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A new year is upon us! Do you greet New Year's Day with any special traditions ? Some people like to watch football games. Others take time to make resolutions for the coming year.

Another popular tradition is to make and eat lucky foods to start the new year off on the right foot. What foods are lucky? And how did they get that reputation ? Come with us as we take a look!

New Year's Day traditions vary around the world. Still, many "lucky" foods can be broken down into six groups. These are greens, grapes, pork, fish, , and cake. Let's take a closer look at each:

Greens: Many different types of cooked greens are thought to be lucky. Depending on your culture, these could include cabbage, kale, chard and collard greens. Why are greens thought to bring luck? Many people believe their green leaves look like folded money. They hope greens will bring them good luck with money in the new year.

Grapes: People all around the world eat 12 grapes at midnight on New Year's Eve. This is especially in Spain, Portugal, Venezuela, Cuba, Mexico, Ecuador, and Peru. Each of the grapes represents one of the months of the coming year. Some believe that the grapes can predict trends in the coming year. For example, if the fifth grape eaten is sour, the fifth month ( May) might be difficult.

Fish: Fish are also popular on New Year's Day. Experts think fish became a popular holiday or feast food thousands of years ago for a couple of reasons. First, religious traditions often called for fish instead of red meat during feasts. Second, before refrigeration, fish could be kept and transported more easily than other meats.

-such as peas, beans, and lentils-are eaten in many different countries around the world. In the U.S., for example, it's in the South to eat black-eyed peas. Experts believe this tradition started in Africa and later spread throughout the American South. Some people also believe look like small coins that swell when cooked. Some people eat them with the hope of great riches in the new year.

Just like there are lucky foods you should eat, there are also a few foods that many people think you should . For example, many people believe you should lobster and chicken on New Year's Day. That's because these creatures often move backwards. Others believe you should all birds, so that your luck won't fly away!

And, finally, one more word of warning before you dig in: Always leave a little food on your plate. Many people believe eating everything on your plate means you're greedy and will result in bad luck. On the other hand, leaving a little food on your plate will guarantee you'll have plenty to eat in the coming year.

What are your family's New Year's traditions ? Do you gather for a lucky meal? Talk about your goals for the upcoming year? Whatever your customs, it's always fun to start the new year with people you care about.

CCRA.L.3, CCRA.L.6, CCRA.R.1, CCRA.R.2, CCRA.R.4, CCRA.R.10, CCRA.SL.1

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Happy New Year! Let's head to the kitchen to see what's cooking today in Wonderopolis!

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The bug that poops candy - George Zaidan

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What makes a meal delicious? Often, the answer might be umami. The Japanese word means "delicious taste," and refers specifically to a savory, meaty flavor often found in fish broths, mushrooms, cheese and tomato sauce.

Umami is now considered the fifth primary taste - next to sweet, sour, bitter and salty, but as I discovered, umami has a character and history all its own.

Having Japanese immigrant parents meant I grew up eating foods steeped in umami: Soy sauce, miso paste, and dashi, a broth made from seaweed, shiitake mushrooms, or shaved bonito flakes, made from dried tuna. Those ingredients in particular are cornerstones of Japanese cuisine, so "umami" was a dinner-table word in my family, long before it entered the American lexicon.

I didn't know what umami was, exactly; I thought of it like a magical elixir, the culinary hero pumping up food's "yum factor." It's savory and salty, like a ramen made of long-simmered bone broth. It can also have tang, like marinara sauce sprinkled with Parmesan, or ranch-flavored tortilla chips. It seemed so central to describing deliciousness itself, it seemed odd that English would have no equivalent word.

Then again, I get why umami evades description. Almost everything about it is mysterious and complex - from how we perceive its taste, to its history and its fight for legitimacy.

Oxford psychologist Charles Spence, who studies taste perception, says a lot of that probably goes backs to the unusual way we sense umami. "It only comes alive and it becomes delicious when it's combined with an aroma," he explains. That's not true of other tastes: "Sweetness is a sweet whether or not you can smell anything; same for salty, same for bitter."

On its own, umami doesn't taste strong or particularly good. But, says Spence, when combined with other foods, umami punches up flavors of protein and salt, while also weaving in other tastes, like sour and sweet. "All the tastes interact with one another, sometimes suppressing, sometimes enhancing the other tastes."

This complexity of umami's might also explain why it wasn't isolated and recognized as a taste until relatively recently in Western culture.

It was a Japanese man, inspired by his wife's rich kelp broth, who isolated the chemical compound glutamate from seaweed in 1908. Chemist Kikunae Ikeda, identified it as the source of this peculiar savory taste, and called it "umami." (There are two other compounds - guanylate, and inosinate - that researchers also associated with umami.)

But it would take nearly a century - and the discovery of glutamate receptors on our tongues two decades ago - before Western cultures accepted umami as a primary taste.

That resistance, Spence says, is rooted in discrimination.

"[There are] racist undertones that it came from the East," he says, which meant Western scientists and chefs were slow to embrace it. He says that legacy still powerfully shapes consumer perception today.

Soon after its discovery, a Japanese company started marketing a salt-like additive that delivered an umami punch, monosodium glutamate, or the notorious MSG. That notoriety stems from a persistent, 50-year-old myth that MSG used in Chinese restaurants causes headaches.

"It's a zombie myth that will not die," says John Hayes, a behavioral food scientist at Penn State.

Hayes says many people still don't realize that, despite its borrowed Japanese name, umami exists in all cuisines.

"Pepperoni pizza: It's just a huge umami bomb," Hayes points out. "There's umami from the cheese, umami from the tomatoes, there's umami from the cured meats. If 'Chinese restaurant syndrome' were real, then that pepperoni pizza should give you a giant headache as well."

The irony of that persistent myth is that umami can actually make food healthier - and more satisfying. Through its mysterious interactions with other flavors; the savory quality of umami can make things taste richer, without adding sodium or fat, for example.

Spence says he's been advocating for greater use of MSG in airline food, for example, which is typically oversalted because flight conditions tend to dull other tastes. "[Umami] is the one taste that stands up to altitude better than all the others."

Flavor chemist Arielle Johnson also notes umami-rich foods tend to take time to prepare; they're often fermented, like kimchi, or slow cooked, like a bone broth. "Umami is a particularly good example of careful mixing and tending and aging and shepherding of ingredients until they become something that is delicious to us," Johnson says.

That reminds me of my childhood notions about umami. It does, indeed, possess mysterious qualities that are hard to describe, even among scientists. And umami, in many ways, reflects the love and deliciousness that goes into a dish. I was not wrong.

Umami also has another profound attribute I had not appreciated as a child: It went unrecognized and unappreciated by Western culture, but eventually overcame that bias and discrimination by simply demonstrating that it has universal, human appeal.

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How umami overcame discrimination and took its place as the 5th taste

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Everything about this savory flavor is mysterious, from how it tastes to why it took so long to get recognized as the fifth taste. What is it, and how does it make food taste delicious?

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Post World War II Food (U.S. National Park Service)

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[1] Hayes 2000: 217; Library of Congress n.d. a, n.d. b.; Michigan Radio 2014; Tunc and Babic 2017.

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Jennifer 8. Lee: The hunt for General Tso

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Reporter Jennifer 8. Lee talks about her hunt for the origins of familiar Chinese-American dishes -- exploring the hidden spots where these two cultures have (so tastily) combined to form a new cuisine.

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Let's Begin...

When you take a bite of a hot pepper, your body reacts as if your mouth is on fire -- because that's essentially what you've told your brain! Rose Eveleth details the science and history behind spicy foods, giving insights into why some people continue to pay the painful price for a little spice.

Create and share a new lesson based on this one.

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When you take a bite of a hot pepper, your body reacts as if your mouth is on fire -- because that's essentially what you've told your brain! Rose Eveleth details the science and history behind spicy foods, giving insights into why some people continue to pay the painful price for a little spice.

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Humans have stepped foot on the moon, but we haven't made it to Mars. Yet.

Amid the myriad barriers, a key issue to sending a crew to Mars is food. Weight, volume and longevity limit the kinds - and how much of it - can be brought on the long journey.

It's a challenge aerospace engineering undergraduate Emmanuel Mendoza has taken on. Specifically, growing our own food in the farthest reaches of the galaxy.

"What can we do with Martian soil, what modifications - if any - can we make to the soil in the future to, you know, make it more habitable for terrestrial plant growth on a different planet," he told NPR. "So I guess, it's extra-terrestrial plant growth."

Mendoza is currently running a study at Texas A&M University, where he's mixing simulated Martian soil and poop from fly larvae to find just the right recipe for growing plants on Mars.

Science fiction inspires reality

The seed of this idea was planted when Mendoza was in middle school, watching Ridley Scott's 2015 film The Martian, in which the fictional botanist Mark Watney becomes stranded on the inhospitable planet and grows potatoes to survive.

"That got me really interested in ... what nutrients or even just what soil structure does [Martian soil] have that we could potentially take advantage of," Mendoza said.

Now, he's running an experiment growing English peas in simulated Martian soil at the Forensic Laboratory for Investigative Entomological Sciences (FLIES).

"[This] Martian soil is manufactured on Earth. It uses data from Martian landers, and it's kind of expensive on a per-kilogram unit basis," Mendoza said, which limited the types of plants he could grow.

"I definitely considered potatoes [like Mark Watney]," he said. "The big reason I didn't grow potatoes were budgetary constraints and also just the fact that I couldn't necessarily get the data I wanted out of them."

He wanted to be able to measure plant growth as it occurred throughout his experiment. Since potatoes grow underground, he'd only be able to collect data once they were done growing. In the end, Mendoza chose to grow English peas because they're self-pollinating, grow fairly quickly and he can see the shoots climb.

The role insects play in his experiment

Martian soil - or regolith - isn't exactly ideal for plants from Earth. It tends to be rocky and coarse, and lacks the right organic matter.

"It's obviously missing the natural biota of any soil you'll find on Earth," Mendoza said. "And it's also missing some certain macronutrients that contain nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur."

