What Is Tasting History?

Updated

Tasting History is a cooking show for history lovers and a history show for food lovers. It covers foods and their stories from Ancient Babylon to WWII, pairing historical context with recipes you can follow. It is a good fit if you want to understand what people ate in a specific time and place, not just watch a modern dish being made.

What the site offers

The homepage describes the project as "the cooking show for history lovers and the history show for food lovers," and states its scope as "From Ancient Babylon to WWII." Each episode typically combines:

  • Historical background — where and when a food or drink appeared, and how it changed.
  • A recipe — often adapted from an original source, such as a 1747 recipe for potted meat or an 1831 dried-chile salsa.
  • A video episode — the main format, with written episode pages you can read.

Content range, based on listed episodes

The episode list shows how wide the coverage is:

Topic Period / place
Aztec origins of salsa Mexico, 16th–19th century
Italian WWII rations Italy, 20th century
2,000 years of mustard Ancient Rome, medieval France, Victorian England
Potted meat British Isles, 18th century
Piña colada origins Caribbean, 20th century
Ea-Nāşir and a 4,000-year-old cake North Africa & the Near East, ancient
Medieval grocery shopping Italy, medieval

So you can move from a specific recipe to the broader question of how a food was made, traded, or preserved.

Other things on the site

  • A cookbook — the site states "The Tasting History Cookbook is Available Now!" with purchase links to Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
  • A newsletter — there is a sign-up option on the page.
  • Episode archive — episodes are organized by date and tagged with region and era.

Who it is for

  • History lovers who want food as an entry point into daily life, trade, and war.
  • Food lovers who want recipes with a documented past rather than a modern invention.
  • Home cooks willing to work with historical ingredients and methods, since recipes may call for things like dried chiles or preservation techniques.

If you only want modern, quick recipes, this is probably not the right source. If you want the story behind a dish and a version of it you can actually make, it is.