Some YouTuber posted online a pretty nice clip of an espresso shot being pulled from a La Marzocco FB80 espresso machine at 120 frames per second. They recommend muting the sound, then putting on your own music. I gave it a quick shot with the famous soundtrack for Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. And I’ll be damned, it syncs up pretty well. Have a better soundtrack to recommend? Feel free to let us know in the comments section below.
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If asked about your favorite dish, you’d do well to name something exotic. Gone are the days when a taste for the likes of Italian, Mexican, or Chinese cuisine could qualify you as an adventurous eater. Even expeditions to the very edges of the menus at Peruvian, Ethiopian, or Laotian restaurants, say, would be unlikely to draw much respect from serious twenty-first-century eaters. One solution is to take your culinary voyages through not just space but also time, seeking out the meals of centuries and even millennia past. This has lately become somewhat easier to do, thanks to the work of Harvard- and Yale-associated researchers like Gojko Barjamovic, Patricia Jurado Gonzalez, Chelsea A. Graham, Agnete W. Lassen, Nawal Nasrallah, and Pia M. Sörensen.
A few years ago, that interdisciplinary research team participated in a Lapham’s Quarterly roundtable on making and eating the ancient Mesopotamian recipes contained on what are known as the “Yale Culinary Tablets.” Dating from between 1730 BC and the sixth or seventh century BC, their Cuneiform inscriptions offer only broad and fragmentary guidance on the preparation of once-common dishes, none of which, luckily, are particularly complex.
The vegetarian soup pašrūtum, or “unwinding,” involves flavors no bolder than those of cilantro, leek, garlic, and dried sourdough. The stew puhādi, which uses lamb as well as milk, turns out to be “delicious when served with the peppery garnish of crushed leek and garlic.”
The Yale Culinary Tablets reveal that the Babylonians, too, enjoyed tucking into the occasional foreign meal — which, four millennia ago, could have meant a bowl of elamūtum, or “Elamite broth,” named for its origin in Elam in modern-day Iran. Another dish made with milk, it also calls for sheep’s blood (“the mixture of sour milk and blood may sound odd,” the roundtable article assures us, “but the combination produces a rich soup with a slight tartness”) and dill, which seems to have been the height of exotic ingredients at the time. Tuh’u, a leg-meat stew, has an identifiable descendant still eaten in Iraq today, but that dish uses white turnip instead of the ancient recipe’s red beet. Given that “Jews of Baghdad before their expulsion used red beet,” it’s “tempting to link the recipe to the continental European borscht.”
Reconstructing these recipes, which tend to lack quantities or procedural details, has involved educated guesswork. But no other texts in existence can get you closer to reconstructing ancient Mesopotamian cuisine in your own kitchen. If you’d like to see how that’s done before giving it a try yourself, watch the videosabove and below from Max Miller, whose Youtube channel Tasting Historyspecializes in preparing dishes from earlier stages of civilization. Not that departure from the recipes as originally dictated by tradition would have any consequences. Most of these recipes may date from an era close to the reign of King Hammurabi, but there’s nothing in his famous Code about what happens to cooks who make the occasional substitution.
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletterBooks on Cities and the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
The story of coffee goes back to the 13th century, when it came out of Ethiopia, then spread to Egypt and Yemen. It reached the Middle East, Turkey, and Persia during the 16th century, and then Europe during the early 17th, though not without controversy. In Venice, some called it the ‘bitter invention of Satan,’ but the Pope, upon tasting it, gave it his blessing. By 1652, the first café in London had opened its doors on St. Michael’s Alley, bringing coffee to England—all thanks to a Sicilian immigrant, Pasqua Rosée.
Today, the British Museum houses a handbill that may well be the first advertisement for coffee in England. It proves remarkable for a couple of reasons. First, the ad introduced Brits to what’s now a staple of the Western diet, and eventually they’d bring it to North America. And, what’s more, you can see another instance of the adage that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Advertising is advertising. Then, as now, beverages were sold on their taste and health properties. And, of course, you were encouraged to consume the product not once, but twice a day. You can find a transcription of the text below.
Text:
THE Grain or Berry called Coffee, groweth upon little Trees, only in the Deserts of Arabia.
It is brought from thence, and drunk generally throughout all the Grand Seigniors Dominions.