At the same time, it does contain other essential nutrients. "And so, it has an interesting balance - it has some elements that we need, and it's just missing other additives that come with having life for a significant amount of time," Mendoza said.

Here's where the larvae come in.

In order to supplement his simulated soil with those missing nutrients and organic matter, Mendoza turned to the larvae of black soldier flies, which excrete a powdery waste known as frass.

"They can break down almost any biomatter and they can turn it into really useful byproducts," Mendoza said. "And then you can use black soldier fly larvae frass as a nutrient substitute for soil."

For this experiment, Mendoza mixed different ratios of simulated Martian soil and frass to see what best supported growing English pea plants. Now, he said he's seeing growth across all his plants - even the ones growing in 100% simulated Martian soil.

Mendoza presented his experiment and initial findings at the Entomological Society of America's 2023 conference earlier this month. But he's not done with the project yet. Pea plants take about 10-12 weeks to fully mature, and Mendoza's are almost there.

Soon, he'll harvest the pea pods, then weigh, measure and analyze them. Once he's done collecting all that data, he said he'll compile his results into a paper.

"I'm just an undergraduate. I think that there are people who are way more qualified to do further studies that I would just really want to see and maybe even help out with in the future. That would be an amazing goal," he said, adding that while his experiment doesn't seek to tackle the issue of water on Mars, it would be interesting to focus on in the future.

As for getting to Mars, Mendoza would jump at the opportunity to go himself.

"Maybe not to be Mark Watney, I'd prefer not to get stranded on Mars, but to be an archetype inspiring people to do a lot with the available resources," he said.

He'll just have to finish his junior year at Texas A&M first.

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Can we grow veggies on Mars? Fly larvae and synthetic soil may hold the answer

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A Texas undergrad is investigating how to grow vegetables on Mars - and has cultivated test samples of English peas in simulated Martian soil, with fertilizer from fly larvae.

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For many Americans, the Thanksgiving feast just isn't complete until they dig into a slice of pumpkin or sweet potato pie - and for some, there's simply no room for both.

The two desserts have similarities - both are orange, sweet and have a bit of spice - but they have distinct histories that have led to dedicated followings.

At Ol' Henry Restaurant in suburban St. Louis, opinions are strong.

"Sweet potato pie. Definitely," said owner Ada Joyce Taylor.

Her granddaughter, operational manager Audrianna Black, agrees. "I'm looking for that sweetness in a pie," she added.

Taylor started the soul food business almost 10 years ago, naming it after her late husband, Henry Edward Taylor. Today, the walls are lined with signed photos and memorabilia, and it's a well-known destination for those craving sweet potato pie.

"On a normal week, I would say that we go through 15 to 20 sweet potato pies," said chef Tracy Stevenson. "During the holiday, I would say 40 or 50."

Both sweet potato and pumpkin pies are American staples with a starchy custardlike filling. Pumpkin pie tends to be more heavy on spice, while sweet potato pie is typically sweeter and lighter.

But the reasons why people choose one over the other often trace back to where they were raised and their race.

"Always sweet potato pie"

The origins of these two desserts stretch back to the 15th and 16th centuries, when European settlers brought sweet potatoes and pumpkins back to Europe from the Americas.

With sweet potato pie, settlers may have been trying to replicate the European dish carrot pie, a dessert with layered slices of carrots, according to soul food historian and James Beard Award-winning author Adrian Miller.

"You'll see recipes in the historical record that have sweet potato pie in layered slices," Miller said. "They know that they're sweet and saying, 'Hey, we've got this natural sweet vegetable that's orange, I could use this as a substitute for carrot pie.'"

Miller said carrot pie recipes of the time had similar methods and spicing as those used for sweet potato pie.

As colonization expanded across the Americas, enslaved Africans learned how to cook sweet potatoes. Miller said the potatoes may have resonated among enslaved people because they're somewhat similar to yams, a root vegetable grown in West Africa.

However, he said, the idea of putting sweet potato into pie form came from European culture.

"It's really the expertise of these enslaved cooks, making something unfamiliar to them to please their slaveholders, that eventually gets embraced and adopted," Miller said. "It's the same with things like fried chicken, barbecue and all these other things that were not necessarily part of the West African food heritage."

Since then, sweet potato pie has become a hallmark of Black cuisine and common on dinner tables across the South.

For Miller, sweet potato pie means family and culture.

"We've never had a pumpkin pie grace our table, unless somebody who doesn't know us brought one over, if we invited someone," Miller said with a smile. "And that's on us, right? Because we should have given them a warning not to bring that stuff over. So it's always sweet potato pie."

"The perfect Thanksgiving dessert"

But it's pumpkin pie that plays a central role in the portrait of a quintessential Thanksgiving dinner.

Like sweet potato pie, pumpkin pie's roots go back to a time when European settlers were experimenting with foods grown locally. They learned how to boil or steam pumpkins that were first domesticated by Native Americans. Early pumpkin pie recipes can be found in both early Colonial and French cookbooks.

"The pumpkin pie itself has this whole world history within it, not only the Columbian Exchange, but the spice exchange," said culinary historian and Roosevelt University Professor Emeritus Bruce Kraig.

But an 1827 novel is largely responsible for the dessert's connection to the holiday. In Northwood: A Tale of New England, author and activist Sarah Josepha Hale dedicated a chapter to describing what is the now-classic Thanksgiving dinner.

"She virtually invented it - the turkeys, the cranberry sauce," Kraig said. "She said pumpkin pie is the American pie."

In 1863, Hale convinced President Abraham Lincoln to declare a national day of Thanksgiving.

Pumpkin pie remains closely linked to the holiday.

At The Blue Owl Bakery in House Springs, Mo., owner Kim Byerly said demand is through the roof for the restaurant's pumpkin pies. They expect to sell several hundred and are expanding by shipping the pies across the country this year.

Byerly is a fan of pumpkin pie, even if it took her years to actually try it.

"I just like the flavor and the consistency of it," Byerly said. "You mix it with that whipped cream and it's just like the perfect Thanksgiving dessert."

The Blue Owl's bakers also make several variations of the traditional pumpkin pie, including pumpkin gooey butter cheesecake, but so far, no sweet potato pie.

Cindi Wittu, a baker at The Blue Owl, said that while she's had both pies, she prefers pumpkin.

"I'm partial to the spices that are in it," she said. "It just reminds me of home, of family."
is a reporter for St. Louis Public Radio. This story was produced in partnership with Harvest Public Media, a collaboration of public media newsrooms in the Midwest.

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Pumpkin or sweet potato pie? There's a rich history behind both

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The two desserts have similarities - both are orange, sweet, and have a bit of spice - but they have distinct histories that have led to dedicated followings.

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If you want to visit the birthplace of french toast , you won't need to know how to speak French!

The origins of french toast are not entirely clear, but long before this sweet snack was called " french toast ," similar recipes were being whipped up all around the world. One of the earliest versions of french toast has been traced back to the Roman Empire.

The name " french toast " was first used in 17 th-century England. The recipe - and name - were brought to America by early settlers.

In France, the dish is called "pain perdu," meaning "lost bread." Why lost bread? Originally, people made French toast from bread in order to make use of bread that would otherwise have been thrown away.

To make french toast , you first dip slices of bread in a mixture of beaten eggs, milk, and vanilla. Then you fry the egg-coated bread in a pan until browned.

Some people recommend slicing the bread the night before and letting it dry out a bit overnight to keep the bread from too much egg and getting .

In the United States, restaurants usually serve french toast with butter, maple syrup and powdered sugar, but the possibilities are endless. French toast can be topped with just about anything.

Popular toppings include powdered sugar, maple syrup, jelly, jam, honey, peanut butter, applesauce, whipped cream, fruit, yogurt, ice cream and nuts. (not sweet) french toast can be topped with bacon, cheese, gravy and even ketchup!

People use a variety of different breads to make french toast . In the western and southwestern United States, many cooks prefer bread. Within some Jewish communities in the New York area, people use leftover challah bread from the dinner for french toast on Sunday mornings.

Around the world, people enjoy french toast in many different ways. The British call french toast "eggy bread," " bread" or "french-fried bread." And sometimes they serve it with ketchup.

The people of New Zealand prefer their french toast served with bananas, bacon and maple syrup. Australians serve up a version of french toast with cheese and tomato sauce. The French consider "pain perdu" a dessert, not a breakfast food.

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Today we're toasting a breakfast treat with a mistaken identity. It's delicious for sure, but surprisingly not French.

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Roast pig, boiled rockfish, and apple pie were among the dishes George and Martha enjoyed during the holiday in 1797. Here are some actual recipes.

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Popping Popcorn - Food Science | Exploratorium

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Contemplating air pop vs. oil pop? Either way, it’s actually water that pops your corn.

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Photo Essay: In Peru, a Daily Grind Against Inflation

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In a poor neighborhood on Lima’s outskirts, supply disruptions and rising prices have residents struggling to afford staples.

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As an Asian Canadian, I've always been interested in how racial minorities and immigrants understand their identities when they're surrounded by an unfamiliar culture. I often think about this when I drive through rural New York and Pennsylvania to visit my husband, becoming more aware of my own racial difference whenever I get out of my car. I recognize that I am quickly passing through these communities and naturally wonder about racial minorities who live in them. Do they maintain their traditions? Do they feel welcomed by their neighbors? How do their identities evolve over time?

To explore these questions, I decided to locate people who looked like me but lived in these smaller towns. I noticed many work in the restaurant industry, so I reached out to Chinese restaurants in small-town Pennsylvania. I came across one located in central Pennsylvania, in a small, predominantly White town with no more than 2,500 people. Originally from China, the owners moved to Pennsylvania from Albany, New York, with the hope their four children would have better opportunities for their future. They purchased the business from another Chinese immigrant, a friend, who actually wanted to leave the restaurant industry.

