Portal:Food

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The Modern Cook was the first cookery book by the Anglo-Italian cook Charles Elmé Francatelli (1805–1876). It was first published in 1846. It was popular for half a century in the Victorian era, running through 29 London editions by 1896. It was also published in America.

The book offered elaborate dishes, described with French terminology such as bisque, entrées, entremets, vol-au-vent, timbale and soufflé. It included bills of fare for meals for up to 300 people, and for a series of eight- or nine-course dinners served to Queen Victoria; one exceptional royal dinner in 1841 had sixteen entrées and sixteen entremets, including truffles in Champagne. (Full article...)

Vegetarianism is the practice of abstaining from the consumption of meat (red meat, poultry, seafood, insects, and the flesh of any other animal). It may also include abstaining from eating all by-products of animal slaughter. A person who practices vegetarianism is known as a vegetarian.

Vegetarianism may be adopted for various reasons. Many people object to eating meat out of respect for sentient animal life. Such ethical motivations have been codified under various religious beliefs as well as animal rights advocacy. Other motivations for vegetarianism are health-related, political, environmental, cultural, aesthetic, economic, taste-related, or relate to other personal preferences. (Full article...)

Mexican cuisine consists of the cooking cuisines and traditions of the modern country of Mexico. Its earliest roots lie in Mesoamerican cuisine. Mexican cuisine ingredients and methods begin with the first agricultural communities such as the Olmec and Maya who domesticated maize, created the standard process of nixtamalization, and established their foodways. Successive waves of other Mesoamerican groups brought with them their cooking methods. These included: the Teotihuacanos, Toltec, Huastec, Zapotec, Mixtec, Otomi, Purépecha, Totonac, Mazatec, Mazahua, and Nahua. With the Mexica formation of the multi-ethnic Triple Alliance (Aztec Empire), culinary foodways became infused (Aztec cuisine).

Today's food staples native to the land include corn (maize), turkey, beans, squash, amaranth, chia, avocados, tomatoes, tomatillos, cacao, vanilla, agave, spirulina, sweet potato, cactus, and chili pepper. Its history over the centuries has resulted in regional cuisines based on local conditions, including Baja Med, Chiapas, Veracruz, Oaxacan, and the American cuisines of New Mexican and Tex-Mex. (Full article...)

Garam masala (Hindustani:- garam masālā, lit. transl. hot or warm spices) is a blend of ground spices originating from the Indian subcontinent. It is common in Indian, Pakistani, Nepalese, Bangladeshi, and Caribbean cuisines. It is used alone or with other seasonings. The specific combination differs by district, but it regularly incorporates a blend of flavours like cardamom, cinnamon, cumin, cloves, bay leaves, star anise, and peppercorns. Garam masala can be found in a wide range of dishes, including marinades, pickles, stews, and curries. (Full article...)

San Francisco Sourdough bread differs from other sourdough bread in being leavened with a culture prepared with fresh grapes. The multiplicity of strains of yeast (up to 16 according to the work of Robert K. Mortimer, professor emeritus of Molecular and Cell Biology at U.C., Berkeley) produces a unique taste.

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Florence Petty (1 December 1870 – 18 November 1948) was a Scottish social worker, cookery writer and broadcaster. During the 1900s, in the socially deprived area of Somers Town, north London, Petty undertook social work for the St Pancras School for Mothers, commonly known as The Mothers' and Babies' Welcome. She ran cookery demonstrations for working-class women to get them in the habit of cooking inexpensive and nutritious food. Much of the instruction was done in the women's homes, to demonstrate how to use their own limited equipment and utensils. Because she taught the women firstly how to make suet puddings—plain, sweet and meat—her students nicknamed her "The Pudding Lady". In addition to her cookery lessons, she became a qualified sanitary inspector.

Petty wrote on cookery, publishing works aimed at those also involved in social work, including a cookery book—The Pudding Lady's Recipe Book, with Practical Hints (1917)—and pamphlet aimed at the public. Both the pamphlet and book contain practical information on how to make and use a haybox as a method of cooking, where heated food is placed in an insulated box to continue to cook, away from a heat source. Petty worked as a lecturer and cookery demonstrator for the National Food Reform Association, travelling round Britain to show cost-efficient and nutritious ways to cook despite the rising food prices and food shortages brought on by the First World War. She was a broadcaster on food and budgeting in the late 1920s and early 1930s, on the 2LO radio station for the BBC, as part of the "Household Talk" series of programmes aimed at housewives. From 1914 until the mid-1940s she toured Britain giving lecture-demonstrations on economical ingredients and cost-effective cooking methods. (Full article...)

Georges Auguste Escoffier
B. 28 October 1846 – d. 12 February 1935

Georges Auguste Escoffier (French: [ʒɔʁʒ oɡyst ɛskɔfje]; 28 October 1846 – 12 February 1935) was a French chef, restaurateur, and culinary writer who popularised and updated traditional French cooking methods. Much of Escoffier's technique was based on that of Marie-Antoine Carême, one of the codifiers of French haute cuisine; Escoffier's achievement was to simplify and modernise Carême's elaborate and ornate style. In particular, he codified the recipes for the five mother sauces. Referred to by the French press as roi des cuisiniers et cuisinier des rois ("king of chefs and chef of kings"—also previously said of Carême), Escoffier was a preeminent figure in London and Paris during the 1890s and the early part of the 20th century.

Alongside the recipes, Escoffier elevated the profession. In a time when kitchens were loud, riotous places where drinking on the job was commonplace, Escoffier demanded cleanliness, discipline, and silence from his staff. In bringing order to the kitchen, he tapped into his own military experience to develop the hierarchical brigade de cuisine system for organising the kitchen staff which is still standard in many restaurants today. He worked in partnership with hotelier César Ritz, rising to prominence together at the Savoy in London serving the elite of society, and later at the Ritz Hotel in Paris and the Carlton in London. (Full article...)

• ... that by 1967, staff at the Home Office were told not to feed Peta morsels of food as she had become "inordinately fat"?
• ... that food was left to rot outside after the supermarket Supie went out of business?
• ... that the Unitized Group Ration – Express is designed to heat food itself without the need of a field kitchen?
• ... that the reactions to food depicted in the manga series Food Wars!: Shokugeki no Soma were decided on through free association games?
• ... that Jean Webster daily served hundreds of people free food directly out of her home kitchen for over a decade?
• ... that in November 2022, Leicester City Council used the Food Act 1984 in combination with a royal charter of 1199 to levy a charge on the organisers of two Christmas light switching-on events?

... that MSG stimulates specific receptors located in taste buds such as the amino acid receptor T1R1/T1R3 or other glutamate receptors like the metabotropic receptors (mGluR4 and mGluR1) which induce the taste known as umami, one of the five basic tastes (the word umami is a loanword from Japanese; it is also referred to as "savoury" or "meaty"). ...that the word prosciutto derives from the Latin perexsuctum which means "thoroughly dried" (lit., "(having been) very sucked out"). ...that the American Culinary Federation, which was the progeny of the combined visions of three chefs' associations in New York, comprises more than 18,000 members in 240 chapters across the United States, and is known as the authority on cooking in America. Its mission is to make a positive difference for culinarians through education, apprenticeship and certification, while creating a fraternal bond of respect and integrity among culinarians everywhere. ...that Julia Child worked at the OSS Emergency Sea Rescue Equipment Section in Washington, D.C., where she was a file clerk and also helped in the development of a shark repellent. In 1944 she was posted to Kandy, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where she met her future husband, a high-ranking OSS cartographer, and later to China, where she received the Emblem of Meritorious Civilian Service as head of the Registry of the OSS Secretariat.

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