It is a simple innocent thing, composed into a drink, by being dryed in an Oven, and ground to Powder, and boiled up with Spring water, and about half a pint of it to be drunk, fasting an hour before and not Eating an hour after, and to be taken as hot as possibly can be endured; the which will never fetch the skin off the mouth, or raise any Blisters, by reason of that Heat.
The Turks drink at meals and other times, is usually Water, and their Dyet consists much of Fruit, the Crudities whereof are very much corrected by this Drink.
The quality of this Drink is cold and Dry; and though it be a Dryer, yet it neither heats, nor inflames more than hot Posset.
It forcloseth the Orifice of the Stomack, and fortifies the heat with- [missing text] its very good to help digestion, and therefore of great use to be [missing text] bout 3 or 4 a Clock afternoon, as well as in the morning.
[missing text] quickens the Spirits, and makes the Heart Lightsome.
[missing text]is good against sore Eys, and the better if you hold your Head o’er it, and take in the Steem that way.
It supresseth Fumes exceedingly, and therefore good against the Head-ach, and will very much stop any Defluxion of Rheumas, that distil from the Head upon the Stomach, and so prevent and help Consumptionsand the Cough of the Lungs.
It is excellent to prevent and cure the Dropsy, Gout, and Scurvy.
It is known by experience to be better then any other Drying Drink for People in years, or Children that have any running humors upon them, as the Kings Evil. &c.
It is very good to prevent Mis-carryings in Child-bearing Women.
It is a most excellent Remedy against the Spleen, Hypocondriack Winds, or the like.
It will prevent Drowsiness, and make one fit for Busines, if one have occasion to Watch, and therefore you are not to drink of it after Supper, unless you intend to be watchful, for it will hinder sleep for 3 or 4 hours.
It is observed that in Turkey, where this is generally drunk, that they are not troubled with the Stone, Gout, Dropsie, or Scurvy, and that their Skins are exceeding cleer and white.
It is neither Laxative nor Restringent.
Made and Sold in St. Michaels Alley in Cornhill, by Pasqua Rosee, at the Signe of his own Head.
Note: An earlier version of this post appeared on our site in 2012.
In 1874, Stepan Andreevich Bers published The Cookbook and gave it as a gift to his sister, countess Sophia Andreevna Tolstaya, the wife of the great Russian novelist, Leo Tolstoy. The book contained a collection of Tolstoy family recipes, the dishes they served to their family and friends, those fortunate souls who belonged to the aristocratic ruling class of late czarist Russia. 150 years later, this cookbook has been translated and republished by Sergei Beltyukov.
Leo Tolstoy’s Family Recipe Book features dozens of recipes, everything from Tartar Sauce and Spiced Mushrooms (what’s a Russian kitchen without mushrooms?), to Stuffed Dumplings and Green Beans à la Maître d’Hôtel, to Coffee Cake and Viennese Pie. The text comes with a translation, too, of Russian weights and measures used during the period. One recipe Mr. Beltyukov provided to us (which I didn’t see in the book) is for the Tolstoys’ good ole Mac ‘N’ Cheese dish. It goes something like this:
Bring water to a boil, add salt, then add macaroni and leave boiling on light fire until half tender; drain water through a colander, add butter and start putting macaroni back into the pot in layers – layer of macaroni, some grated Parmesan and some vegetable sauce, macaroni again and so on until you run out of macaroni. Put the pot on the edge of the stove, cover with a lid and let it rest in light fire until the macaroni are soft and tender. Shake the pot occasionally to prevent them from burning.
We’ll leave you with bon appétit! — an expression almost certainly heard in the homes of those French-speaking Russian aristocrats.
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Several years back, Colin Marshall highlighted George Orwell’s essay, “A Nice Cup of Tea,” which first ran in the Evening Standard on January 12, 1946. In that article, Orwell weighed in on a subject the English take seriously–how to make the perfect cup of tea. (According to Orwell, “tea is one of the mainstays of civilization.”) And he proceeded to offer 11 rules for making that perfect cup. Above, Luís Sá condenses Orwell’s suggestions into a short animation, made with kinetic typography. Below, you can read the first three of Orwell’s 11 rules, and find the remaining eight here.
First of all, one should use Indian or Ceylonese tea. China tea has virtues which are not to be despised nowadays — it is economical, and one can drink it without milk — but there is not much stimulation in it.…
Secondly, tea should be made in small quantities — that is, in a teapot.… The teapot should be made of china or earthenware. Silver or Britanniaware teapots produce inferior tea and enamel pots are worse.…
Thirdly, the pot should be warmed beforehand. This is better done by placing it on the hob than by the usual method of swilling it out with hot water.