The first time I stopped by the restaurant, I noticed that the dining room was splashed with quiet reminders of China - a framed image of the Great Wall, a Chinese fan hanging on the wall. The restaurant was usually empty in the afternoons, as customers seemed to prefer takeout to dining in. The kids were hard to miss. They sat at the counter with their homework and peppered me with questions about where I was from, if I was Chinese like them and what I was doing in Pennsylvania. The restaurant is a place of business just as it is a shrine to the kids who spend their time there. The walls were covered with awards the children got from school, colorful drawings of family members, and art decorations.

The children spent most of their days after school at the restaurant - at ages 11, 9 and 5 they're too young to be at home alone. If they weren't doing homework, they were watching YouTube videos of K-Pop stars and Asian dramas or running around the restaurant. For dinner, they would eat a simple steamed fish with a bowl of white rice or a fish cake soup. Often, the kids said they wanted to only eat "American" food - pizza or burgers - but their mother told them it wasn't good for them.

The mother of the family said this isn't her dream life, but something she has to do. "It's for my kids," she said, in between phone calls and cooking the next order. "Their education and their future. I don't think about mine."

The popularity of American Chinese food has created a set of shared experiences among Chinese American children growing up in local Chinese restaurants. According to the book The Fortune Cookie Chronicles by Jennifer 8. Lee, there are more Chinese restaurants in the United States than there are McDonalds, Burger Kings, Wendy's, Domino's, and Pizza Huts combined. Instead of lounging at home with TVs and toys, many children growing up in these restaurants spend a considerable portion of their childhood working alongside their parents.

What I found most remarkable about these children's lives were the tensions created by overlapping spaces; the restaurant is both a place of connection and isolation, home and work, playground and business. At times, the children feel trapped and obligated to be at the restaurant, but also recognize the need to help their parents. The majority of their time is spent here, making it the cornerstone for their life now and for the future they dream of.

Hannah Yoon is a freelance photojournalist based in Waterloo, Ontario. She has earned a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Wilfrid Laurier University and a college diploma in Photojournalism from Loyalist College. Hannah's work has appeared in various Canadian and American publications, and she was the 2014 recipient of the Tom Hanson Photojournalism Award from the Canadian Press. She has documented a variety of subjects including cultural and social Otherness, social isolation, mental health, and collective memory. Recently, Hannah has been exploring her own identity as a member of the Korean diaspora and how her upbringing in Canada has shaped her as a person and her work.

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A photo essay exploring what it's like to be raised in a family business.

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The English word tomato derives from the Aztec word tomatl. It is believed the Aztecs and Incas were cultivating and eating the tomato from 700AD. Though the tomato originated from the Andean region, it eventually spread north to Mexico. The scientific name for the tomato is solanum lycoperscicum.

While the Spanish were responsible for bringing the tomato to Europe in the early 16th century, its first reference in Italy was in 1544 in Pietro Andrea Mattioli's Herbal, who refers to the tomato as pomi d'oro meaning golden apple. The tomato was not used in cooking until the 18th century as it was often viewed with fear and suspicion as a member of the nightshade plant family, which had plants such as the mandrake among them.

Once the names the tomato were called were amended and confusion and ambiguity as to what it was subsided, it was able to illustrate its full potential. After its family ties became less relevant and it was allowed to exist for what it was, not how it looked, it thrived. This took an element of trust.

Below, Nightshade's subjects discuss their favourite recipes.

I can tell you, lasagna is the first dish I learned to cook. I moved out from my parents' house without knowing how to cook even a common pasta but since lasagna and pollo con patate, are my favourite dishes, I learned how to cook them first. Even though making the ragu isn't so easy. I tried my best and my lasagna is one of the best in town, if you get in Brianza by any chance, you've got to taste it.

Evelyne's lasagna Ingredients: Egg lasagna | Passata | Celery | Carrots | Onions | Mince | Parmesan | Olive oil | Homemade béchamel | Salt | Pepper | Basil
Fry the onion until softened. Add the carrot and cook for five minutes, then add the celery and cook for another two minutes. Turn up the heat, add the chopped beef and cook until browned all over.

Make a ragu over an afternoon, pour in the wine and passata, season with salt, pepper and a pinch of grated nutmeg, then bring to a simmer.

Make your own béchamel. Place cooked ragu into an overproof dish and layer. Top with parmesan. Garnish with basil.

This is a classic Italian recipe. If you ever jump on a plane to Italy, don't miss it.

Since I was a child, this has been my favourite recipe. I remember cooking it for every family party, even for my sister's wedding. With this recipe you will never go too far wrong. Your guests will love Crostata. This recipe is a mix of authentic Italian flavours, in which lemon and marmellata (jam) are the main ingredients for a unique and refined taste.

Good luck and enjoy!

Claudia's Ingredients: 250g cold butter from the fridge | 200g of icing sugar | 500g of 00 flour | 2 eggs | The rind of an untreated lemon | 400g of jam | Enough milk to brush the surface | A pinch of salt crostata alla marmellata
Put the flour, butter and a pinch of salt in the mixer. Mix in order to obtain an uneven sandblasting.

Add the eggs, icing sugar and lemon peel to flavour the pastry and allow the citric acid to make it crumbly.

Knead the dough before putting it onto a work surface. Start working it with the fingertips, to create a nice compact dough. Wrap it in clingfilm and let it rest for 30 minutes in the fridge, or ideally overnight.

After letting the dough rest, we heat it and flatten it. Aim for a thickness of 7/8mm. Transfer the dough into a 24cm diameter cake pan and pinch the bottom with a fork.

Then we make our short pastry with jam, we distribute it on the edge. After that, prepare 3 or 4cm strips of dough and place on to the jam, applying pressure to the edges. Lay the strips diagonally creating a grid of pastry and diamond shapes of jam. To make the tart shiny, brush the milk on the pastry with a pastry brush. After that, we bake the tart in a pre-heated oven at 170C for 50 minutes.

Fiorentina is one of the most popular and biggest steak in Italian cuisine.

I have eaten this more than three times and its taste was undeniable. I think it is one of the best dishes that I often have because it reminds me of Tuscany's fabulous and iconic lifestyle.

Ingredients: T-bone steak | Salt | Pepper (coal fire)
Use the highest quality steak, ideally Tuscan or Italian. Cook on an open fire if possible (on the embers of the grill). Rare or medium rare only. Garnish with salt and pepper.

Pizza has always been a reason to gather with my friends. Pizzerias were fancy enough for our student pockets. When my mum would make pizza at home, we were always very excited.

For me, it was nice to see the first generation of immigrants learning the Italian cooking as their way of integration.

Abigail's pizza al prosciutto e funghi Ingredients: Semolina pizza dough | tablespoon olive oil | 2 cloves chopped garlic | 5 mushrooms thinly sliced | mozzarella cheese | 1 can tomatoes | chopped roma | 1 bell pepper| thinly sliced prosciutto | salt & pepper to taste | oregano | pepper flakes
Preheat oven to its hottest setting for 45 minutes. With about 1 teaspoon olive oil, sauté the sliced mushrooms and a pinch of salt over medium heat for 5-10 minutes, until well browned. Set aside.

Sprinkle semolina on your baking sheet. Place the dough on top of the semolina and roll out into a circular shape. Brush the outer edges with olive oil and chopped garlic. Spread chopped tomatoes from the centre out to the edge of the oiled crust.

Evenly place your toppings (mushrooms, mozzarella, bell pepper, etc) on the dough. Sprinkle with salt, Italian seasoning and pepper flakes, to taste. Add Parmesan cheese if desired.

Transfer the pizza onto your stone by sliding it off the baking sheet. Bake for 10+ minutes, or until the crust is nicely browned and the cheese is bubbly. Remove with tongs and let rest for five minutes.

I usually cook it during summer for lunch, after a long morning at the beach. It is easy, quick and everyone loves it, including my kids. The pepper is not that hot. It is a plate that I particularly love because I buy the shrimps fresh from the local fish store near the beach.

Nadege's Ingredients: Shrimps from Marsala Tomatoes from pachino | 300g spaghetti | Olive oil | Garlic | Hot pepper | Salt pasta con gamberoni, peperoncino e pangrattato
In a frying pan add some oil, garlic and hot pepper then mix all together until the mixture becomes a little golden. In the meantime, boil some water for the pasta.

Add two or three tablespoons of the boiling water into the mixture. Then let it sit for a couple of minutes until the pasta is cooked. Add salt and pepper. Mix everything together.

Aubergines are my all-time favourite late summer/winter vegetable. This dish reminds me of childhood, having a family meal at a local tavola calda. It can be eaten as a standalone dish or as part of a secondo piatto. It's one of the most unassuming yet deliciously hearty dishes. I've probably adulterated the dish to suit my palette but this is a firm favourite for me to prepare for my nearest and dearest. If you want a leaner version of this dish, try grilling the aubergines instead. An exceptionally tasty vegetarian treat.

Tiwonge's melanzane alla parmigiana Ingredients: 3 large aubergines | 1 bottle of tomato passata | 2 cloves of garlic 2 balls of mozzarella | 1 cup of parmigiano reggiano (grated) | 1 cup of extra virgin olive oil | 1 cup flour | 1 cup vegetable oil | Black pepper to taste | Fresh basil to taste | Salt to taste
Preheat oven to 180C (356F). Slice aubergines lengthways but leave skin on. Place in a bowl and sprinkle two tablespoons of salt over them and leave for an hour to remove the moisture.

In the meantime prepare the sauce. Add two teaspoons of olive oil to a pan and finely chop garlic cloves. Fry until softened. Add passata and cook on medium heat on hob for 15 minutes. Tear and add fresh basil and black pepper and salt. Cook for a further 10 minutes. Chop mozzarella into small cubes.

Place flour into a bowl. Take aubergines out of salt and coat each in the flour. Prepare a new pan with two tablespoons vegetable oil and fry off flour coated aubergines- about 1-2 minutes each side. Place on kitchen towel to absorb oil. Add more cooking oil to pan if required.Prepare an oven baking dish. Start by spoon- ing some of the passata onto the base. Then place a layer of aubergines on top, add some passata, parmesan and mozzarella. Repeat until all ingredients have been used.

