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Anti-communists sent food and medical assistance. Communist sympathisers sent tractors. And both countries had much to learn from the other.

The after-hours dish that conquered Ireland and the Irish everywhere.

Marieke Hendriksen, in our recent conversation, told me how her new junior researcher had “got an allergic reaction and ended up in A&E” as a result of eating too much fermented food. In the past, Marieke added, “because people ate so many fermented foods, they must have had a higher histamine tolerance.” That rang a […]

In the end we can never know what people in the past tasted in their food, but a new method aims to come closer.

A new book shares more information about salt and ways to use it than you can imagine

“You yourself like caribou meat, and what are these maggots but live caribou meat? They taste just the same as the meat and are refreshing to the mouth.”

“An anchovy, to get to an important point, is a larval sardine (Engraulis encrasicolus). Around Nice, anchovies are called poutines (not to be confused with fast-food from Quebec).” This, from a writer I have long respected for their meticulous research, rang alarm bells. Nowhere, ever, have I come across the idea that an anchovy is […]

“There was no treatment for pellagra, aside from an improved diet, and … we can’t improve the peasants’ diet. That’s not our job. We’re doctors.”

Quinoa is not a staple at our house. I like it a lot, but I don’t make it that often. If I did, I would probably already have negotiated a way through the ethical maze that confronts me. Should I buy quinoa from its homeland in South America, and if so should it be the […]

I didn’t realise, when I booked a brief holiday in the Po Delta, that I would be staying at the heart of the Italian quinoa supply chain