From Geology to Global Cuisine: A Historian’s Evolution
Welcome. Here you’ll find my thoughts on history of many kinds: food, the earth, farming, science and technology. Wehn the mood strikes, I also write about other topics that interest me.
So here’s a bit more about me. I grew up on a large arable and dairy farm a few miles from Stonehenge in England. Picking up Mesolithic flints or clambering over Iron Age hilltop “forts” were daily occurrences. I attended private schools in the long nearly-800-year old shadow of Salisbury Cathedral spire.
By age eighteen I was ready to escape all this history. Luckily Voluntary Service Overseas sent me off to the Niger Delta to teach in a newly-established girls’ high school. A year there made me realize I had better get serious about what I wanted to do with my life.
At Bristol University I took a first degree in geology, an uncommon choice for a woman at the time. in the While I was dithering between continuing to a Ph. D. at Columbia or at Johns Hopkins, I discovered that there was a discipline that studied how science had evolved.
Off to University College London instead, therefore, for a Ph. D. in History and Philosophy of Science. Karl Popper was then reigning over his famous seminar at the London School of Economics. Those tumultuous sessions drove home the connections between science, philosophy, and politics. Nothing ivory tower about them.
However I was, was shocked to discover that philosophers of science did not consider geology a worthy science. Working out why resulted in my first book, From Mineralogy to Geology: The Foundations of a Science (1987).
By the mid 1970s, I had moved to the United States. I married Larry Laudan, also a philosopher and historian of science. In pursuit of two careers in a minuscule academic field, we moved from Pittsburgh to Virginia to Hawaii. Hawaii set me on a new track. The many different ethnic groups in the Islands were in the process of creating a new cuisine, Local Food. How this had happened led to The Food of Paradise: Exploring Hawaii’s Culinary Heritage (1996).
In the mid 1990s Larry and I had decided that a quarter of a century in academia was enough. A new adventure was needed. We moved to Mexico. I embarked on a global food history resulting in Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History (2013). This was not the wild jump it seems. Everything I had learned teaching history of science and technology I applied to one of humankind’s greatest technological products, food.
After fifteen years in Mexico, we moved north again, first to Austin, Texas where Larry taught in the Law School. Then were moved again to the Bluegrass Region in central Kentucky. Caring for my husband before his death in August 2022 came to claim all my time. I am gradually picking up writing again. I hope to make headway on two major projects. One, tentatively titled Woman, Stone, Food, is a study of grain processing before mechanization. The other is a cultural history of the farmer. Fun, even if I never finish.
And yes, I’m sticking with a blog. I’ve watched print newsletters, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Substack come and go. Much of the material I have is exploratory and speculative. It’s not appropriate for the academic journals that I published in for much of my life.The material shares common threads so I want it in one place, not scattered across op eds and online journals.
If you are interested, you can sign up for an RSS feed, an email announcement, or just follow me on Twitter or Facebook.
I was thinking about how food has changed, just in the past few decades, and did a google search for ‘culinary historian’. This blog came up, and I’m so glad I found it. :P
Well thank you. Delighted to know you found it useful.
What a beautiful piece. I was searching for online food history courses. I plan to work on my PhD someday and this piece spoke to me. Thanks a lot!
Thank you. And good luck with that Ph.D.
Your post very good, i like it
Hi Rachel！I’m so excited to find your book inadvertently. Delicious food will bring people great satisfaction to mind, and what even more striking is the changes and integration of food development by historical development. Although I just read the first two pages of you book Cuisine and Empire, the next content is so fascinated to me. However, It’s so pity for me lacking the chapter of China. Since the Zhou dynasty of slavery society was destroyed, China had been experiencing the ethnic fusion and migration. Even along the Beijing-Hangzhou Grand Canal, people of different provinces have great differences on food. I’m now having a trip in Hainan and am interested in a kind of food named Zaopocu for characterizing evident geographical fusion. I’m expected to complete reading of your book as soon as possible and try to treat Chinese food from your original point of view. Mostly, I’m looking forward to meet you in China if there is possible you come to collect the relative materials :D
Joanne, Thank you for your kind words. And I think as you go through the book you will find much on China in the different chapters. I look forward to hearing your reaction.
