Category Archives: Culinary History

Around the Table Podcast: Edible History with Victoria Flexner

By Sarah Peters Kernan

Listen here, or subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts!

In this episode, Sarah Kernan talks to Victoria Flexner, food historian and founder of the historical dining collective, Edible History. She is the author of A History of the World in 10 Dinners: 2,000 Years, 100 Recipes, published by Rizzoli in 2023. Through these projects and her Substack newsletter, Victoria expertly communicates history through food. Follow Victoria Flexner on Substack and Instagram for updates.

Music

Frédéric Chopin, Etude Op. 10, no. 5 in G flat major

Provided by Musopen.org through Creative Commons Public Domain Mark 1.0

Mentioned in the Show

A History of the World in 10 Dinners: 2,000 Years, 100 Recipes

Edible History (Supper Club)

Edible History (Substack)

Museum of Food and Drink

Ken Albala

Lucy Schaeffer, photographer

Victoria Granof, food stylist

Transcript

Sarah Kernan 00:08

This is Around the Table, a podcast from the Recipes Project. I’m your host, Sarah Kernan. Together, we will learn about exciting scholars, professionals, projects, resources, and collections focused on historical recipes.

Welcome to Season 2, dedicated to “making.” In each episode this season, we will feature interviews with guests who describe what making means to them. For some, it is recreating a historic recipe as closely as possible. For others, it is creating something new in a modern setting. However imperfect the process or the outcome, making historical recipes offers a powerful methodology for connecting with and understanding the past in a direct and tangible way.

Today I’m speaking to Victoria Flexner, food historian and founder of the historical dining collective, Edible History. Along with Jay Reifel, she is the author of A History of the World in 10 Dinners: 2000 Years, 100 Recipes, published by Rizzoli in 2023. You can also read her work in her Edible History Substack newsletter. And I’m so excited to speak to Victoria today about her extensive experience recreating historic recipes and communicating history through food. Victoria, thank you so much for joining me today.

Victoria Flexner 01:37

Thank you for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Sarah Kernan 01:40

Before you published A History of the World in 10 Dinners, you founded Edible History in 2014 as a way to share history through food and dining experiences. Could you talk briefly about the supper club events Edible History hosted for several years and how that eventually led to your book?

Victoria Flexner 02:00

Absolutely. I studied history as an undergrad and then also did obviously my postgrad in history as well. But I’d also worked in restaurants for many years. And so Edible History as the supper club was kind of a natural evolution of my work in those two spaces. And it began as sort of a small little indie supper club in Bushwick and Williamsburg around 2014 and kind of quietly grew into, you know, still kind of like a local supper club, but we had a nice loyal following of people. It was an interesting mix of foodies, people who are really interested in history. And yeah, we would host these dinners in different kind of pop-up spaces around Brooklyn.

Victoria Flexner 02:58

Each dinner was rooted in a specific time period. So, like Tudor England and all the dishes served that night would be from period cookbooks and manuscripts from Tudor England. And so then as each course would come out to diners, I would tell everyone about the dish itself, you know, where it came from, but then also use it as sort of like a window into kind of broader historical themes of the period. So the idea was always to use the food as just kind of a lens through which to approach the entire time period and kind of bring people in through the flavors and the smells and things, and then kind of get them hooked into the into the moment.

Sarah Kernan 03:44

Absolutely. How did that eventually lead to the creation of the cookbook? Was that a goal initially or just a product of the process over time?

Victoria Flexner 03:56

It was kind of a bit of both. Through a long series of events, as these things kind of often happen, someone came to a supper club who introduced me to someone who worked in publishing. And eventually I began working with my agent. And the idea for a book was sort of always there in the background, but the supper club was kind of operating full force at the time. We were doing a residency at the Museum of Food and Drink, MOFAD, when it was back in Williamsburg. And um and so it was one of those things that kind of just kept getting pushed down the road. It’s like, oh, when we have a bit more time, we’ll put some kind of a book proposal together. And then the pandemic hit and…

Sarah Kernan 04:42

You had time!

Victoria Flexner 04:45

It was a lot of time. Do things like write a book proposal, which is exactly what I did. It was acquired by Rizzoli and yeah. I guess. And then that became the book. So it was sort of a, I think Edible History, the supper club, really pivoted into sort of the written format during the pandemic, interestingly. That was like the pandemic pivot for Edible History.

Sarah Kernan 05:12

Does Edible History exist as a supper club anymore?

Victoria Flexner 05:15

It lives on in my Substack, which is kind of musings and individual histories of foods and beverages. And it lives on in the book. But I think the supper club, it existed in like a really unique time and space, also within kind of the food scene in New York. You know, it’s interesting post-pandemic. Everything is more expensive, which is so legitimate, but also it kind of changes the ways in which you can do a fun, affordable pop-up dinner. And I think that we have like a wonderful supper club that we can kind of like put our, you know hang the hat up on, or whatever the saying is. We did amazing events for almost a decade. And that feels like a really wonderful run for the supper club wing of the whole thing.

