title: A Curious History of Food and Drink
author: Ian Crofton
publication date: October 23, 2013
publisher: Quercus
This book is for all those food lovers who are ever eager to hear about new, strange, and wonderful dishes.
— Ian Crofton (A Curious History of Food and Drink)
Did you know…
… that in 2005, archeologists uncovered the world’s oldest noodles in Lajia, China. The noodles were 4,000 years old, made of millet and buried with an earthenware bowl.
… circa 100 BC, part of the pay given to Roman soldiers was called a salarium since it was intended for the purchase of salt
… kopi luwak, the world’s most expensive coffee, which is by collecting coffee beans eaten by wild civets was discovered circa 1850
These are just some of the interesting tidbits to be found in Crofton’s A Curious History of Food and Drink.
Starting waaaaay back with the hippo soup eaten in Africa in 6000 BC and moving step by step chronologically forward, Crofton makes pit stops along the way through history, stopping here and there to discuss bizarre anecdotes, legends and origin stories of various foods and drinks.
While I love food history and food facts, I found the lack of cohesion throughout the book a little jarring and the blurbs often too short. Many times, some interesting fact or story is mentioned in a couple of sentences and then that’s it. No elaboration, no footnotes with further sources of investigation, nothing. It felt like a letdown and only teased my curiosity to the point where it got annoying after awhile. I jotted down a lot of little sidenotes for myself and plan on hitting the internet to learn more, but feel that I shouldn’t have to work so hard to satisfy my curiosity. I just wanted to know how some of the stories ended! There were just TOO many half finished thoughts and stories in the book for me to feel satisfied by the time I was finished. There were recipes sprinkled throughout, but they were generally of the ‘shock value’ variety, so after a while, I skipped over those.
I understand that no book that tries to encompass the “history of food and drink” into one small, enjoyable volume will ever be able to cover everything, but I would have appreciated slightly longer blurbs, or at least a very good footnotes/source material section so that I could continue reading about subjects that I wanted to learn more about. This is an entertaining book for anyone interested in some fun and bizarre food facts, but probably not for someone looking to learn more about food history.
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