Bake for 25-30 minutes. Serve with a sprig of basil and enjoy this heart-warming beautiful dish.

This is a classic Italian antipasto. It is the perfect dish for when you invite your friend for dinner because it is easy to make and very tasty.

Bintou's caprese Ingredients: Mozzarella | Tomato | Extra virgin olive oil | Oregano | Salt | Pepper
Slice mozzarella and tomato and place on plate. Apply a generous amount of extra virgin olive oil. Season with salt, pepper and fresh oregano.

This dish reminds me of the long summers in my childhood, and I used to enjoy this on a picnic or by the beach. It brings memories of laughs, sun, water, running barefoot in the hot sand, beach games and the joy of eating all together.

Cinzia's pomodori di riso alla romana Ingredients: 4-5 medium firm ripe round tomatoes seeded and hollowed out | 1 cup uncooked rice (I used long grain par boiled) 185 grams | 1 teaspoon oregano 1/2 gram | 1 teaspoon basil 1/2 gram | 1/2 teaspoon salt 2 1/2 grams | 1/2 gram *6 springs fresh chopped Italian parsley | 1 clove garlic chopped | 1/4 - 1/2 cup chopped tomato pulp 55-82 grams | 2-3 tablespoons olive oil
Pre-heat oven to 180C (375F) and lightly oil a large baking pan. In a medium bowl add rice and cover with water, allowing it soak for one hour, then drain and rinse.

Rinse and dry tomatoes, carefully cut off top of tomato and set aside. Remove seed and pulp from the tomatoes, set aside the pulp and discard the seeds.

In a medium bowl mix chopped tomato pulp, oregano, salt, parsley, garlic, 2-3 tablespoons (45 grams) olive oil and rice. Fill hollowed out tomatoes with mixture. Place tops back on tomatoes, sprinkle tomatoes with a little salt and drizzle with olive oil.

Add roasted potatoes with rosemary and bake for approximately 45- 60 minutes or until potatoes and rice are tender. Serve immediately. Enjoy.

This is my favourite dish for three reasons: though based on rather basic ingredients, it is unabashedly rich and indulgent; its reddish/orangey colours evoke those of my favourite team (AS Roma), and you can do an excellent version of it in under 30 minutes.
Joseph's amatriciana

Ingredients: Guanciale (cured Italian pig cheek. Do not use pancetta in any circumstance) | Pecorino Romano (abundant) | Tomato passata Calabrian chili | Salt | Pepper | Rigatoni or bucatini | Wine
Dice the guanciale into thin strips. Remember to remove the hard part of the skin, and to slice off a bit of fat if the ratio of meat to fat is less than 1:3. Add to a non-stick pan at medium heat and let it heat gently until the guanciale is crispy and the fat renders.

Add a splash of dry white wine (like a frascati), to deglaze the pan. This step is optional. Once the alcohol has evaporated, add some flakes of chilli and a high-quality tomato passata (or blended chopped tomatoes). Add some seasoning (but not too much salt), and let it simmer on a medium heat.

In the meantime, bring water to the boil, and add either rigatoni (short pasta) or bucatini, depending on your (and guests') preference. Tip: growing up I was always told that the water of the pasta must be as salty as the Mediterranean. Few things are more upsetting than an under-salted pasta. So be generous when salting the boiling water for pasta. Two minutes before the pasta is ready, set aside some of the starchy boiling water, and then quickly decant and add to the sauce.

Another tip: always toss pasta into sauce, not vice versa. The pasta is at its most absorbent in the 10 seconds after it has been drained, so don't waste time in mixing it with the sauce. As you toss it in, add in generous heaps of grated pecorino cheese, which should gently melt. This renders the sauce less red but also thicker. Use the water set aside to regulate the consistency. A good amatriciana must have a touch of sleepiness to it.

Plate - on a heated plate preferably, add some grated pecorino and buon appetito.

www.harrietfairbairn.com | @harrietoflondon

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How Italy blends culture with cuisine - a photo essay

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Photographer Harriet Zawedde was born in Rome but raised in the UK. Her series Nightshade, combines portraits with botanical images of the tomato plant and the subjects' recipes

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The Fourth of July and barbecue-and when we say barbecue we're not talking hamburgers on a gas grill but traditional and delicious slow-pit-cooked pork, beef, and other meats-go together like... well, like Mom and apple pie. Except that apple pie came pretty directly from Europe and barbecue is as American as it gets: developed here, refined here, and enjoyed here, particularly on that quintessential American day of celebration-the Fourth of July.

Barbecue is the most purely American food- and that's maybe the only thing about it everyone agrees on.

Barbecue on the Fourth is an American tradition that goes back centuries. Millers Weekly Messenger reported a celebration on July 4, 1808, in what is now Oconee Station, South Carolina, where the local militia put on their Fourth of July parade and then, "a short address suited to the occasion was delivered by the Rev. Mr. ANDREW BROWN; after which they marched to an agreeable and natural arbor, where, in the company with a number of others, they partook of an elegant barbecue."

Famous naturalist John James Audubon attended a Fourth of July party in Kentucky in the early 1800s, and waxed a bit poetic about it: "As the youth of Kentucky lightly and gaily advanced toward the Barbecue, they resembled a procession of nymphs and disguised divinities...it served to remind every Kentuckian present of the glorious name, the patriotism, the courage, and the virtue of our immortal Washington."

And let's not forget Frog Bayou, Arkansas where, in 1846, according to the Arkansas Intellegencer: "The noble steer was immolated at this sacrifice-lambs, shoats, and poultry sent up their quotas to this patriotic feast."

Because American barbecue - whether it's known as barbecue, BBQ, bar-b-q, 'cue, or just Q - is more than a way of cooking: It's myth, folklore, and American history; it's politics (like the time Texas Gov. W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel put up barbecue pits at his inauguration and handed out free barbecue to anyone who showed up; 19,000 did, because in the South, politics and barbecue go together like ribs and sweetened iced tea); it's controversy (disputes about meat and smoke can get hotter than the hottest barbecue sauce); and now it's big business.

American barbecue is more than a way of cooking: It's myth, folklore, and American history.

But it's old-fashioned big business. No multinational chain can yet make good barbecue; you've apparently got to be an old-fashioned individualist, hardworking, innovative, and maybe more than just a little offbeat. Take Ed Mitchell, of Wilson, North Carolina. He barbecued a hog out back of his mother's small store one day to cheer her up, and the next thing he knew his mother's customers were asking for some of that good-smelling 'cue. He began cooking more and more hogs, and then he and an 80-year-old neighbor developed a custom brick barbecue pit with innovations that Ed will tell you make his barbecue not only better but easier and more convenient. Now Ed and his son run a restaurant focused on the history of barbecue in North Carolina, using heritage breed pigs raised by local farmers.

What is barbecue, real American barbecue? The answer depends on what part of the country you live in and who your parents were. It is one of the most intensely debated topics in American popular culture. At a restaurant in Galveston, Texas, I said to a couple at a nearby table, "Aren't these ribs great!" "Well," said the man, "they're pretty good. Only there's a place down in Florida where we're from. Just a little shack." He looked around and lowered his voice. "This stuff is okay. But back home, now, that's what I'd call real barbecue."

"Real barbecue" is what you keep hearing when you get talking to people about barbecue. Just what does it mean? There are many definitions. The easiest thing is to start by defining what it isn't. First of all, it isn't grilling. "You're not flipping burgers or searing a steak. Instead you're trying to turn a large, tough, gnarly cut of meat into something tender and succulent," says one barbecue man I know. And second, barbecue certainly isn't basting oven-baked chicken or ribs with "barbecue sauce," the way Mom likes to do for Sunday dinner.

The hard part is to figure out what real barbecue is. The basic definition seems simple enough. It's meat cooked over a framework, not on a spit, over a low bed of coals, not a brisk campfire, and slowly. It can take 12 hours or even longer, which is one reason barbecue pit masters often wake up very early. David Whitfield, a Mississippian hog cooker, says, "The key to cooking is to start slow, and don't ever get much faster." This accomplishes two things. It makes the meat tender and succulent, allowing the protein strands to stay long and supple as they cook and retain the meat's juices, and it flavors the meat with the alchemical smoke from the coals. The result is addictive, delicious, and impossible to get any other way.

"The key to cooking is to start slow, and don't ever get much faster," says David Whitfield, a Mississippi hog cooker.

It sounds easy enough: barbecuing is slow cooking over coals. But once you start talking about what kind of meat to cook, over what kind of coals, for how long, and with how much smoke-and then throw in what kind of sauce, if any, you're going to serve it with-well, the United States is a big country, and there are plenty of big opinions on each of these matters. And, of course, the controversy doesn't stop there. From "What is barbecue?" you move on to another hotly debated topic, "Where did barbecue come from?"

Everyone agrees that natives of the Americas had a great deal to do with it. But what about African-Americans? And European-Americans? What contributions did they make? No one is really sure.

We do know that the Spanish conquistadors reported seeing Taino-Arawak and Carib natives in Hispaniola roasting, drying, and smoking meat (alligator, deer, and maybe even human) on wooden frameworks over small beds of coals. They called the framework a babracot, which the Spaniards turned into a barbacoa. The method appeared ludicrous to many early Europeans. Cooking over coals was not unusual, but over such low heat? An early French traveler noted incredulously: "A Caribbee has been known, on returning home from fishing fatigued and pressed with hunger, to have the patience to wait the roasting of a fish on a wooden grate fixed two feet above the ground, over a fire so small as sometimes to require the whole day to dress it." Not coincidentally, perhaps, these peoples also invented the hammock, a good place to lounge while waiting for barbecue to get done.