Sarah Kernan 06:15

Before I start asking you a lot of questions about the book, I do have one follow-up question about the supper club events, just because encountering historic recipes out in modern dining experiences is not very common. There’s only a handful of restaurants you can go to, for example, that serve historically inspired recipes or dishes on a regular basis. And so I’m wondering, what was the response that you got from diners who attended the event? Was it a little bit of shock and awe, or were they just more engaged in history after the experience? Did they think the food was just incredibly weird and off the wall? What did they think?

Victoria Flexner 07:02

It was a wonderful range of reactions, and it kind of depended on the diner, you know. If it was like someone who was at the tenth-century Baghdad dinner because they love reading about tenth-century Baghdad in their spare time, they’re probably there more for a bit of like the history chat, but some of my favorite diners were always like the friends and family members who kind of got dragged along by their foodie or history-loving loved ones and who would be kind of a bit shocked at first, maybe a little intimidated, maybe not super enjoying some of the flavors. But I think after, you know, maybe like a dish or two when they would understand that this isn’t going to be like a typical tasting menu that you would get at a restaurant and the conversation is kind of flowing about the period. You would, you would see them sort of almost start to like settle into the time period.

And it was really amazing. I mean, once when we did a Tudor England meal in Bushwick, this young guy came with like a friend of his and he was horrified when we brought out the cockentrice, which was one of Henry VIII’s favorite dishes, which is the front end of a pig, sewed to the back end of a partridge. And he was like kind of hiding behind his friend and, and like, and that’s great because you know what? He probably won’t forget the cockentrice like that.

Sarah Kernan 08:40

Exactly.

Victoria Flexner 08:41

Forever. And it also, I’m sure we’ll probably talk about this more, but one of the most magical things about recreating historical recipes is that you get to be in the same place, just for a moment, as someone who lived so long before you. And that shock and awe that, you know, that guy was having in reaction to the cockentrice is perhaps the same that someone else at Henry VIII’s court, centuries ago, also experienced when they saw the cockentrice being wheeled out of the kitchen. And that’s so cool to just witness and be a part of.

Sarah Kernan 09:23

For listeners who haven’t had a chance to read a History of the World in 10 Dinners yet, or even look at it, I just want to describe it for a moment. It is both a cookbook of historic recipes and an incredibly well-researched deep-dive into specific moments and places in global history. And it’s also a visually stunning book. The design and the layout are so thoughtful. The food styling and the photography are beautiful. They bring each chapter and dinner party to life, and it really makes you want to just start cooking the dishes that are in the book. It covers a very wide range of historical periods and places. And notably, many of the dinners and the recipes are from non-Western culinary traditions. So, to get started with talking about the book, how did you decide exactly what to include, the themes and the chapters, as well as even the specific recipes?

Victoria Flexner 10:25

We set out a large project for ourselves. I remember a few months after signing the book deal, I was visiting my godfather at his beach house and I was walking down the beach and I just started crying because I realized the magnitude of the project that I just sort of signed all this paperwork to do. Such an idiot, why did I decide to do this? Why not just like one place or one time period? It was tricky to kind of take the entire globe and then distill it down. It’s like, okay, we’re gonna, we’re doing ten time periods and places.

One of the rules that was sort of self-imposed, but I felt like was important was I didn’t want to include any recipes from any place that we didn’t like have recipes from. So, one could start in ancient Sumeria because there are cuneiform tablets that still exist to this day with recipes for bread and beer, but I felt like you kind of want a whole cookbook from a time period or a larger collection of recipes to work from that give a fuller image of what that culture and that place was like, because we are going to use these recipes as the windows into sort of doing a little kind of mini-history of each place. So, if we’re only going to cover places that, kind of, large culinary repertoire still exists from that that kind of cuts it down a large amount.

And the oldest cookbook that we know of in human history is a cookbook from ancient Rome that was compiled in the first century AD by a man named Apicius. And so this ancient Roman cookbook felt like a place to start and it’s, yes, perhaps a little problematic to start with ancient Rome, is like beginning of history. I hope that I did a good job of acknowledging in the text that just because we’re beginning with ancient Rome doesn’t mean that that is the start, quote unquote, of history. Because it often is in, kind of, more like textbook Western history, which is problematic as we sort of revisit the historical narrative writ large from a 2025 post-colonial perspective.

And then once we sort of had the start point, I knew that the end point was going to be New York City in the nineteenth century, because I did not want to include a time period that someone was still alive from. Because then you’re competing with memory and that, you’re never going to win.

Sarah Kernan 13:29

It’s challenging.

Victoria Flexner 13:30

Yeah. Like that’s not how my grandma made it. Or like I actually remember that, you know, I used to, my mom used to do it this way. Anyway, ending in the nineteenth century with New York and the birth of the restaurant, which felt like perhaps after the writing of the first cookbook in ancient Rome, the birth of the restaurant about two thousand years later is, in New York, is perhaps like another really pivotal moment in global food history. So that felt like a neat place to wrap it up. And then it was about trying to strike a nice balance between the Eurasian continent and the Americas, trying to be reflective of pre-Columbian American history, while also not working with a lot of written sources, and also trying to include some African history, again, not working with a lot of written sources.

