL
BENAY O’CONNELL
LILI
RASMUS
DUNCAN MCHALE
REBEKA DAVIDSON
HALEY LEWIS
DECEMBRIANA
ANNE URBANCIC
KAYKE J
RYAN GERRY
RYAN DE BOER
MELODY ROSS
AMY EDMUNDS

When Britain industrialized in the late 1700s and the rest of the western world soon followed, humans were transformed to a degree not seen for 10,000 years when we first settled into farming life.

But it wasn’t some simple flick of the switch, where some entrepreneurs decided to build some factories and invent the modern world. Massive changes to food and agriculture had to happen first. As we’ve come to expect by now, history follows food, in one last grand finale to this season of the podcast. Come listen how!

(Also stick around at the end of the episode for a note about the show and next season)

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Music from this Episode: The Best of Beethoven

Ken Albala – A Cultural and Culinary History of Food

Oxford Academic, Emma Griffin – Diets, Hunger, and Living Standards during the British Industrial Revolution

Spartcus Educational – Factory Food

Wisconsin Public Radio – How the Industrial Revolution Gave us Lunch as We Know it

Special thanks to the show’s patrons:

JAKE PENZELL
BENAY O’CONNELL
LILI
RASMUS
DUNCAN MCHALE
REBEKA DAVIDSON
HALEY LEWIS
DECEMBRIANA
ANNE URBANCIC
KAYKE J
RYAN GERRY
RYAN DE BOER

Who founded America? George Washington? Thomas Jefferson? America had founding fathers alright, but they aren’t the ones you’re thinking of. Would you believe that African slaves and Indians were the true minds and bodies behind birthing America’s culture?

It’s all true. Come listen to the story of how American ingredients , cooked by African Slaves, for the benefit of European colonists, created soul food, which created Southern food, which is the foundation of ALL American food. Period.

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Music from this Episode: English Country Dances – 17th Century Music From The Publications Of John Playford

Michael Twitty – The Cooking Gene

Judith Carney – Black Rice

Charles C. Mann – 1493: The New World Columbus Created

The Cambridge World History of Food, Cambridge University Press, 2000

Ken Albala – A Cultural and Culinary History of Food

Special thanks to the show’s patrons:

JAKE PENZELL
BENAY O’CONNELL
LILI
RASMUS
DUNCAN MCHALE
REBEKA DAVIDSON
HALEY LEWIS
DECEMBRIANA
ANNE URBANCIC
KAYKE J

Is good cooking defined by ingredients, skill in preparation, style of cuisine, or is it something even more fundamental and deeply human?

We left out of Africa all the way back in Episode 1, and rarely looked back, but in this episode we finally return to the vast continent, specifically south of the Sahara desert, where more than any other qualities, feeling full and satisfied are what make a great meal, and a great chef is one who can evoke that feeling the most.

Come listen for this and other perspectives on food and dining we so rarely hear about in western history.

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Music from this episode: Traditional Nigerian as well as Zulu drums

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/27/science/african-pastoral-archaeologists-rewrite-history-of-farming.htmlThe Cambridge World History of Food, Cambridge University Press, 2000

Stirring the Pot, a History of African Cuisine, by James C. McCann

New York Times – African Pastoral: Archeologists Rewrite History of Farming

Early North African Cattle Domestication and it’s Ecological Setting, a Reassessment

Ken Albala – A Cultural and Culinary History of Food

Special thanks to the show’s patrons:

JAKE PENZELL
BENAY O’CONNELL
LILI
RASMUS

Save this episode to go with your morning coffee. Sip that dark and bitter brew, maybe with cream and/or sugar, maybe not, and listen along as you learn of coffee’s origins, how it came to Europe, displaced alcohol and sobered everyone up, and how it would foster revolutions in finance, science, and philosophy.

Thanks to coffee and the coffeehouses people drank it in, this newly caffeinated world would never be the same. This is the story of the happy (polygamous?) marriage between coffee, colonialism, and capitalism.

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A History of the World in 6 Glasses, by Tom Standage

Food: A Cultural and Culinary History, by Ken Albala – The Great Courses

Michael Pollan, “Capitalism’s Favorite Drink” (review of Coffeeland)

The “American Melting Pot” is far older, larger, and even more diverse than most people imagine.

After Columbus reconnected Eurasia and Africa with the Americas, the world began to change in ways it never had before. Europeans, Africans, Asians, and American Indians began migrating out of their landmasses of origin. Some movement was voluntary, much was not. . . . but people of all origins soon found themselves flung around the globe, forced to interact and work with each other, mixing their cultures and genetics together to form hybrid societies.

With hybrid societies come hybrid cuisine. The world’s first fusion food is born as people and their culinary traditions converge.

Did I mention we’ll also cover the origin of hard liquor and mixed cocktails? Don’t miss this episode.

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1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created, by Charles C. Mann

A History of the World in 6 Glasses, by Tom Standage

Food: A Cultural and Culinary History, by Ken Albala – The Great Courses

Columbia University – History of the World lectures by Richard Bulliet

What does it mean for one culture to “steal” from another? How often does it happen? Is it a bad thing when it does? Listen to explore those questions and more, as we visit the Far East once again, this time even farther east. . . to Japan and Korea.

Also known. . . by myself at least, as the lands of umami and kimchi.

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Korean Traditional Music sampled from The National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts. Republic of Korea / 1997

medium.com – A- Brief Look at the History of Japanese Cuisine

medium.com – A Short History of a Traditional Korean Food: Kimchi

Encyclopedia Britannica – Japanese History

The Great Courses Daily – The Story of Sushi and Japanese Cuisine

PBS Online – Hidden Korean History

Atlas Obscura – How For Centuries, Massive Meals Amazed Visitors to Korea

newsday.com – Korean Food History and Culture

For millions of years, the two main hemispheres of planet earth were separated by an impassible ocean. North/South America and Eurasia/Africa, two divergent ecosystems, food chains, and human civilizations. . . Then one day in 1492, a guy named Columbus passed that impassible ocean, and began the momentous and tumultuous process of bringing the Old World and the New World back together, into one.

Human civilization and the ecosystems of earth itself would never be the same.

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Please leave a review to help spread the word!

Theme music by Michael Levy of Ancient Lyre. This rendition of the Hurian Hymn and the whole album “An Ancient Lyre” and much more is available from all major digital music stores and streaming sites.

1491 by Charles Mann

harvard.edu; The Columbian Exchange: A History of Disease, Food, and Ideas

Giancarlo Casale; The Ottoman Age of Exploration

Encyclopedia Britannica: The Age of Discovery

Lewis Dartnell; Origins: How the Earth Made Us

Did Europeans suddenly wake up one day, tired of Medieval living, and decide to change course, to rebirth themselves in modern ideas and start creating good art? Or, as usual, is the story something much more complicated, gradual, and subject to the influence of other cultures from outside?

Hmm, I wonder?… Come listen for an extensive tour of the Italian Renaissance, how it began, and what it meant for people and what they ate.

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The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1570), translation and commentary of Terrence Scully

Academia Barilla: Food of the Renaissance

Life in Italy: History of Pasta

The New World Encyclopedia: Italian Renaissance

Daily Life in History: How did the Fall of Constantinople affect the Italian Renaissance

Turkish Cultural Foundation: The Story of Turkish Food

Smithsonian Magazine: Renaissance Table Etiquette and the Origin of Manners