The European arrivals found natives barbecuing in many parts of America, at least south of the not-yet-delineated Mason-Dixon Line. A Frenchman named Jacques Ie Moyne painted the Taino-Timucua of northern Florida cooking their meat and fish on a babracot in 1564. And a historian, Robert Beverley, commented in 1705 that the natives in Virginia had "two ways of Broyling viz. one by laying the Meat itself upon the Coals, the other by laying it upon Sticks rais'd upon Forks at some distance above the live Coals, which heats more gently, and drys up the Gravy; this they, and we also from them, call Barbacueing."

The European colonists apparently took to this odd method of cooking with alacrity. By the end of the 1600s barbecuing parties had become so popular that Virginia had to enact a law prohibiting the celebratory shooting of firearms during them. As the meat cooked long and slow, guests danced and socialized or played outdoor games like horseshoes, with betting and liquid refreshment. Barbecuing was already not just a cooking method but a social event. George Washington mentions in his diaries attending barbecues a number of times, including a "Barbicue of my own giving at Accotinck" in 1773.

One of the frustrating things about these early colonial records is that they tell us virtually nothing about who was doing the barbecuing. Today the barbecue cook, or pit master, as he (usually it's a he) is sometimes called, is a celebrity of sorts, respected for his arcane skill. Then it was a different matter. A popular assumption is that the first pit masters were enslaved people. However, while there undoubtedly were enslaved people cooking barbecue fairly early on, large-scale slavery did not gain a real foothold in the South until the late 1600s, by which time barbecuing was already commonplace.

It is very likely that enslaved people did the cooking at the well-heeled barbecues attended by George Washington in the late 1700s, but poorer whites probably did quite a bit of their own barbecuing. None of which is to deny African-Americans the enormous contributions they have made to American barbecue, but it seems reasonable to view barbecue as the ultimate representation of the American melting pot, created by Native Americans and transformed by different groups of Blacks and whites.

The role of women in barbecue is an interesting question. In the white world, barbecuing was and still is predominantly a men's sport. Early American cookbooks were addressed to women, and they contained no recipes for barbecue. Mary Randolph included a recipe titled "To Barbecue Shote" (a young hog) in her famous 1824 The Virginia Housewife, but it was for baked pork with stuffing. This all-male tradition has continued up to today, with few exceptions. The North Carolina barbecue expert Bob Garner explains: "Barbecue is just one of those things that men like to do to stay up all night and drink."

At first glance, the same holds true in African-American barbecue circles. In his book Smokestack Lightning, Lolis Elie quoted Amazing Grace Harris, a Kansas City barbecue cook, as saying somewhat bitterly, "I have to earn my respect; that's what keeps me going. Most of the barbecue people are mens." Yet Adrian Miller, while researching his forthcoming book Black Smoke: African American Adventures in Barbecue (University of North Carolina Press, 2021) found that Black women had been involved in barbecue for centuries. He even discovered one 19th century woman who bought her way out of slavery with the money she made cooking and selling 'cue.

Like any sub-culture, barbecuing has its own jargon and its own fights between different factions, such as that between the log burners and gassers. According to the Society for the Preservation of Traditional Southern Barbecue, a virtual community of barbecue enthusiasts, a log burner is "one who makes barbecue by burning hardwoods down to coals for use as the source of heat and smoke"; a gasser is one who barbecues with gas. Real barbecue masters might forgive the back-yard enthusiast his bag of charcoal briquettes. But gas? Smokey Pitts, spokesman for the SPTSB, jeers, "Might as well put the meat in the kitchen oven and make a nice pork roast out of it. It sure as hell ain't what I'd call barbecue!" Gassers beg to differ.

Like any sub-culture, barbecuing has its own jargon and its own fights between different factions.

A discussion of the relative merits of open-pit and closed-pit barbecue can also get a dandy fight going among partisans. Basically, open-pit barbecue is what the original Tainos were doing. Closed-pit involves covered cookers and is practiced more in Texas and the West than elsewhere.

The ultimate closed pit is the smoker. The covered pit or smoker is where the smoke ring develops. That's the telltale pink edge you find just inside a piece of meat. It forms as a result of a chemical reaction between smoke gases and meat pigment. In the Western end of the barbecue belt the smoke ring is a sure sign of genuine down-home barbecue. But log burners on the East Coast have a different opinion. Says one: "It might taste good, but it's not what we'd call real barbecue." The only conclusion a non-combatant outsider can draw is that there are a lot of real barbecues, most of them delicious and all of them with their own arcane methods, terms, and tastes.

"If you don't use the whole pig, it's not barbecue," said the late, great Pete Jones, founder of the Skylight Inn, in Ayden, North Carolina, which has been serving up whole barbecued pigs for over 70 years. All along the flat coastal plain of the Carolinas, where English colonists were once dominant, whole-hog barbecue is the primary style. In eastern North Carolina the pig is cooked very simply and served with the plainest of sauces, vinegar seasoned with salt, pepper, and a little red pepper. At a pig pickin', a whole-hog barbecue get-together, guests have the option of picking the meat off the bones themselves or having it pulled and chopped, or not, to be eaten on a plate or on a soft bun, topped with a little more sauce and some coleslaw.

In the Piedmont district of western North Carolina, whole hog gives way to pork shoulder as the meat of choice. Professor Gary Freeze of Catawba College finds a link between the immigration of Pennsylvania Germans into the Piedmont and the transition from whole-hog to shoulder barbecue.

South Carolina cooks whole hog along the coast and shoulders and ribs elsewhere, but the state is known primarily for its unusual mustard-based sauce. Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia all are securely within the pork belt as well, as is Tennessee. In these places whole-hog barbecue is found in rural areas. In the cities you'll more likely find pork shoulders and ribs, along with more aggressive smoke flavors and tomato-based spicy sauces.

According to one Southern scholar, anyone foolish enough to barbecue anything besides pork puts himself "irrevocably outside the barbecue belt." This option is ignored in Kentucky. Every May (except this year, of course), Owensboro holds an International Bar-B-Q Festival where "mutton gluttons" compete in a mutton-eating contest. Some believe Owensboro's barbecued-mutton tradition began with the protection of sheep farmers under the Tariff of 1816. But the Kentucky and mutton connection predates that. A guest at the wedding dinner of Thomas Lincoln and Nancy Hanks, in Washington County, Kentucky, in 1806, recorded, "We had ... a sheep ... barbecued whole over coals of wood burned in a pit, and covered with green boughs to keep the juices in."

Farther west they barbecue beef. Why? The obvious answer is that there are a lot of cattle in Texas, Oklahoma, Missouri, and Kansas. The question really should be how did barbecue get to these Western states at all? The Texas barbecue writer Robb Walsh believes that enslaved African-Americans, who made up 30 percent of the state's population by 1860, brought barbecue with them from the South. When German and Czech immigrants got to Texas in the middle of the nineteenth century, they in turn brought a liking for sausage and brisket. Hot guts, as barbecued sausages are called, and smoky brisket became key to the Texas barbecue table.

Kansas City also barbecues beef, but when you get that far north and west of the original barbecue belt, traditional strictures go out the window and the natives go wild-just not necessarily hog wild. Carolyn Wells, executive director of the Kansas City Barbecue Society, says that in her town "if it moves, we cook it." And they cook the beef, hogs, goats, lambs, ducks, chickens, turkeys, and fish any way they please, so long as it's with plenty of smoke and lots of bright and brassy sauce, heavily laced with tomato and sugar. Kansas City is home to the world series of barbecue, which draws nearly 400 contestants and tens of thousands of spectators every year.

There is no doubt that the African-American connection with barbecue is strong.

Fertile ground for food historians is the as yet unexplained fact that in some parts of the United States pit masters are primarily black men, while in others they are white. Robb Walsh says East Texas "is the only place where black Southern barbecue includes beef." There is no doubt that the African-American connection with barbecue is strong. A barbecue was the celebratory reaction in Galveston, Texas, to the announcement on June 19, 1865 - two years after the Emancipation Proclamation - that slavery had been abolished in that state. Since then a barbecue picnic has been traditional with many Black Texans on Juneteenth. The great Black migration between the two world wars brought barbecue to the inner cities of the North and Far West. In nearly all these places the 'cue is mostly pork ribs and sausage, although in St. Louis there is an underground passion for barbecued hog noses, known affectionately as snoots. But folks there don't talk to outsiders very much about that.

For years barbecue was the province of the rural and urban working class and poor, celebrated quietly by them at sociable back-yard get-togethers and in smoky roadside joints that weren't always on the internet. The middle class occasionally participated in the "Barbecue Eucharist," as one writer put it, at the annual church picnic or at political fundraisers. And from Sam Houston's speech at the "Great American Barbecue" political rally for the American party in 1860 to LBJ's famous cookouts, barbecue has always had a political tinge. You can't campaign in the South without eating at barbecues. Sometimes political history is even made. South Carolina's first integrated political event after Reconstruction was held at Gov. Donald Russell's victory barbecue back in 1963. Even today Dixie Bones, a restaurant in Woodbridge, Virginia, caters political barbecue bashes for Southern members of Congress up in Washington - and provides different sauces for members from different states.

But it was only in the 1980s that barbecue really started going mainstream. That was when big barbecue contests began, pulling in thousands of middle-class Americans from every part of the country (although few contest participants are African-American). Also, books and cookbooks about barbecue started pouring out from publishers (notably, most are written by men). Upscale barbecue joints have opened across the United States, many of them fusion restaurants such as Heirloom Market BBQ in Atlanta, Georgia, that combines "Seoul" food and "Soul Food", according to partners Jiyeon Lee and "Hillbilly" Cody Taylor. It's what Adrian Miller calls "BBQ 2.0" - barbecue that references global flavors, particularly Tex-Mex and Asian flavors. Central Texas-style barbecue - beef, sausage, sauce on the side - is also in the forefront of American trends. That popularity is powered by the barbecue contests primarily attended by white men, and by Aaron Franklin in Austin, Texas, whose beef brisket and unassuming manner (along with praise from folks like Anthony Bourdain and institutions like Esquire) have catapulted him to much-televised fame.