There was quite a few cookbooks and manuscripts to choose from, from medieval Europe. There’s about 140 culinary manuscripts from medieval Europe that still exist either in libraries physically or kind of digitized versions. So that was easy. It was almost like an embarrassment of riches and one had to kind of cut down. Okay, we’ve already done, you know, France.

But Asia and the Middle East, also a fair amount of sources to work with. So that was just kind of juggling what recipes fit in with the other ones, you know? I chose Spain, Muslim-ruled Spain, Al-Andalus, because that felt like a nice way to touch on European history, but also Islamic history within Europe, which is not a subject people know a lot about.

For the African continent, it would have been amazing to do something from Timbuktu, from the empire of Mali. Unfortunately, all those sources were destroyed by Al-Qaeda in 2010s or so. So that knocked that out. And then it felt like we’d already done, you know, perhaps a good amount of, sort of, places near Egypt. So didn’t include Egypt. But yeah, it was just kind of an interesting, it was sort of like putting a patchwork together of different places.

But hopefully the, kind of, end result is, that as you move through the cookbook from ancient Rome through the Middle East back to Europe, and then kind of into the Americas, into Africa, back into Europe for a moment, and then end in New York, you feel like you’ve seen a lot of parts of the world in some of their most impactful moments and sort of follow the journey of culinary styles and ingredients. So you’re also following the kind of food itself around the world. And it’s only “a” history of the world, not “the” history of the world.

Sarah Kernan 16:30

Exactly.

Victoria Flexner 16:32

Hopefully protect ourselves a little.

Sarah Kernan 16:35

How many of these chapters, which are basically organized as dinner parties, essentially, if that’s fair to say, how many of these did you do as supper club events? I know that there’s at least a couple, like the Tudor England, which you had done at least some of the recipes from at events. Are a lot of these taken directly from your experiences with the events or was a lot of it brand new?

Victoria Flexner 17:05

Yeah, a lot of them are. Actually, I think Ethiopia and Al-Andalus might have been the only ones that were, and Versailles, weren’t done as supper clubs prior to the cookbook coming out. So, we had, I mean, we’d been doing the supper club for a number of years. So we had covered a good amount of, you know, space and time and geography. But which was also really helpful in in putting it together because we’d seen firsthand people’s reactions to different dishes and narratives. And, you know, you’re sort of evaluating like which stories are people really resonating with, but also simultaneously which dishes are speaking to people, which is so hard to kind of determine sometimes because even if it speaks to you, it might not really resonate with someone else. I mean, it’s so subjective in that sense.

Sarah Kernan 18:01

Yeah. Yeah. So when you’re putting together these recipes, how are you balancing what is said in the actual recipes, in the original cookbooks, the original texts, and balancing that with the modern kitchen setting, modern expectations of cookbook readers today? How do you accommodate all that? And how does that affect the final product that you’re putting out?

Victoria Flexner 18:31

Yeah. Well, the original recipes are pretty spartan. Often it’s just like, kind of, here are the ingredients and, you know, combine them and, you know, walk around a field and say fifteen Hail Marys and cook it until it’s done.

Sarah Kernan 18:51

And serve it forth.

Victoria Flexner 18:52

Exactly. Yeah. And serve it forth. So there is a fair amount of like kind of guesswork that you’re doing with measurements and cooking times and temperatures and things like that. I would say that recipes today are so much more detailed, which is fair enough because recipes for most of human history that were recorded weren’t recorded to be used by average people, you know, as a cookbook that you would look to when, you know, you want to make like a nice Friday night dinner for your friends or something.

These recipes were recorded by very elite professional chefs who were working for the nobility, the aristocracy, you know, the wealthiest individuals. And they were recorded more as kind of a record of what was occurring in that household, but also often as sort of like a manuscript to consult for kind of dietary guidance or medicinal guidance. In a time before our medicine was made in labs, what we ate was our medicine and how we, you know, heal ourselves or adjust our temperaments or humors.

And a cookbook that you might find in a noble house in Renaissance Italy wasn’t going to be used by the family to cook up a thirty-minute weeknight meal. It was there for the doctors to consult and also just kind of as a physical representation of the culture that was being exercised there. I mean, these are the same individuals that were having their portraits painted and who were commissioning churches and grand houses. You know, they wanted the way in which they experienced culture to be kind of codified and remembered.

Sarah Kernan 20:56

Could you talk a bit about what role you think food plays in connecting with and understanding history, since that is such a fundamental part of this book?

Victoria Flexner 21:09

Yeah. I think it’s only recently that food has, and I mean really recently, like the last decade or two, maybe that might be a stretch, maybe the last decade, that food has really been taken seriously as a medium to study history. I often compare it to kind of like what women’s studies or women’s history was in the 1970s and 80s, where it just wasn’t taken very seriously by traditional academia. I mean, even when I was doing my first master’s degree, I had to explain to my professors what food history was, which was kind of like mind blowing to me, but they hadn’t heard of other food historians, even though there were some who were out there practicing, like Ken Albala, who’s, you know, like a legend and a true OG in that sense.