That must be an interesting clue to mix China in the different chapters :P. After sending you my thought, I dreamed of you last night. And it’s really a sweet dream :D
https://entitleblog.org/2018/07/12/defending-degrowth-at-ecomodernisms-home/ you are mentioned here. And i certainly don’t agree with you.
A question: In your book there is a photo of three cooking pots from Oaxaca and Puebla. What age would you assign to the one that looks most like a fat boot? Was recently given one by someone who doesn´t know age or value. I would like to donate this item to a charity auction and would love to have an idea of what value to give to it and age. Can you help? Thank you. Gretchen DeWitt p.s. lovely book!
Hello Gretchen. I don’t have a photo of cooking pots from Oaxaca in my book so I am bit puzzled to know how to respond to this. The fat boot shape is very common and I think has been made over a long period of time.
I stumbled across your “Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History” and have found it fascinating. Thanks for writing such an enjoyable and informative book! I’d be curious as to what you think of the Louisiana Creole and Cajun cuisines…which I grew up eating down in New Orleans. Anyway, great book and I’ll look up more by you.
I bought a metate and pestle at an estate sale an hour from the mexican boarder. How would i know if it is old or knew? I am thinking of selling it but have no idea how much to ask for it. I paid $25 for it.
Rachel, we’ve been following your explorations in all their breadth and colour. Those pertaining to our own particular focus, Irish food culture & history, have been especially appreciated. If you have a newsletter or similar, please add our humble blog to the mailing list – lest we miss an article. Keep up the good work!
I finally got around to reading your article in the Fall 2019 issue of the Hedgehog Review. Thank you so much for your clarity. One thing you mentioned was your love and fascination with the complexities in our food system. I’m not involved with the industry, nor a chef, but follow many food trade organizations, from farming to grocery. Twitter is a great way tune in, if you will, to the conversations happening (particularly now, with Covid-19 challenges) within the ag/food service/food retail business.
What can I do to encourage others to take a more active interest in these elements? Are their professional organizations I should be supporting? Books to share?
I talk to my friends about it, but they’re over me! LOL
Thank you again for the fine work.
Dylan Dean
Dear Dylan, Thanks so much for writing. It sounds as if we share many interests. Can I follow you on Twitter? And are there any Twitter accounts you find particularly helpful? Let me think about what you can do to encourage a more active interest. Right now we are in the grip of a story about our food that is totally at odds with how we actually get our food. Important to tell a new story.
Hello Rachel!
I came across your wonderful blog as I was researching Madeira wine.
I’m a poet and historical fiction writer (originally from Austin, Texas – actually!) and I write a series of weekly blog posts on my website called ‘Madeira Mondays’, looking at 18th century history and historical fiction. I wanted to learn a little bit more about Madeira, the drink that the series is named after, and found your post about ‘Madeira, trust and trade’. Fascinating stuff and really deepened my understanding of how this drink came to have such prominence in the colonies.
Thanks and I look forward to reading more in the future!
All the best, Carly
Thank you Carly. Good to find another Madeira enthusiast.
Hello Rachel. I’ve browsed through your blog and found it to be very delightful. As an aficionado of all things culinary & gastronomic, I must say that your thoughts & anecdotes on food are a welcome respite from my miserable and ongoing struggles to understand your husband’s paper, “A Confutation of Convergent Realism,” for the past two days. (Why don’t theoretical terms genuinely refer? Do they ever? Can they possibly?) Who knows. What I do know is that I’ll be looking forward to more of your posts.
Yours,
An Undergrad in Torment
Dear Undergraduate in Torment,
I take no responsibility for my husband’s pessimistic induction.
I am happy that you found solace perusing my blog. I’m in the middle of re-thinking it so expect new posts in the New Year.
Hi Rachel…off topic but Just now heard of Diana Buja’s death in 2019! Do you have any info? I had been searching for her for years. I spoke with her about her shingles..years ago.
mekoontz53@gmail.com
Hello,
I am an Early Childhood Major at Northern Kentucky University, and we are working on projects on foods and how we teach children about food. I chose two of my favorite subjects, chocolate and history.