Texas-style barbecue has even come to Canada. We recently went to Beach Hill Smokehouse "Authentic Texas Barbecue" in Toronto, Ontario. The owner, a tall Black Texan, served up juicy, smoky beef brisket and succulent smoked sausages with skins so tight they burst in our mouths like firecrackers. Outside, the Canadian snow was knee-deep. But inside, sitting at a rustic wooden picnic table dotted with rolls of brown paper towels, taking in the tantalizing aromas of smoke and meat, we were unmistakably and deliciously back home in the States.

Where there's smoke, there's hope. And you've got to believe that anything people are this passionate about will survive, one way or another.

Some purists fret that the introduction of fusion flavors, the focus on cooking to win contests, and the predominance of the Texas style threatens the existence of traditional barbecue. But where there's smoke, there's hope. And you've got to believe that anything people are this passionate about will survive, one way or another.

A few years back we went to Lexington Barbecue, in Lexington, North Carolina, where the founder, Wayne Monk, was quoted as saying, "As long as I'm the one making the decisions, we'll continue to cook and serve our barbecue the way we always have." The place was crowded - it serves about 1,200 people a day - but that didn't stop the waitresses from topping up my sweetened iced tea practically every time I took a sip. After a short wait, I got my tray of "outside meat," hauntingly delicious dark and crusty slices of pork shoulder that had been cooking over hickory and oak charcoal for 12 hours. Monk's son-in-law surveyed the bustling scene and mentioned that quite a few of the staff were younger family members who seemed interested in carrying on the family tradition.

"This is as good as it gets," he said, with satisfaction. Whether he meant the busy restaurant or the barbecue or both, it didn't really matter. He was right on all counts.

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American barbecue is more than a way of cooking - it's myth, folklore, and history

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Have you ever perfectly peeled multiple potatoes in a 45-second timeframe? Or browned onions and carrots in a minute, sauteeing them rapidly to ensure they cook evenly without burning? It may seem like an impossible task, but in the world of Cooking Mama -- among glowing pixels of digital cream puffs and inaccessible steaming pots of curry -- anything is possible.

Cooking Mama is a cooking simulator where players follow the recipes of the watchful, wide-eyed, bandana-wearing "Cooking Mama." The game is cute and simple enough: confetti explodes out of the top of the screen upon completing a dish, and Mama applauds your effort through every step by awarding you with a shiny medal. The game skyrocketed to acclaim back in 2006 when it first launched, selling over 500,000 copies in the United States alone. The Nintendo DS game proved that cooking simulations are not only fun, but that there's also a huge market for them -- an undeniable appeal that combines food with gaming.

Cooking Mama isn't the first food-related video game. Pixelated chefs have been around since at least 1982, when the classic game BurgerTime hit arcades. That game sent its protagonist, chef Peter Pepper, careening down ladders and building burgers while simultaneously avoiding the clutches of the evil Mr. Pickle, Mr. Egg, and Mr. Hot Dog. There was also Tapper, a 1983 arcade game in which players function as a bartender slinging rounds of root beer for thirsty customers. Hell, it could even be argued that Pac-Man is an eating-related video game.

But Cooking Mama changed everything because the focus was entirely on food; there was no frantic running, no succumbing to untimely falls or villainous enemies, and no real game-ender. The worst that could happen in Cooking Mama was that you screwed up the recipe, and Mama was slightly disappointed.

"I [remember playing] Cooking Mama nonstop when I first got it. It was super appealing -- way better than real food," said Everest Strayer-Wong, a New York City-based illustrator whose work revolves around food, with the occasional video game reference. "I loved peeling the potatoes and chopping cabbage... I feel like I learned real cooking skills from that game."

"The idea of reinventing different versions of ourselves online is nothing new in 2019, but cooking video games definitely fold into that same concept."

Strayer-Wong is not alone in her food-related obsession to Cooking Mama, and the ways it has translated into her professional work. Nelson Wu, a Toronto-based artist whose most recent work for the Los Angeles Times' food section also incorporated a video game theme. Wu was similarly inspired by the cooking simulator, in addition to Restaurant City, a game tied to social media where players can open their own restaurants, specialize their menus, and visit friends' establishments.

"I've had an interest in cooking since I was a kid. I used to watch my parents cook and try to copy them with this toy kitchen set," Wu explained. In middle school and high school, that interest was further developed by games. "I became really obsessed with Cooking Mama and Restaurant City. There was something so exciting about perfecting a recipe I've never heard of or [making] something as simple as cup noodles."

As Wu got older and began drawing more, he realized his food illustrations, often inspired by his time gaming, could convey emotions that ranged from nostalgia to understanding and familiarity. "As someone who enjoys food very much, I want to capture my experiences in these drawings... The vibrancy of color and shine of the highlights make food all the more juicy looking. Doing this, I want to make the dish the best it can be in hopes that people can connect with that experience somehow."

Interestingly enough, Strayer-Wong claims that food in video games gives her a sense of nostalgia for meals she's never had. "Maybe it's because drawing is like putting the world through the filter of your own experience and aesthetic. In food art, and video game art, what's left is the best parts of the food's spirit -- and someone else's expression of that food from their own nostalgia."

Though a lot of the appeal of cooking video games has to do with the dazzling sights of food, similarly to Studio Ghibli's whimsical animations, another big draw has to do with being in an alternate reality where one can actually be successful at cooking -- without the dangers, like cuts and flames, of being in a kitchen. At least that was the case for Allisyn Ruttle, a recruiter at Los Angeles-based video game developer Riot Games.

"I'm much more prompted to play games like Overcooked when I feel like cooking rather than cooking in real life. Less actual effort, no trips to the grocery store, no doing dishes," Ruttle expressed. Overcooked is a multiplayer cooking simulation, where players cooperate and coordinate fixing up dishes -- like pancakes, smoothies, and sushi rolls -- in the fictitious Onion Kingdom.

That being said, Ruttle realizes that video games can't fill all the voids that cooking actually provides -- and not just the lack of actual sustenance. "The great thing about cooking in real life that is lost in video games is the community aspect of it. Sure, you can play multiplayer Overcooked, but there's something to be said about developing a meal with friends or family, buying ingredients together, and making something with your hands."

Even so, over time, cooking in video games has drawn more and more popularity. Perhaps it also has something to do with the rise of food fandom and the larger interest people have in celebrating, looking at, and diving into food -- even if that means doing it virtually.

In Nintendo's highly acclaimed 2017 hit, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, it's up to players to gather their own ingredients and cook masterpieces over an open flame in order to obtain healing meals. Half the fun of the game is combining different ingredients in hopes of developing a new recipe, like simmered fruits, rice balls, and spicy meat and seafood skewers. Websites like have even dedicated articles with the best recipes to provide Link, the protagonist, with proper meals. Nintendo has just announced the unnamed sequel to Breath of the Wild at E3, and no doubt it will include more intricate recipes for the hero.

Though not as in-depth as Breath of the Wild, Red Dead Redemption 2 also allows players to cook sustaining foods, like flame-grilled venison, flaky fish seasoned with oregano, and healing tonics, offering a respite to the gunplay.

Another modern game that includes aspects of food and cooking -- though it isn't the focus of the game -- is Final Fantasy XV. Players collect recipes on their travels and the food provides their party with helpful stat boosts. Additionally, the depictions of food are mouth-watering and elaborate; there are steaming bowls of bisque, mushroom risotto, and even grouper carpaccio delicately plated with flowers. For those less concerned with luxury, foam cups of instant ramen also make an appearance.

The game boasts over 100 dishes for Ignis, the character who assumes the role of the party's chef, to learn. The dishes have become so popular that Square Enix, the game developer, opened up a cafe in Tokyo -- aptly named the Square Enix Cafe -- that serves food from Final Fantasy XV.

There's even a Reddit thread specifically devoted to cooking with Ignis, where Redditors attempt to recreate the video game dishes in real life. Enthusiastic fans rallied and created an unofficial, community-driven cookbook of all the recipes in real life, free to fellow gamers and amateur chefs.

"The idea of reinventing different versions of ourselves online is nothing new in 2019, but cooking video games definitely fold into that same concept," Ruttle explained. "Cooking games allow you to see what ingredients compliment each other and help you discover recipes, without having to deal with burning, undercooking, friends hating the way it tastes, or doing dishes."

Ruttle describes the act of food-related gaming as a "fantasy of existing in real life without actually existing."

Wu concurs, and also notes that some dishes aren't always physically accessible due to lack of ingredients, but can be dreamt up in virtual spaces.

"At least for me, it's a great opportunity to learn about a variety of dishes, dishes that have ingredients that aren't quite readily available in real life," he affirmed. "I have a lot more freedom to be creative with what I make in games and there's an overwhelming feeling of accomplishment when mastering a recipe."

Food video games have come a long way since Pac-Man devoured cherries while dodging ghosts and Mario dosed on powerful mushrooms to increase his size. These days, in the world of food-related video games, there is no "game over" -- only "what are we cooking up next?"
Sign up here for our daily Thrillist email, get Eatmail for more food coverage, and subscribe here for our YouTube channel to get your fix of the best in food/drink/fun.
Kat Thompson is a staff food writer at Thrillist whose favorite part of Breath of the Wild is riding horses and cooking. She can make a mean chicken curry on Cooking Mama and drools over the food in Final Fantasy XV. Follow her on Twitter @katthompsonn.