But most history kind of comes to us either in the written format, or we look at a painting, or we go to an old historic site, and we’re kind of taking it in that way. But food is tasting the past, it’s deeply sensorial, but what makes it so critical to the study of the past is that it’s a way to access the lives of individuals who left nothing behind. Most humans who have lived on this planet left absolutely no trace of their life. And I think any of us would be really sad to think that you know once we pass, there’s nothing left of us.

And it’s not just individuals, it’s entire cultures and communities. And if we’re gonna be frank, this is, generally speaking, women and people of color. You know history is written by the victors and the victors have been white Christian Western men. So it is mainly their experiences that we have records of. But food gives us way to relate to people who weren’t literate, who didn’t write books or build buildings or make art that we still have today.

Victoria Flexner 23:17

And when we cook something that someone else cooks like five hundred years ago. We’re performing similar actions. We’re inhabiting a shared metaphysical space for a moment with this person. We’re smelling what they smelled. We’re tasting what they tasted. And maybe it sounds a bit woo-woo, and maybe that’s why the ivory tower is still a little bit on the fence about the entire subject, but it is a legitimate form of study. It’s anthropological in a lot of senses.

It gives us access into someone else’s life, not perhaps in the traditional sense of they were born on this date. This is you know how long they lived. These were the major events of their life. But you can share an understanding that’s very similar to the understanding you have when you go to a restaurant and you eat something that is mind-blowingly delicious. And you know, for a moment really are so grateful to the chef and the, and the, and the cooks who prepared it and the people who grew that food, you know, you’re connecting with someone else. It’s just connecting with others across space and time.

Sarah Kernan 24:24

One thing that I really like about the format of your book, when you look through it, the images and the layout, it is like a work of art. And that gets across in a very different way than if you’re just like reading these historic recipes on their own. When you’re seeing these images of the final products or the stages of cooking, you really get the sense that dining in the past and food of the past was a really beautiful sensorial experience in a way that you can’t really access through a lot of other historical sources. And I think that’s a real gift from this book. It’s a different way to appreciate these historical recipes and to consider dining in the past and a different way of thinking about that. So when I look through the book, I start thinking about how beautiful of an experience some of these dinners must have been hundreds of years ago in a way that I don’t necessarily get immediately when I’m just looking at the recipes and the historic cookbooks on their own. So I think that is a wonderful contribution that you and Jay have made through this cookbook as well.

Victoria Flexner 25:52

Thank you for saying that. Although I think that a lot of that credit has to be given to Lucy Schaeffer, who is the photographer for this book, and Victoria Granof, who is the food stylist. I mean, the two of them were, are, just legends, the absolute best. I mean, every day on set with them, you know, we sort of knew which dishes we were doing. And, you know, in your mind, you might think, oh, okay, well, it would look really cool if we did this.

And then they would just come up with something that was like a thousand times better than you could have ever imagined. They are two women who are supremely good at what they do and should get all the credit for really making this book so visually stunning. And Rizzoli also does. They know how to make a beautiful book. I have to say the cover of this book was Victoria Granof’s idea. She was like, I want to do a Roman floor mosaic. And so she had given me this like huge list of all these various things to buy before the photo shoot. So I spent like three mad days running around New York, like acquiring like half a red snapper and like an oyster shell that looked exactly like this and one bone marrow bone. And I was, it was before I’d met her and she’s a good friend now, so she’ll find this funny. But I was like, this woman is either completely insane or a genius.

The most random list: one peacock feather, four roses. And on the first day when we showed up, she had made this mosaic. They weren’t actual, kind of, like ceramic pieces. They were little pieces of paper that she had individually hand painted. And then she made this entire, kind of like, floor and then got all these random ingredients out and just sort of started, you know, kind of placing them around and her and Lucy worked together a lot. Lucy just sort of, you know, kind of instinctually knew where to go and how to photograph it. And you’re just standing there looking at it like, oh God, it’s like a lot of food scraps on like a piece of cardboard. This is weird. This isn’t what I thought. And you look at it on the screen and you’re like, that’s incredible. That’s absolutely incredible. It was the first shot we did of the whole shoot. And I knew immediately that it had to be the cover because, just, amazing.

Sarah Kernan 28:29

Yeah, I mean, it really does look like a Roman mosaic when you look at the cover. I mean, so much of it. For anyone who actually makes or attempts to make historic recipes, I think we all run into the same problem. The final product is often just a different shade of brown and it doesn’t look all that attractive yet somehow like everything in this book is so colorful and just beautiful to look at. I mean, there’s so many colors and textures and none of it looks boring or just all different shades of brown and is really exceptional. Kudos to the whole team that worked on this.

Victoria Flexner 29:14

Yes. Thank you. The team came together and yeah, and magic happened in the kitchen and the studio.

Sarah Kernan 29:21

Well, if I could switch a little bit to asking about more recent work. Your most recent food history writing is on your Substack, Edible History. What sorts of things do you write about in that space? And do you have any plans for what that will become or what you want to do in that specific writing space?

