Fifty years ago, the balsamic vinegar industry that we know didn’t exist. That’s not to say that balsamic vinegar didn’t exist. It’s been made for centuries in the attics of almost every well-to-do family’s home in Modena, Italy. It’s just that no one outside of Modena knew about it. It wasn’t a conspiracy. It’s more […]
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In 1329 the Bishop of Naumburg held a Christmas baking contest. Imagine a medieval fair and you’re on the right track. The trick was that the baked goods had to be okay for the Advent, which meant no butter and no sugar. The winner was stollen. It might have looked pretty similar to the cake […]
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The story of rugelach, the most popular Jewish pastry in America, dates back several hundred years to a Viennese cookie called kipfel (incidentally, also the ancestor of Hungary’s kifli). “Kipfel” means crescent, the cookie’s shape; “rugelach” probably comes from the Yiddish word rog, or corner—so rugelach is “little corners.” Throughout history, as Jews moved they […]
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There are plenty of stories about the origins of panettone, Italy’s most famous Christmas dessert, but the most romantic is this: once upon a time in Milan a poor baker named Antonio had a beautiful daughter who caught the eye of a local nobleman. When Antonio’s bakery was in danger of going out of business, […]
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In the Styrian region of Austria, locals use pumpkin seed oil like Italians use olive oil. That is to say, a lot: about a liter a month. In Austria the oil is such a big deal that they grow pumpkins just for their seeds. The pumpkin itself is a byproduct that gets discarded on the […]
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I grew up thinking there were four kinds of cheddar: mild, medium, sharp, and extra sharp. Oh yeah, and a fancy fifth kind: white. Though I didn’t know it at the time, those cheeses are all products of essentially the same methods: milk from dozens or hundreds of sources all trucked to the cheese factory, […]
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The Northern Italian region of Piedmont is famous for its hazelnuts. That reputation might come from the fact that it’s the birthplace of the genius-level chocolate-hazelnut pairing called gianduja. When Napoleon instituted a Mediterranean naval blockade that caused the price of cacao to skyrocket, an enterprising chocolatier in Turin stretched out his chocolate supply by […]
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Four hundred years ago to the year, in 1615, Miguel de Cervantes published the second edition of Don Quixote de la Mancha. The world’s first novel has a couple dozen references to cheese, and you can bet that Cervantes was thinking of a cheese we’d recognize today as Manchego. Manchego was made in the La […]
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For centuries grandmothers have been prescribing vinegar as a panacea for ailments ranging from hiccups to dandruff to tummy aches to arthritis. The link between vinegar and medicine is so established that the Italian word balsamico actually comes from the same origin as the word balsam in English: a resinous liquid with medicinal benefits. Perhaps, […]
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In the mountains and valleys that stretch across North Africa, there’s no guarantee of a good harvest from year to year. That’s nothing new for the Berbers. They’ve been farming olives, wheat, vegetables, and fruits there since before Carthage was founded in 814 BCE. (The name “Berber” actually comes from the Roman name for the […]
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