West­ern schol­ar­ship has had “a bias against study­ing sen­su­al expe­ri­ence,” writes Reina Gat­tuso at Atlas Obscu­ra, “the rel­ic of an Enlight­en­­ment-era hier­ar­chy that con­sid­ered taste, touch, and fla­vor taboo top­ics for sober aca­d­e­m­ic inquiry.” This does not mean, how­ev­er, that cook­ing has been ignored by his­to­ri­ans. Many a schol­ar has tak­en Euro­pean cook­ing seri­ous­ly, before … Con­tin­ue read­ing Dis­cov­er the World’s Old­est Sur­viv­ing Cook­book, De Re Coquinar­ia, from Ancient Rome