Tucked away on a small street in New York City’s Greenwich Village there is a butcher shop called Florence Meat Market which opened in 1936 and doesn’t seem to have changed much since. There is sawdust scattered on the floor and all the meat is cut to order on big cubes of butcher block. These [...]
Archive for the ‘Food History’ Category
The Mysterious Newport Steak
Posted in Food History, Ingredients, recipes, tagged Florence Meat Market, Food History, Greenwich Village, Jack Ubaldi, New York Apartment Steak, Newport steak, recipe, steak on April 7, 2011 | 4 Comments »
Chestnuts: Famine Food on the Holiday Table
Posted in Festival Cooking, Food as Anthropology, Food History, Ingredients, recipes, Traditional Foodways, tagged cake, castagnaccio, chestnut flour, chestnuts, dessert, famine food, gluten-free, Italian food, recipe, Thanksgiving, vegan on November 23, 2010 | 4 Comments »
Wild chestnut trees have flourished in southern Europe since the ancient Greeks brought them from Asia Minor and the Romans spread them throughout their empire. For thousands of years poor subsistence farmers in that part of the world extended their crops with wild foods like chestnuts. In addition to roasting or boiling them, chestnuts were [...]
Now This is Celery!
Posted in Farmers' Market Cooking, Food History, Ingredients, recipes, tagged Braised Celery, Celery, Food History, recipes on October 20, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Until I started shopping regularly at my farmers’ market I was never a big fan of celery. Sure, it’s important as an aromatic vegetable to build a flavor base for soups or sauces, but on it’s own I always found it pretty insipid; pale and watery in both appearance and flavor. All that changed when [...]
Coffee Preparation Through the Ages, Part II
Posted in Food as Anthropology, Food History, Ingredients, tagged coffee, Food History, History of Coffee Preparation, History of Espresso on October 18, 2010 | 1 Comment »
This is part II of an article exploring the development of coffee preparation techniques from the 17th Century Ottoman Turks to the Italian Espresso of the mid-20th Century. Part I can be found here We last met in 1838 Paris where the French Balloon style vacuum pot was patented. This high-tech, theatrical method of brewing [...]
Coffee Preparation Through the Ages, Part I
Posted in Food as Anthropology, Food History, Ingredients, tagged coffee, Food History, History of Coffee Preparation, History of Espresso on October 13, 2010 | 10 Comments »
A two part article in which we explore the development of coffee preparation techniques from the 17th Century Ottoman Turks to the Italian Espresso of the mid-20th Century. Europeans have been drinking coffee since about 1615 when Venetian traders obtained it from the Ottoman Turks. The first European coffee house outside of Istanbul opened in [...]
A Plum by Any Other Name…But is it a Greengage?
Posted in Farmers' Market Cooking, Food History, Ingredients, recipes, tagged Food History, Greengage plums, Greengages, Reine Claude on September 16, 2010 | 6 Comments »
Somehow foreign names for ingredients always sound exotic. Wouldn’t you rather make aubergine Parmesan, than just plain old eggplant? Or creep away after leaving baskets of excess courgettes on your neighbor’s doorstep in the middle of the night instead of secretly gifting them with zucchini? One mysterious ingredient I always wondered about in British cookbooks [...]
A Brief History of the Birthday Cake
Posted in Festival Cooking, Food History, recipes, Traditional Foodways, tagged birthday cake, blogoversary, Food History, history of the birthday cake, victorian birthday cake on August 26, 2010 | 4 Comments »
Today is Comestibles’ first anniversary, so what better corner of food history to explore than that of the birthday cake. People have been celebrating holidays with special baked goods for thousands of years, but the white fluffy birthday cake with sweet icing we associate with every child’s party is a fairly modern invention. It could [...]
In the Kitchens of King Henry VIII
Posted in Food as Anthropology, Food History, Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2010, Traditional Foodways, Travel, tagged Food History, Hampton Court Palace Tudor Kitchens, Henry VIII kitchen, Tudor Food on August 17, 2010 | 7 Comments »
One of the best things about attending the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery is the chance to meet people with all sorts of interesting food-related jobs. Two years ago I met Marc Meltonville, who runs all of the kitchens in Britain’s Historic Palaces. These are historic buildings that are owned by the Crown but [...]
18th Century Kitchenalia at London’s Portobello Market
Posted in Food History, Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2010, Travel, tagged 18th Century Cookware, Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2010, Portobello Market on August 9, 2010 | 4 Comments »
During a recent trip to the UK I had the chance to spend half a day wandering through the immense and absorbing Portobello Market which takes place every Saturday in the Notting Hill area of London. A little over half a mile long, is best known for its antiques, but has four other distinct sections [...]