I saw your name and read this article, and wondered if you would be willing to email me some answers to questions on the history of chocolate? I would love to teach the kids in my class ( 3 to 5 year olds) about where chocolate first was discovered, and how it was used in historical times. Also to help them learn about the evolution of chocolate use- from small uses (possibly medicinal!) to the huge following chocolate has today. What else is chocolate used for besides what they know as candy? And what are some interesting facts I could share with my students about chocolate? I want to make it fun, but teach them that food has history!
Any answers you have time to share with me will be so appreciated!
Thank you,
Julia
Dear Rachel, I’m so sorry to hear about your husband, condolences. But it explains why we haven’t heard much from you of late which is why I came by to check your site. Glad you’re ready to write again. Looking forward to it all. Thanks and all the best. Andrew
Thanks Andrew. Hope to get going again soon.
Hello Ms Laudan
French reader here, learning of you by the HN news post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34254614)
Liked the linked piece, overstated a bit the end of hunger in country land vs the food industry. My parents have talked of hunger to their children quite *a lot*, but it was always about WWII while they were living in the city, never about their youth in Jura – neither were children of rich peasants, and Jura is NOT a great agricultural land – poor soil, not much sun, not exactly mild climate – great for lichen and mushrooms, not so good for wheat – now cows for cheese and grape for wine are all that is left. Nonetheless, Jura peasants – like all French peasants – were not suffering from hunger during WWII – the only French but the rich. And the food industry was not significant at this time. Industry had ended hunger in the country – my mum’s father was an artisan/peasant – but not the *food* industry.
Dear Gerard,
So sorry to be so long getting back to you. Delighted to have a French reader and particularly one with roots in the Jura. I spent some happy summers in a village a few miles outside Dole doing an exchange with a French family who had a house there where they spent their summers (the rest of the year in Paris). This was in the late 50s (!) so memories of WWII were very much alive. There was a big rabbit hutch in the yard and the number of rabbits diminished over the course of the summer! And I remember trips squeezed into the back of a Deux Chevaux to buy wine and cheese from their makers. So I can imagine your parents did not suffer from hunger.
I can’t complain because after a few days I had forgotten I had even posted here.
But today chatting with my brother I laughed with him on what I had read in your article about the ‘leisure life’ of the !Kung, and he was very interested about it because he had an argument with a family member who claimed the famous ‘2 hours a day of work’ for the hunters/gatherers and he was keen to have a counter argument so I sent him the link and then remembered the blog.
I have seen quite a few rabbits indeed when I was young, in both my dad and mother villages. My maternal grand dad was getting money in the ‘factory’ (not salaried, he was leasing the location for access to electrical energy), and was using his land to nourish the family, and the rabbits were providing some variety. I am sure that he had a few cows (my mum talked about herding when she was young), chickens, pigs I am not sure (maybe pigs were too much a hassle, they can be dangerous to keep with small children), wheat (bread was done in the communal oven).
When I was old enough to have clear memories, all that was left outside of the garden (grandma) and fruits (granddad, to eat and to process for more interesting stuff) was the rabbits and chickens, at this time, he was getting old so the cows had gone.
Now raising rabbits to eat them is but a memory, in towns like Lyon and in the country like the Jura. I don’t know if it’s even allowed, probably not. French are no fans of rabbit meat nowadays.
Indeed, rabbits have declined in popularity everywhere. I love the story of your family.
Greetings from Beijing! I’m a great fan of your Cuisine and Empire–as are my students!
I hope you’re eating well in Kentucky. I’m from that part of the world and know just how thoroughly industrialized food systems have taken over.
Thanks for getting in touch and for the nice comment on Cuisine and Empire. I love trying to make sense of big patterns.
I am indeed eating well in Kentucky, but then I am a careful shopper and a good home cook.
I am interested to read your work on beef, especially in the republican period, and of course look forward to your Seven Banquets.
You’ve come a long way and you’re loaded with lots of experiences.
I sympathize with you on the loss of your husband in 2022.
Please, write more posts about fish farming. And sticking to your blog was a wise decision.
Thanks for the encouragement. I’m not sure I have anything more to say about fish farming!
Hi Rachel, I hope you are doing well. I am reading Cuisine & Empire now and am enjoying it. I love your style. Thank you for writing this book!
Ben, thanks so much for the comment and for signing up for the blog. I should warn you that just when I was getting started again, life has intervened and I doubt I am going to be able to post much for several weeks.