Enjoy!
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At least since The Canterbury Tales, the setting of the medieval tavern has held out the promise of adventure. For their customer base during the actual Middle Ages, however, they had more utilitarian virtues. “If you ever find yourself in the late medieval period, and you are in need of food and drink, you’d better find yourself an inn, tavern, or alehouse,” says Tasting History host Max Miller in the video above. The differences between them had to do with quality: the taverns were nicer than the alehouses, and the inns were nicer than the taverns, having begun as full-service establishments where customers could stay the night.
As for what inn‑, tavern‑, or alehouse-goers would actually consume, Miller mentions that the local availability of ingredients would always be a factor. “You might just get a vegetable potage; in some places it would just be beans and cabbage.”
Elsewhere, though, it could be “a fish stew, or something with really quality meat in it.” For the recipe of the episode — this being a cooking show, after all — Miller chooses a common medieval meat stew called bukenade or boknade. The actual instructions he reads contain words revealing of their time period: the Biblical sounding smyte for cut, for instance, or eyroun, the Middle English term that ultimately lost favor to eggs.
The customers of taverns would originally have drunk wine, which in England was imported from France at some expense. As they grew more popular, these businesses diversified their menus, offering “cider from apples and perry from pears,” as well as the premium option of mead made with honey. Alehouses, as their name would suggest, began as private homes whose wives sold ale, at least the excess that the family itself couldn’t drink. However informal they sound, they were still subject to the same regulations as other drinking spots, and alewives found to be selling an inferior product were subject to the same kind of public humiliations inflicted upon any medieval miscreant — the likes of whom we might recognize from any number of the high-fantasy tales we read today.
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletterBooks on Cities and the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
Even if you don’t speak Italian, you can make a decent guess at the meaning of the word mangiamaccheroni. The tricky bit is that maccheroni refers not to the pasta English-speakers today call macaroni, tubular and cut into small curved sections, but to pasta in general. Or at least it did around the turn of the twentieth century, when i mangiamaccheroni still had currency as a nickname for the inhabitants of the pasta-production center that was Naples. That identity had already been long established even then: Atlas Obscura’s Adee Braun quotes Goethe’s observation, on a trip there in 1787, that pasta “can be bought everywhere and in all the shops for very little money.”
Some especially hard-up Neapolitans could even eat it for free, or indeed get paid to eat it, provided they were prepared to do so at great speed, in full public view — and, as was the custom at the time, with their bare hands. “Many tourists took it upon themselves to organize such spectacles,” Braun writes. “Simply tossing a coin or two to the lazzaroni, the street beggars, would elicit a mad dash to consume the macaroni in their characteristic way, much to the amusement of their onlooking benefactors.” As you can see in the Edison film above, shot on the streets of Naples in 1903, their maccheroni came in long strands, more like what we know as spaghetti. (Fortunately, if that’s the word, tomato sauce had yet to catch on.)
“On my first visit there, in 1929, I acquired a distaste for macaroni, at least in Naples, for its insalubrious courtyards were jungles of it,” writes Waverley Root in The Food of Italy. “Limp strands hung over clotheslines to dry, dirt swirled through the air, flies settled to rest on the exposed pasta, pigeons bombed it from overhead,” and so on. By that time, what had been an aristocratic dish centuries earlier had long since become a staple even for the poor, owing to the proto-industrialization of its production (which Mussolini would relocate and greatly increase in scale). Nowadays, it goes without saying that Italy’s pasta is of the highest quality. And though Italians may not have invented the stuff, which was originally brought over from the Middle East, perhaps they did invent the mukbang.
Based in Seoul, Colin Marshall writes and broadcasts on cities, language, and culture. His projects include the Substack newsletterBooks on Cities and the book The Stateless City: a Walk through 21st-Century Los Angeles. Follow him on the social network formerly known as Twitter at @colinmarshall.
Above, we have the Alulu Beer Receipt. Written in cuneiform on an old clay tablet, the 4,000-year-old receipt documents a transaction. A brewer, named Alulu, delivered “the best” beer to a recipient named Ur-Amma, who apparently also served as the scribe. The Mesopotamians drank beer daily. And while they considered it a staple of everyday life, they also regarded it as a divine gift—something that contributed to human happiness and well-being.
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