Questions tagged [food]
Any nourishing substance that is eaten, drunk, or otherwise taken into the body to sustain life, provide energy, promote growth. Questions with this tag should be about the historical practices of growing, preparing, and eating food, or about the historical origins of modern foods.
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Was it known in ancient Rome and Greece that boiling water made it safe to drink and if so, what was the theory behind this?
I believe wine was mixed with water because it tasted better than plain water -- it had the positive side effect of killing bacteria.
But if no wine was available, was plain water drunk? Did people ...
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Was rapeseed oil used for cooking before the twentieth century?
The Wikipedia article on rapeseed oil states that it has been in use for thousands of years, starting in India around 4,000 years ago and China and Japan around 2,000 years ago. However, it is unclear ...
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What is the first documented mention of female period loss (amenorrhea)?
(Hypothalamic) Amenorrhea is defined as the absence of menstruation during the reproductive years of a woman's life. According to physiologists, it's an evolutionary biological mechanism that gets ...
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Traditionally, did Europeans not heat milk before drinking it?
My impression was that before modern pasteurization and refrigeration, most cultures that drank milk considered it a good idea to heat milk before drinking it and so usually did heat milk before ...
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Have Chinese (and surrounding) cultures traditionally heated their milk?
I’ve spoken with many middle aged Chinese people who have reported that for as long as they can remember, even growing up on a farm, they would never drink milk, even their own cattle’s, without first ...
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Were grapes luxurious food in Ancient Rome?
We always see in historical movies that a Roman emperor is sitting on his throne and a concubine feeds him with grapes. My question is that is this historically true? Were grapes so expensive that ...
user40948
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Did active frontiersmen really eat 20,000 calories a day? How does this compare to other highly-active people in recorded history?
I am currently midway through this book, The Company: The Rise And Fall of the Hudson's Bay Empire. It is really good.
One thing that keeps coming up is the amount of rations needed for each explorer, ...
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Which person is Burani named after?
In this article I found two persons as whom Burani (a Middle Eastern dish) is named after:
According to Naḵjavānī (p. 145), the term būrānī is derived from the name of Būrān, daughter of Ḥasan b. ...
user40948
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What did modern China do with food sold to the state?
I understand that communes, later, "production units", and eventually, households sold food to the state at a set price. If the state wants to pay a lower-than-market price for food, do they ...
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Did it really take until 1990 for "Europe"/UK to switch from glass bottles of milk to cartons? [closed]
I came across this weird claim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_delivery#Europe
By 1975, 94% of milk was in glass bottles, but in 1990, supermarkets started offering plastic and carton containers, ...
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What was Hunanese cuisine like before chili peppers were imported to China?
Today, chilis are strongly associated with Hunanese cuisine, which is regarded as the spiciest Chinese regional cuisine. However, Chinese recipe books didn't start mentioning chilis until the 1790s, ...
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When and how did Britons' (and offshoots like Americans) aversion to eating some parts of animals/fish (e.g. head/organs/blood/feet) begin?
Britons (and their offshoots the Americans and others) are today averse to eating some parts of animals/fish (e.g. head/organs/blood/feet). For example, chicken feet were worthless in the US until c. ...
user54367
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Has a food taster ever thwarted an assassination attempt?
Important people have been known to employ food tasters to avoid assassination by poisoning. The linked Wikipedia article mentions that Claudius, Adolf Hitler, Barack Obama, and Vladimir Putin all ...
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Were there luxury restaurants in East Germany?
I was recently reading the excellent book Mac B, Kid Spy: Mac Saves the World by Mac Barnett.
It is set in 1989, and Mac crosses the Berlin Wall to infiltrate the Television Tower in East Berlin.
I ...
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What would have been on the menu in an Ancient Egyptian tavern?
Public dining places
It appears that there were public dining places in Ancient Egypt. A menu from one of them has been found, dating back to 6th Century BC. On this menu was cereal, wild fowl, and ...
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