Victoria Flexner 29:42

Yeah. So the Substack looks at individual foods and beverages, and it’s covered a really broad range. Again, it’s kind of like taking one singular dish or ingredient like the pineapple or the tomato or Dr. Pepper or, you know, the New York City cup of coffee in that kind of classic Anthora blue and white cup. And then using that as, again, a way to kind of look at a kind of bigger moment of history or a bigger theme within history. And they’ve been really fun to put together.

It’s been fun to work in a way where I’m still kind of wearing my historian hat and doing a lot of research, but it’s also a way to reach, I think, an even broader audience. And it’s been really interesting, kind of this whole new audience that I’ve been able to engage with over Substack, which is also its own interesting kind of entity at this moment in time. If you’re anyone who’s writing in any way, I think Substack is just kind of an interesting place to be.

But it’s pop culture. It’s, you know, it’s now, but it’s also history. And so I’m really enjoying writing about food in a way that perhaps feels like a bit more immediate, but is still very much tied to the past. So, it’s been really wonderful. And hopefully somewhere in those Substacks, there might be a future book. I can’t say, but yeah, absolutely kind of continuing to work in that sort of style, I suppose.

Sarah Kernan 31:25

Wonderful. Thank you so much for speaking with me today. I really appreciate your time, Victoria.

Victoria Flexner 31:31

Oh, thank you for having me. It was really wonderful.

Sarah Kernan 31:35

Thanks to everyone for listening today. Please remember to subscribe to this podcast so you never miss an episode. I’ll see you again next time on Around the Table.

 

“Recetario Soberano”: Defending Sovereignty One Recipe at a Time

By Ángel Tuninetti and the Centro de Estudios Heñói Team

Paraguay is a poster case for the damage that industrial agriculture can cause on food security and food sovereignty. The landlocked South American country was almost self-sufficient in food production until the 1990s, mainly thanks to the diversified crops and animal production of the fincas campesinas [small peasant farms]. 

Then, in 1996, GMO soybeans were introduced, and with them, an industrial agricultural model aimed at the production of commodities, followed later by other GMO crops, such as corn, rice, and wheat.  Now the country depends on the import of vegetables and fruits, since 95% of the cultivated lands are dedicated to genetically modified crops for export. This production involves the use of 60 million liters of pesticides per year (10 liters per inhabitant), and is defended by mercenaries, the police, the army and the judicial apparatus. This is a war for the future of Paraguayan people and their right to food sovereignty.

To defend the right of the Paraguayan people to their food sovereignty and their culture, the Centro de Estudios Heñói, a small NGO based in Asuncion, produces and publishes its Recetario Soberano. It consists in collecting and rescuing traditional peasant and indigenous recipes kept alive and transmitted from generation to generation, but that are not part of the typical Paraguayan fare that you will find in recipe books and traditional restaurants.

How are traditional indigenous and peasant recipes rescued?

Through a process in which we seek to understand the cultural significance of recipes, linking them to their roots, memories, and their socioeconomic, political, and symbolic history for the communities.

The process of recovering traditional recipes starts with interviews with Indigenous and peasant leaders to capture their stories and memories, recording them through audiovisual media, and capturing the recipe preparation in their environment, as a communal event. The communities have embraced the project, and their leaders recognize the importance of their culinary traditions, such as the ingredients from the Chaco region, often not included in the “official” Paraguayan gastronomy. As Ana Romero, a young leader from the Kemha Yat Sepo, of the Enxet People,  said, “in the Chaco, the indigenous food traditions of the peoples continue to be practiced, but we are a diversity of peoples, territories, and foods. In the Alto Chaco, we do have similarities in our food system; we are based on tuna, algarroba, mistol, and chili peppers.”

Ramón Medina, a leader from Kamba Kua, Pilar, emphasized the importance of community: “It is important to preserve not only the traditional food or recipes of Paraguay. But also, the entire history of community building, solidarity, sharing, inviting one another, the grand gesture of inviting one another. People liked and were happy to invite and be invited by others”.

Image Credit: Heñói.

Food sovereignty is intrinsically tied to land rights. As Mario Rivarola, the leader of the Mby’a community of Hugua Po’i, Caaguazú, pointed out, “to recover these typical foods of the Mbyá peoples, we need to recover the land to recover the Mby’a traditions and culture. That is the responsibility of the State, to comply with and enforce the national and international regulations that guarantee access to our ancestral territories”.

The first two recipes rescued

Chipa Manduvi

Image credit: Heñói

Ingredients: Corn flour, roasted and ground peanuts, cassava starch, milk, salt.

Preparation: Mix the corn flour, ground peanuts, and cassava starch in a large bowl. Add the salt and mix well. Add the milk little by little, kneading until you get a smooth, even dough. The amount of milk may vary, so add it gradually until the dough has the right consistency. Form the chipas and place them in a baking dish on banana leaves. Bake in a tatakúa (traditional brick oven) or preheated oven.

 

Ka’i Ku’a

Ingredients: Corn with husks, fresh Paraguay cheese, pork lard, milk

Image credit: Heñói

Preparation: Remove the husks from the corn, wash, and set aside. Remove the kernels from the corn and ground with a mill. Mix the ground corn with the Paraguay cheese, pork lard, and salt until you get a smooth dough. Pour the mixture into each husk, close it, and tie it at the ends and in the middle, forming the characteristic “monkey waist.” Place the husks in a pot with enough water. Let it boil for about 30 minutes. Remove and serve.