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biology: The study of living things. The scientists who study them are known as biologists.

calorie: The amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water by 1 degree Celsius. It is typically used as a measurement of the energy contained in some defined amount of food. The exception: when referring to the energy in food, the convention is to call a kilocalorie, or 1,000 of these calories, a "calorie." Here, a food calorie is the amount of energy needed to raise 1 kilogram of water 1 degree C.

carnivore: An animal that either exclusively or primarily eats other animals.

coyote: This relatively long-legged member of the dog family ( Canis latrans) is sometimes referred to as the prairie wolf. It is, however, notably smaller and its build more scrawny than a true wolf. Found from Alaska down into Central America, coyotes have lately expanded their range into all 50 U.S. states. Many now hang out in urban areas where they have no predators and can easily dine on rodents and scavenge trashed food.

data: Facts and/or statistics collected together for analysis but not necessarily organized in a way that gives them meaning.

equation: In mathematics, the statement that two quantities are equal. In geometry, equations are often used to determine the shape of a curve or surface.

evolutionary: An adjective that refers to changes that occur within a species over time as it adapts to its environment. Such evolutionary changes usually reflect genetic variation and natural selection, which leave a new type of organism better suited for its environment than its ancestors. The newer type is not necessarily more "advanced," just better adapted to the conditions in which it developed.

field: An area of study, as in: Her field of research was biology. Also a term to describe a real-world environment in which some research is conducted, such as at sea, in a forest, on a mountaintop or on a city street. It is the opposite of an artificial setting, such as a research laboratory.

online: (n.) On the internet. (adj.) A term for what can be found or accessed on the internet.

physiologist: A scientist who studies the branch of biology that deals with how the bodies of healthy organisms function under normal circumstances.

strategy: A thoughtful and clever plan for achieving some difficult or challenging goal.

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When it comes to downing hot dogs, science says there's a limit

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Humans may be able to eat only 83 hot dogs in 10 minutes, new research suggests.

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In a book about his travels in Africa published in 1907, British explorer Arnold Henry Savage Landor recounted witnessing an impromptu meal that his companions relished but that he found unimaginably revolting.

As he coasted down a river in the Congo Basin with several local hunter-gatherers, a dead rodent floated near their canoe. Its decomposing body had bloated to the size of a small pig.

Stench from the swollen corpse left Landor gasping for breath. Unable to speak, he tried to signal his companions to steer the canoe away from the fetid creature. Instead, they hauled the supersize rodent aboard and ate it.

"The odour when they dug their knives into it was enough to kill the strongest of men," Landor wrote. "When I recovered, my admiration for the digestive powers of these people was intense. They were smacking their lips and they said the [rodent] had provided most excellent eating."

Starting in the 1500s, European and then later American explorers, traders, missionaries, government officials and others who lived among Indigenous peoples in many parts of the world wrote of similar food practices. Hunter-gatherers and small-scale farmers everywhere commonly ate putrid meat, fish and fatty parts of a wide range of animals. From arctic tundra to tropical rainforests, native populations consumed rotten remains, either raw, fermented or cooked just enough to singe off fur and create a more chewable texture. Many groups treated maggots as a meaty bonus.

Descriptions of these practices, which still occur in some present-day Indigenous groups and among northern Europeans who occasionally eat fermented fish, aren't likely to inspire any new Food Network shows or cookbooks from celebrity chefs.

Case in point: Some Indigenous communities feasted on huge decomposing beasts, including hippos that had been trapped in dug-out pits in Africa and beached whales on Australia's coast. Hunters in those groups typically smeared themselves with the fat of the animal before gorging on greasy innards. After slicing open animals' midsections, both adults and children climbed into massive, rotting body cavities to remove meat and fat.

Or consider that Native Americans in Missouri in the late 1800s made a prized soup from the greenish, decaying flesh of dead bison. Animal bodies were buried whole in winter and unearthed in spring after ripening enough to achieve peak tastiness.

But such accounts provide a valuable window into a way of life that existed long before Western industrialization and the war against germs went global, says anthropological archaeologist John Speth of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Intriguingly, no reports of botulism and other potentially fatal reactions to microorganisms festering in rotting meat appear in writings about Indigenous groups before the early 1900s. Instead, decayed flesh and fat represented valued and tasty parts of a healthy diet.

Many travelers such as Landor considered such eating habits to be "disgusting." But "a gold mine of ethnohistorical accounts makes it clear that the revulsion Westerners feel toward putrid meat and maggots is not hardwired in our genome but is instead culturally learned," Speth says.

This dietary revelation also challenges an influential scientific idea that cooking originated among our ancient relatives as a way to make meat more digestible, thus providing a rich calorie source for brain growth in the Homo genus. It's possible, Speth argues, that Stone Age hominids such as Neandertals first used cooking for certain plants that, when heated, provided an energy-boosting, carbohydrate punch to the diet. Animals held packets of fat and protein that, after decay set in, rounded out nutritional needs without needing to be heated.

Emile Holmewood

Putrid foods in the diets of Indigenous peoples

Speth's curiosity about a human taste for putrid meat was originally piqued by present-day hunter-gatherers in polar regions. North American Inuit, Siberians and other far-north populations still regularly eat fermented or rotten meat and fish.

Fermented fish heads, also known as "stinkhead," are one popular munchy among northern groups. Chukchi herders in the Russian Far East, for instance, bury whole fish in the ground in early fall and let the bodies naturally ferment during periods of freezing and thawing. Fish heads the consistency of hard ice cream are then unearthed and eaten whole.

Speth has suspected for several decades that consumption of fermented and putrid meat, fish, fat and internal organs has a long and probably ancient history among northern Indigenous groups. Consulting mainly online sources such as Google Scholar and universities' digital library catalogs, he found many ethnohistorical descriptions of such behavior going back to the 1500s. Putrid walrus, seals, caribou, reindeer, musk oxen, polar bears, moose, arctic hares and ptarmigans had all been fair game. Speth reported much of this evidence in 2017 in PaleoAnthropology.

In one recorded incident from late-1800s Greenland, a well-intentioned hunter brought what he had claimed in advance was excellent food to a team led by American explorer Robert Peary. A stench filled the air as the hunter approached Peary's vessel carrying a rotting seal dripping with maggots. The Greenlander had found the seal where a local group had buried it, possibly a couple of years earlier, so that the body could reach a state of tasty decomposition. Peary ordered the man to keep the reeking seal off his boat.

Miffed at this unexpected rejection, the hunter "told us that the more decayed the seal the finer the eating, and he could not understand why we should object," Peary's wife wrote of the encounter.

Even in temperate and tropical areas, where animal bodies decompose within hours or days, Indigenous peoples have appreciated rot as much as Peary's seal-delivery man did. Speth and anthropological archaeologist Eugène Morin of Trent University in Peterborough, Canada, described some of those obscure ethnohistorical accounts last October in PaleoAnthropology.

Emile Holmewood

Early hominids may have scavenged rotten meat

These accounts undermine some of scientists' food-related sacred cows, Speth says. For instance, European explorers and other travelers consistently wrote that traditional groups not only ate putrid meat raw or lightly cooked but suffered no ill aftereffects. A protective gut microbiome may explain why, Speth suspects. Indigenous peoples encountered a variety of microorganisms from infancy on, unlike people today who grow up in sanitized settings. Early exposures to pathogens may have prompted the development of an array of gut microbes and immune responses that protected against potential harms of ingesting putrid meat.

That idea requires further investigation; little is known about the bacterial makeup of rotten meat eaten by traditional groups or of their gut microbiomes. But studies conducted over the last few decades do indicate that putrefaction, the process of decay, offers many of cooking's nutritional benefits with far less effort. Putrefaction predigests meat and fish, softening the flesh and chemically breaking down proteins and fats so they are more easily absorbed and converted to energy by the body.

Given the ethnohistorical evidence, hominids living 3 million years ago or more could have scavenged meat from decomposing carcasses, even without stone tools for hunting or butchery, and eaten their raw haul safely long before fire was used for cooking, Speth contends. If simple stone tools appeared as early as 3.4 million years ago, as some researchers have controversially suggested, those implements may have been made by hominids seeking raw meat and marrow ( SN: 9/11/10, p. 8). Researchers suspect regular use of fire for cooking, light and warmth emerged no earlier than around 400,000 years ago ( SN: 5/5/12, p. 18).

"Recognizing that eating rotten meat is possible, even without fire, highlights how easy it would have been to incorporate scavenged food into the diet long before our ancestors learned to hunt or process [meat] with stone tools," says paleoanthropologist Jessica Thompson of Yale University.

Thompson and colleagues suggested in Current Anthropology in 2019 that before about 2 million years ago, hominids were primarily scavengers who used rocks to smash open animal bones and eat nutritious, fat-rich marrow and brains. That conclusion, stemming from a review of fossil and archaeological evidence, challenged a common assumption that early hominids - whether as hunters or scavengers - primarily ate meat off the bone.

Certainly, ancient hominids were eating more than just the meaty steaks we think of today, says archaeologist Manuel Domínguez-Rodrigo of Rice University in Houston. In East Africa's Olduvai Gorge, butchered animal bones at sites dating to nearly 2 million years ago indicate that hominids ate most parts of carcasses, including brains and internal organs.

"But Speth's argument about eating putrid carcasses is very speculative and untestable," Domínguez-Rodrigo says.

Untangling whether ancient hominids truly had a taste for rot will require research that spans many fields, including microbiology, genetics and food science, Speth says.

But if his contention holds up, it suggests that ancient cooks were not turning out meat dishes. Instead, Speth speculates, cooking's primary value at first lay in making starchy and oily plants softer, more chewable and easily digestible. Edible plants contain carbohydrates, sugar molecules that can be converted to energy in the body. Heating over a fire converts starch in tubers and other plants to glucose, a vital energy source for the body and brain. Crushing or grinding of plants might have yielded at least some of those energy benefits to hungry hominids who lacked the ability to light fires.

Whether hominids controlled fire well enough to cook plants or any other food regularly before around 400,000 to 300,000 years ago is unknown.

Emile Holmewood

Neandertals may have hunted animals for fat

Despite their nutritional benefits, plants often get viewed as secondary menu items for Stone Age folks. It doesn't help that plants preserve poorly at archaeological sites.

Neandertals, in particular, have a long-standing reputation as plant shunners. Popular opinion views Neandertals as burly, shaggy individuals who huddled around fires chomping on mammoth steaks.

That's not far from an influential scientific view of what Neandertals ate. Elevated levels of a diet-related form of nitrogen in Neandertal bones and teeth hint that they were committed carnivores, eating large amounts of protein-rich lean meat, several research teams have concluded over nearly the last 30 years.

