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Food History

Tagliatelle with meat sauce, an iconic Italian dish.

Immerse Yourself in Italian Cuisine at These Eight Cooking Schools

From local women to world-renowned chefs, here’s a delicious way to get in touch with your inner Italian

Cool Finds

The Contentious History of the Cherry Tomato

The salad topper has a long and fraught history

Cool Finds

Japan Honors the Creator of the California Roll

Some may see it as an affront against sushi, others see an ambassador for culture

Cool Finds

A Brief History of Bog Butter

Turf cutters in Ireland regularly find chunks of butter deep in the nation’s peat bogs. What is the stuff doing there?

Some of Uber den Tellerrand's volunteers teaching a cooking class.

Cool Finds

Refugees Are Teaching Germans How to Cook Their Traditional Foods

Cooking classes are bridging the gaps between Germans and Middle Eastern refugees

A portrait of Mary Church Terrell in 1946 by Betsy Graves Reyneau

How One Woman Helped End Lunch Counter Segregation in the Nation’s Capital

Mary Church Terrell’s court case demanded the district’s “lost laws” put an end to racial discrimination in dining establishments

Associate Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor at the National Museum of American History discusses the dining traditions at the Supreme Court.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor Dig Into the History of Food at the Supreme Court

The American History Museum and the Supreme Court Historical Society brought the justices together to share tales from the highest court

Studying Bacon Has Led One Smithsonian Scholar to New Insights on the Daily Life of Enslaved African-Americans

At Camp Bacon, a thinking person’s antidote to excess, historians, filmmakers and chefs gather to pay homage to the hog and its culinary renown

La Cité du Vin.

Cool Finds

Bordeaux’s New Wine Museum Is Open for Business

The “City of Wine” is a vino lover’s amusement park

Cool Finds

A Brief History of General Tso’s Chicken

From haute cuisine to takeout

A beer funnel, one of the pieces of equipment used to make beer in China 5,000 years ago

Cool Finds

Gan Bei! Chinese Brewed Beer 5,000 Years Ago

Researchers analyzed deposits on ancient pots and jugs to find out Chinese brewers made sophisticated barley beers 1,000 years earlier than thought

Cool Finds

Five of the Most Iconic State Sandwiches

Choosing a state sandwich is hard work

A lamprey in a tank at the Aquarium Restaurant Atalaya in Spain.

Cool Finds

It’s Lamprey Breeding Time in Britain

The bloodsucking fish are returning rivers that were once too polluted for them to live in

Voskehat, “the queen of Armenian grapes”

Armenia

History in a Glass: (Re)discovering Armenian Wine

With more than six thousand-year-old history of viniculture, Armenian wines are gaining popularity

Darjeeling white tea brews with a delicate aroma and a pale golden color.

Cool Finds

For the First Time in 150 Years, Anyone Can Buy One of the World’s Rarest Teas

Go straight to the source

Authentic "Derby-Pie"

Trending Today

Why Making ‘Derby-Pie’ Might Land You a Lawsuit

The Kentucky Derby’s traditional dessert has a tangled legal history

Switzerland

The Swiss Have Made Cheese Since the Iron Age

This discovery pushes Swiss cheesemaking traditions back millennia

Cool Finds

An Israeli Brewery Recreated a 2,000-Year-Old Beer

Beer brewed as in Biblical times

The ramen shops.

Discover the Real Ramen at a Shrine to Slurpy Noodles

The iconic dish has surprising regional roots

For the first time in hundreds of years, some seders might include rice and beans.

Trending Today

For the First Time in 800 Years, Rice and Beans Are Kosher for Passover

The Jewish Conservative movement relaxes a 13th-century ban on rice, corn and beans during Passover

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