Image credit: Heñói

Why work to recover these recipes?

First, because we are aware of the problems of food on a national and global scale. These include the loss of food sovereignty, understood as the human right and self-determination of peoples to healthy and culturally appropriate food, as declared by La Vía Campesina. Peasant and indigenous communities have the right to eat what they want and have eaten traditionally, but the current food production system is dismantling their capacities for resistance because of the destruction of biocultural corridors, due to the relentless advance of agricultural, livestock, and forestry extractivism on their lands and territories. Inadequate nutrition has also meant increased deaths from chronic non-communicable diseases like obesity, diabetes, and hypertension.

Secondly, because we want to question what is Paraguayan gastronomy. In local literature, what is generally referred as “Paraguayan cuisine or gastronomy,” includes recipes that are assumed to be traditional without questioning the colonial heritage they often possess. This general idea of ​​Paraguayan gastronomy recipes is separated from the productive and creative labor behind the raw materials, the utensils, the culinary recipe itself, and the significance that all of these have for the organization and structuring of Indigenous and peasant communities. In other words, vorí vorí, sopa paraguaya, locro, and jopara, understood to be the intangible cultural heritage of Paraguay, could not exist without the productive Indigenous and peasant labor behind them. The  “typical Paraguayan fare” you would find at a traditional restaurant or food fair often excludes the diversity and richness of the culinary art developed in different Indigenous and peasant territories.

Our approach recovers the meaning that Indigenous and peasant communities give to food, to specific recipes, and to their relationship with nature, culture, society, the economy, and the power relations that permeate the ways in which food is produced, distributed, and consumed. 

Image credit: Heñói

In a country ravaged by extractivism, preserving and promoting ancestral cooking is an imperative to save traditional cultures and promote community building.

Anguish as a Form of Resistance: Ignacio Doménech’s Cocina de Recursos (Deseo mi comida) in Civil War Spain

By Yanet Acosta

A cookbook is much more than a simple collection of recipes.[i] In the case of Cocina de recursos (Deseo mi comida) by Ignacio Doménech, the cookbook is not only a tool of critique but also a form of resistance. It pushes back against the devastation of war, a devastation that leaves its mark not only on bodies, through the absence of food, but also on minds, through the torment of craving what can no longer be eaten.

Cocina de recursos (Deseo mi comida) was published in Spain in 1940, just after the end of the Spanish Civil War. Its author, Ignacio Doménech, had been one of the country’s most renowned chefs before the war. He trained under the legendary Auguste Escoffier at London’s iconic Savoy Hotel and became a major figure in popularizing haute cuisine in Spain, thanks to the publishing house he founded upon returning home.[ii]

A chef displays a platter of fowl to a curious woman.
Fig. 1. Cover of Ignacio Doménech’s magazine, El Gorro Blanco. Image courtesy of the author.

.

To fully grasp its significance—and, as we will see, the deep sorrow expressed by Doménech—one must consider the context. Throughout the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), Franco’s propaganda repeatedly promised that their victory would put an end to scarcity. Yet the war’s end brought no such relief. Instead, food shortages worsened due to Spain’s international isolation and the abandonment of farmland. Agricultural production didn’t return to pre-war levels until 1950. As a result, the rationing system implemented by Franco’s regime in 1939 became increasingly severe. By 1941, rations were allocated based on social class and profession. In 1943, the system further tightened with the introduction of individual ration cards for every citizen.

Doménech’s critical stance on these developments is immediately evident in the book’s title, which includes the parenthetical phrase “Deseo mi comida” (“I crave my food”). This isn’t a simple grammatical clarification. It reads more like a desperate cry. This plea is not only a response to wartime scarcity but also the profound deprivation of the postwar years.

A man and woman and child eat at a circular table laden with food. A cat waits patiently at the woman's feet.
Fig. 2. The cover of Ignacio Doménech’s Cocina de recursos (Deseo mi comida). Image courtesy of the author.

The ensuing book is divided into two parts. The first offers a collection of recipes accompanied by the author’s own commentary. What’s striking is Doménech’s shifts between past and present verb tenses. While this might seem like a grammatical inconsistency, it’s actually a meaningful choice. Having authored more than thirty cookbooks—including Marichu, la mejor cocinera española (1919) and La guía del gastrónomo y del maître de hotel (1919)—as well as thousands of articles, Doménech had total command of the Spanish language. His use of tenses appears deliberate; the present refers to postwar Spain, while the past evokes the wartime experience. He also speaks directly of the postwar context. At one point he writes: “In these postwar times, any cook with good taste and imagination is forced to create a thousand little surprises in the kitchen.”