But consuming that much protein from meat, especially from cuts above the front and hind limbs now referred to as steaks, would have been a recipe for nutritional disaster, Speth argues. Meat from wild, hoofed animals and smaller creatures such as rabbits contains almost no fat, or marbling, unlike meat from modern domestic animals, he says. Ethnohistorical accounts, especially for northern hunters including the Inuit, include warnings about weight loss, ill health and even death that can result from eating too much lean meat.

This form of malnutrition is known as rabbit starvation. Evidence indicates that people can safely consume between about 25 and 35 percent of daily calories as protein, Speth says. Above that threshold, several investigations have indicated that the liver becomes unable to break down chemical wastes from ingested proteins, which then accumulate in the blood and contribute to rabbit starvation. Limits to the amount of daily protein that can be safely consumed meant that ancient hunting groups, like those today, needed animal fats and carbohydrates from plants to fulfill daily calorie and other nutritional needs.

Modern "Paleo diets" emphasize eating lean meats, fruits and vegetables. But that omits what past and present Indigenous peoples most wanted from animal carcasses. Accounts describe Inuit people eating much larger amounts of fatty body parts than lean meat, Speth says. Over the last few centuries, they have favored tongue, fat deposits, brisket, ribs, fatty tissue around intestines and internal organs, and marrow. Internal organs, especially adrenal glands, have provided vitamin C - nearly absent in lean muscle - that prevented anemia and other symptoms of scurvy.

Western explorers noted that the Inuit also ate chyme, the stomach contents of reindeer and other plant-eating animals. Chyme provided at least a side course of plant carbohydrates. Likewise, Neandertals in Ice Age Europe probably subsisted on a fat- and chyme-supplemented diet ( SN Online: 10/11/13), Speth contends.

Large numbers of animal bones found at northern European Neandertal sites - often viewed as the residue of ravenous meat eaters - may instead reflect overhunting of animals to obtain enough fat to meet daily calorie needs. Because wild game typically has a small percentage of body fat, northern hunting groups today and over the last few centuries frequently killed prey in large numbers, either discarding most lean meat from carcasses or feeding it to their dogs, ethnographic studies show.

If Neandertals followed that playbook, eating putrid foods might explain why their bones carry a carnivore-like nitrogen signature, Speth suggests. An unpublished study of decomposing human bodies kept at a University of Tennessee research facility in Knoxville called the Body Farm tested that possibility. Biological anthropologist Melanie Beasley, now at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., found moderately elevated tissue nitrogen levels in 10 deceased bodies sampled regularly for about six months. Tissue from those bodies served as a stand-in for animal meat consumed by Neandertals. Human flesh is an imperfect substitute for, say, reindeer or elephant carcasses. But Beasley's findings suggest that decomposition's effects on a range of animals need to be studied. Intriguingly, she also found that maggots in the decaying tissue displayed extremely elevated nitrogen levels.

Paleobiologist Kimberly Foecke of George Washington University in Washington, D.C., has also found high nitrogen levels in rotting, maggot-free cuts of beef from animals fed no hormones or antibiotics to approximate the diets of Stone Age creatures ( SN: 1/2/19).

Like arctic hunters did a few hundred years ago, Neandertals may have eaten putrid meat and fish studded with maggots, Speth says. That would explain elevated nitrogen levels in Neandertal fossils.

But Neandertal dining habits are poorly understood. Unusually extensive evidence of Neandertal big-game consumption has come from a new analysis of fossil remains at a roughly 125,000-year-old site in northern Germany called Neumark-Nord. There, Neandertals periodically hunted straight-tusked elephants weighing up to 13 metric tons, say archaeologist Sabine Gaudzinski-Windheuser of Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz in Germany and colleagues.

In a study reported February 1 in Science Advances, her group analyzed patterns of stone-tool incisions on bones of at least 57 elephants from 27 spots near an ancient lake basin where Neandertals lit campfires and constructed shelters ( SN: 1/29/22, p. 8). Evidence suggests that Neandertal butchers - much like Inuit hunters - removed fat deposits under the skin and fatty body parts such as the tongue, internal organs, brain and thick layers of fat in the feet. Lean meat from elephants would have been eaten in smaller quantities to avoid rabbit starvation, the researchers argue.

Further research needs to examine whether the Neandertals cooked elephant meat or boiled the bones to extract nutritious grease, Speth says. Mealtime options would have expanded for hominids who could not only consume putrid meat and fat but also heat animal parts over fires, he suspects.

Neandertals who hunted elephants must also have eaten a variety of plants to meet their considerable energy requirements, says Gaudzinski-Windheuser. But so far, only fragments of burned hazelnuts, acorns and blackthorn plums have been found at Neumark-Nord.

Emile Holmewood

Neandertals probably carb-loaded

Better evidence of Neandertals' plant preferences comes from sites in warm Mediterranean and Middle Eastern settings. At a site in coastal Spain, Neandertals probably ate fruits, nuts and seeds of a variety of plants ( SN: 3/27/21, p. 32).

Neandertals in a range of environments must have consumed lots of starchy plants, argues archaeologist Karen Hardy of the University of Glasgow in Scotland. Even Stone Age northern European and Asian regions included plants with starch-rich appendages that grew underground, such as tubers.

Neandertals could also have obtained starchy carbs from the edible, inner bark of many trees and from seaweed along coastlines. Cooking, as suggested by Speth, would have greatly increased the nutritional value of plants, Hardy says. Not so for rotten meat and fat, though Neandertals such as those at Neumark-Nord may have cooked what they gleaned from fresh elephant remains.

There is direct evidence that Neandertals munched on plants. Microscopic remnants of edible and medicinal plants have been found in the tartar on Neandertal teeth ( SN: 4/1/17, p. 16), Hardy says.

Carbohydrate-fueled energy helped to maintain large brains, enable strenuous physical activity and ensure healthy pregnancies for both Neandertals and ancient Homo sapiens, Hardy concludes in the January 2022 Journal of Human Evolution. (Researchers disagree over whether Neandertals, which lived from around 400,000 to 40,000 years ago, were a variant of H. sapiens or a separate species.)

Emile Holmewood

Paleo cuisine was tasty

Like Hardy, Speth suspects that plants provided a large share of the energy and nutrients Stone Age folks needed. Plants represented a more predictable, readily available food source than hunted or scavenged meat and fat, he contends.

Plants also offered Neandertals and ancient H. sapiens - whose diets probably didn't differ dramatically from Neandertals', Hardy says - a chance to stretch their taste buds and cook up tangy meals.

Paleolithic plant cooking included preplanned steps aimed at adding dashes of specific flavors to basic dishes, a recent investigation suggests. In at least some places, Stone Age people apparently cooked to experience pleasing tastes and not just to fill their stomachs. Charred plant food fragments from Shanidar Cave in Iraqi Kurdistan and Franchthi Cave in Greece consisted of crushed pulse seeds, possibly from starchy pea species, combined with wild plants that would have provided a pungent, somewhat bitter taste, microscopic analyses show.

Added ingredients included wild mustard, wild almonds, wild pistachio and fruits such as hackberry, archaeobotanist Ceren Kabukcu of the University of Liverpool in England and colleagues reported last November in Antiquity.

Four Shanidar food bits date to about 40,000 years ago or more and originated in sediment that included stone tools attributed to H. sapiens. Another food fragment, likely from a cooked Neandertal meal, dates to between 70,000 and 75,000 years ago. Neandertal fossils found in Shanidar Cave are also about 70,000 years old. So it appears that Shanidar Neandertals spiced up cooked plant foods before Shanidar H. sapiens did, Kabukcu says.

Franchthi food remains date to between 13,100 and 11,400 years ago, when H. sapiens lived there. Wild pulses in food from both caves display microscopic signs of having been soaked, a way to dilute poisons in seeds and moderate their bitterness.

These new findings "suggest that cuisine, or the combination of different ingredients for pleasure, has a very long history indeed," says Hardy, who was not part of Kabukcu's team.

There's a hefty dollop of irony in the possibility that original Paleo diets mixed what people in many societies today regard as gross-sounding portions of putrid meat and fat with vegetarian dishes that still seem appealing.

Questions or comments on this article? E-mail us at feedback@sciencenews.org | Reprints FAQ

A version of this article appears in the March 25, 2023 issue of Science News.

Citations

J. Speth and E. Morin. Putrid meat in the tropics: It wasn't just for Inuit. PaleoAnthropology. Vol. 2022, p. 297. doi: 10.48738/2022.iss2.114.

J. Speth. Putrid meat and fish in the Eurasian Middle and Upper Paleolithic: Are we missing a key part of Neandertal and modern human diet? PaleoAnthropology. Vol. 2017, p. 44. doi: 10.4207/PA.2017.ART105.

J. Thompson et al. Origins of the human predatory pattern: The transition to large-animal exploitation by early hominins. Current Anthropology. Vol. 60, December 2019, p. 1. doi: 10.1086/701477. https://doi.org/10.1086/701477.

K. Hardy et al. Reconstructing Neandertal diet: The case for carbohydrates. Journal of Human Evolution. Vol. 62, January 2022, p. 103105. doi: 10.1016/j.jhevol.2021.103105.

C. Kabukcu et al. Cooking in caves: Paleolithic carbonized plant food remains from Franchthi and Shanidar. Antiquity. Published November 23, 2022. doi: 10.15184/aqy.2022.143.

K. Jaouen et al. Exceptionally high δ¹⁵N values in collagen single amino acids confirm Neandertals as high-trophic level carnivores. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Vol. 116, February 19, 2019, p. 4928. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1814087116.

S. Gaudzinski-Windheuser et al. Hunting and processing of straight-tusked elephants, 125,000 years ago - implications for Neandertal behavior. Science Advances. Published February 1, 2023. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.add8186.

Bruce Bower has written about the behavioral sciences for Science News since 1984. He writes about psychology, anthropology, archaeology and mental health issues.

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