This is a linkpost for https://eukaryotewritesblog.com/2024/01/20/book-review-cuisine-and-empire/

People began cooking our food maybe two million years ago and have not stopped since. Cooking is almost a cultural universal. Bits of raw fruit or leaves or flesh are a rare occasional treat or garnish – we prefer our meals transformed. There are other millennia-old procedures we do to make raw ingredients into cooking: separating parts, drying, soaking, slicing, grinding, freezing, fermenting. We do all of this for good reason: Cooking makes food more calorically efficient and less dangerous. Other techniques contribute to this, or help preserve food over time. Also, it tastes good.

Cuisine and Empire by Rachel Laudan is an overview of human history by major cuisines – the kind of things people cooked and ate. It is not trying to be a history of cultures, agriculture, or nutrition, although it touches on all of these things incidentally, as well as [...]

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First published:
January 21st, 2024

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/CcmQr5RvP2pvnxTG5/book-review-cuisine-and-empire

Linkpost URL:
https://eukaryotewritesblog.com/2024/01/20/book-review-cuisine-and-empire/

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

[Linkpost] “Book review: Cuisine and Empire” by eukaryote

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