Many of the words in the first part of Cocina de recursos (Deseo mi comida) reflect the author’s profound pain. Doménech makes this clear in his own description of the book:

“Los imposibles anhelos de un cocinero que, en tiempos de guerra, ante las realidades del hambre que ya mascábamos y, sin poderlo remediar, soñaba a todas horas con los más suculentos manjares”

“The impossible longings of a cook who, during times of war, facing the reality of the hunger between our teeth, could not help but dream constantly of the most succulent dishes.”

His words carry a quiet defiance—a resistance not only to the hunger itself but also to the circumstances that produced it, the war, and his life in the postwar period. Remarkably, however, the cookbook made it past Franco’s censorship without obstruction. This was largely due to the subtlety of Doménech’s approach. Censorship at the time focused on direct attacks against the regime’s dogma, moral standards, the Church, or the state. His resistance, by contrast, was indirect, anticipating the tone and strategy that many later writers and journalists would adopt in their own quiet opposition.

In Cocina de recursos, both subtext and shifts in verb tense become tools of critique. Doménech also makes use of irony—especially when discussing the absurdities of rationing. For example, he writes:

“Todo es cuestión de tíquets, carnets, cartas de trabajo, cartas de racionamiento para asegurar algo de víveres en crudo o en guisados. De modo que por esto digo que debían racionarse también las ganas de comer, ya que unos individuos, por su sobriedad de toda su vida o por su constitución física, comen mucho menos que otros individuos que tienen mucho más apetito, con justicia la ración no puede ser igual”.

“Everything depends on tickets, cards, work papers, and ration cards to get some food, either raw or cooked. That’s why I say even hunger should be rationed — some people, because of their habits or their body type, eat much less than others who are much hungrier. So it wouldn’t be fair to give everyone the same amount.”

In the second part of Cocina de recursos (Deseo mi comida), Doménech shifts his focus from recipes to food criticism, presenting a series of restaurant reviews written in the form of narrative chronicles. These accounts, dating from 1937 and 1938, are filled with anecdotes, encounters, conversations, and commentary—and unlike in the first part, here Doménech exclusively uses the past tense.

Yet one anecdote stands out as oddly contemporary, more reflective of the author’s present reality than of the period he’s supposedly describing. He recounts a conversation with a wealthy, titled gentleman who proposes a business venture: opening a restaurant that would traffic in black-market goods. During the postwar years, black market trading—or estraperlo—was rampant in Spain, making this episode feel particularly timely.[iii]

These and other insights show that Cocina de recursos (Deseo mi comida) is far more than a simple cookbook. It is a testament of suffering and an act of resistance. In a postwar Spain plagued by food shortages even harsher than those of the Civil War, Doménech’s work was a quiet but powerful protest, expressed through the language of cuisine.

.

[i] Scholars like Susan Leonardi, Janet Floyd, Laurel Forster, Janet Theophano, Cara de Silva, Anne L. Bower, María Paz Moreno, Rebecca Ingram, and Lara Anderson have convincingly shown this. See Acosta, 2024.

[ii] Simón Palmer, 2012.

[iii]  This observation is echoed by Miguel I. Arrieta Gallastegui, editor of the most recent edition of Cocina de recursos (Deseo mi comida), published by Editorial Trea.

.

References

Acosta, Yanet. “Cocina y crítica gastronómica de guerra y posguerra por Ignacio Doménech.” The Foodie Studies Magazine, nº 1 (2016): 4-19.

Acosta, Yanet. “Investigación contemporánea de las recetas manuscritas. El repositorio on- line de los recetarios domésticos históricos de Canarias.” Acosta &Ingram, Food Studies en español. Fragua, 2024.

Domenech, Ignacio. Cocina de recursos (Deseo mi comida). Gijón: Ediciones Trea, 2011.

Moreno, María Paz, De la página al plato. El libro de cocina en España. Gijón: Ediciones Trea, 2012.

Simón Palmer, María del Carmen, “Ignacio Doménech, autor y editor culinario,” Cincinnati Romance Review, volumen 33 (2012), University of Cincinnati, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures.


Yanet Acosta, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain and research affiliate with the Cátedra UNESCO for Communication, is also Director of the Masters in Communication and Food Journalism, The Foodie Studies. Awarded the Spanish Royal Academy’s Álvaro Cunqueiro Prize for Journalism in 2021, she is co-editor of Periodismo Gastronómico, Investigación y Comunicación Intercultural (2021) and Food Studies en español: Investigación actual en gastronomía y comunicación, with Rebecca Ingram (2024, Fragua). Current projects include the Digital Humanities recipe website and database, Recetarios domésticos históricos de Canarias (2021-present) and “#TetuánFoodie,” a collaboration with Laboratorios Ciudadanos, Madrid. A gastronomical journalist for more than two decades, she is also the author of the novels El chef ha muerto (2011) and Matar al padre (2017).

Curry Goes to War: Indian Army Field Rations in World War Two

By Pradeep Barua

The Indian Army participated in both  world wars in the twentieth century. During the First World War (1914-1918,) 1.3 million Indian soldiers fought for the British Empire. Another two million men joined the Indian Army and fought for the allies in World War Two (1939-1945).[i] In the latter case, feeding this massive army in various theatres of war, ranging from the jungles of Burma (Myanmar) to the deserts of North Africa to the frozen Apennines of Italy, proved to be a major challenge for the Army.

Alongside the challenges of the battlefield and terrain, the Indian Army was also a multi-faith army comprised of Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs. In addition to religious differences, Hindu and Sikh soldiers were subject to caste considerations. Food and rations had to be prepared along strict guidelines to adhere to caste and religious sensitivities. Two cooks or Langris were assigned to a company of soldiers (about 100 men). Depending on the company’s composition, the cooks would be Muslim, Hindu or Sikh, and of a particular caste as needed. The presence of the Langris ensured that food for the different religions and castes was provided for in the right way. The Indian Army also supplied stackable cooking pots, so soldiers could prepare their own meals in the field. This was especially important to high caste Brahmin Hindu soldiers who had to prepare and eat their own food in order to preserve their caste status.[ii]

Frontline British soldiers had access to 24-hour ration packs that included tinned bully beef, spam, steak, kidney pudding and sausages. These were not acceptable to Indian soldiers, and it was subsequently a challenge to keep them fed on the frontlines. To aid in this, dehydrated lentils, fish, vegetables, and fruit were provided to Indian soldiers engaged in combat.[iii] Indian soldiers, like their British counterparts, also foraged for fresh eggs, fish, and poultry as the situation allowed.

Whether it was lentils, fish, or meat, the favorite form of preparation was a curry. It was slow cooked in a pot and served on an enameled metal plate roughly 12 inches across.[iv] The slow cooking tenderized hard dehydrated lentils, dry fish, and even tough cuts of meat. Crucial to the curry was the addition of a blend of powdered spices that each Indian soldier carefully hoarded and carried into the frontlines. A base curry spice blend included turmeric, cumin, and coriander. To this, people added other spices such as chili, black pepper, cinnamon, or nutmeg depending on regional preferences. The curry was usually eaten with a flat wheat bread called the chapatti, which was made every day by the Langris. The curry and the chapattis became synonymous with Indian troops in various theatres of conflict. Many civilians in the combat zones, who were assisted by Indian troops, fondly recall the food that the Indian soldiers shared with them. In Italy, for example, villagers today remember with gratitude the curries and chapattis that Indian soldiers distributed among them to relieve starvation during the Italian campaign in World War Two.[v]

Food traditions of the Indian Army developed at the regimental level. The regimental messes evolved and enshrined curry recipes over periods of up to a century.[vi] This knowledge was passed on to the regiment’s battalion cooks. On festive occasions these dishes were cooked in the rear areas and transported to soldiers in forward positions.

What follows is a small representation of curry recipes unique to Indian Army Regiments:

Assam Regiment:

The battalions of this regiment fought mainly in Assam and Burma during the Second World War. An iconic dish is Machoor Tenga Jhool or Fish Sour Curry.

A bowl of red curry with seafood.
Fig. 1. Machoor Tenga Jhool or Fish Sour Curry. Image courtesy of author.

Jammu & Kashmir Regiment:

The battalions of this regiment also fought in Burma during the Second World War. Its iconic dish is Rogan Josh or Mutton Curry.

A bowl of brown curry with mutton.
Fig. 2. Rogan Josh or Mutton Curry. Image courtesy of the author.

Sikh Regiment:

The battalions of this regiment fought in all the major theatres of war that the Indian Army participated in during the Second World War. Its iconic dish is Sarson ki Saag aur Makki ka Roti or Mustard Greens Curry and corn flat bread.

A plate of green curry with a flatbread.
Fig. 3. Sarson ki Saag aur Makki ka Roti or mustard greens curry and corn flat bread. Image courtesy of the author.

Ultimately, the Indian Army regiments enshrined regional customs and traditions. Food served an essential purpose in maintaining these regional identities. The Indian soldiers’ curry rations played a vital role in ensuring that the Indian Army’s morale and well-being was in the best condition during the Second World War.

.

[i] See Pradeep Barua, The Late Colonial Indian Army: From the Afghan Wars to the Second World War (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2021).

[ii] “An Army Marches on its Stomach,” National Army Museum, UK, https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/army-marches-its-stomach

[iii] Kristen Ann Ehrenberger, “Dehydrated Rations for Indian Soldiers in the Second World War,” H-Nutrition, 22 June 2017, https://networks.h-net.org/node/134048/discussions/182894/dehydrated-rations-indian-soldiers-second-world-war

[iv] “Tales From the Supply Depot: Indian Army Enameled Plate,” 18 May 2015, https://hatchfive.wordpress.com/2015/05/18/indian-army-enamelled-plate/

[v] War and Chapati: The Role of Indian Soldiers in Italy during WWII, documentary produced by Assocoiazione Universarte and directed by Harvinder Singh, https://globalhistorydialogues.org/projects/war-and-chapati/

[vi] Regimental Zaikas: Indian Army Regimental Dishes (Bangalore: ASC Centre and College, 2019).


Pradeep Barua is Professor of History at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. He is the author of several books on South Asia and military history including Gentlemen of the Raj, The State at War in South Asia, The Military Effectiveness of Post-Colonial States, and The Late Colonial Indian Army.