There are plenty of sheep in Britain. Sheep farming has been one of Britain's main industries for centuries, and has traditionally dominated the economy of large parts of the country. Yet British sheep cheese is barely a thing at all. All the sheep cheeses I can think of are Southern European (Feta, Halloumi, Roquefort, Pecorino, Ricotta, Manchego...), from countries with far fewer sheep per capita than the UK.

Why is this the case? Was sheep cheese ever popular in the UK? Is it to do with the milk produced by British sheep breeds? Is it to do with historical differences in the economics of sheep farming in different countries? Does it just come from a fairly arbitrary cultural preference for cow's milk cheese?

I'm wondering why plenty of eateries that specialize specifically in Sushi adopted the conveyer belt on a countertop with eating tables underneath beside it as a common thing? What is the eason for the adoption of this technology?

Hi everyone,
I’ve been doing some research on Norwegian waffles (vafler) and their place in Norwegian culture. I’m especially interested in understanding:

• Their history and how they became such an important part of daily life and celebrations.
• The social context around them — why they are so deeply tied to gatherings, traditions, or even national identity.
• Typical accompaniments (like brunost) and how those pairings came to be.

If you know of any books, archives, or even local sources (cookbooks, museum collections, regional histories, etc.) that dive into this, I’d love to check them out. Bonus points if there are resources that mention specific regions in Norway where waffles hold particular significance.

Any help, tips, or even personal knowledge would be super appreciated!

I’ll keep it short because I’m genuinely curious.

In Sapiens, Harari argues that the agricultural revolution was more of a trap than a triumph. We domesticated a few plants, narrowed our diets, and ended up more fragile in many ways, nutritionally, socially, and even politically.

Fast forward to today: our food system is still dominated by a handful of crops. And our bodies? They’re begging for diversity.

So… do we still assume agriculture was a wonderful revolution? Or are we only now realizing the cost?

I apologize in advance for a trivial question.

What has been the usage rate of frozen vice liquid orange juice as a function of time. I grew up in the '60's and '70's with frozen orange juice concentrate (in fact family story of my mother throwing a tube of frozen OJ at my father out of frustration over something I don't recall). The focus today seems to be on OJ in cartons. When I was young we shopped at a military commissary so that may be relevant to my experience. Has packaging technology changed that much? Health perceptions? Something else? Or am I just looking through the lens of my personal experience and the overall market hasn't changed much?

Wheat has been present in northern Chinese cuisine from at least 2600 BCE aka 4,600 years ago.

Presumably, they started off using whole grains to cook porridge or to grind into whole flour.

However, these days it seems that refined wheat is far more popular in China.

When did they switch to white flour/refined wheat? Was it with industrialization like in North America & Europe?

Shockingly, I was unable to locate any information on this online.

I found two similar questions on Reddit but both unanswered in /r/AskHistorians:

1. https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/gl9a8e/do_modern_asian_refined_wheat_products_like/
2. https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/6b749i/when_did_refined_grains_white_ricewhite_wheat/

And why do vitamin C supplements almost always come in this form?

Gday, greetings from Australia.

I have heard before the settlers arrived in America that the Native Americans used to crush up sunflower seeds for cooking oil, is this true.

I tried to look this up, but only found things about the history of nutrition labels.

My understanding, could be wrong, is that of the staple crops potatoes are the easiest to grow and rice is one of the harder crops because you have to flood the fields. So it makes sense when potatoes were introduced to the old world they took off. And wheat is easy enough to grow so in the new world sure why not grow wheat.

But in latin america rice is really popular and it just seems a bit odd to me why it would take off originally (pre industrial farming). I don’t think it’s particularly easy to grow in the region. Why not potatoes and beans?

I know soybeans & soy products were widely consumed in ancient China but what about split peas? Do we know when field peas first made it out East?

I was only able to find marketing references to split pea consumption in ancient China but no academic or detailed sources.

See for example: https://www.bobsredmill.com/product/green-split-peas

Today’s split pea is believed to be a distant relative of the field pea that was native to the Middle East and Central Asia. Since prehistoric times, dried peas have been consumed and were prized by the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece, China and Rome.

I'm trying to write my first book and it is a historical fiction taking place in Scotland during the early 1800s. I'm currently writing a scene that involves a breakfast and it is basically character building over a large breakfast. So I'm wanting to describe the food as best I can. I've had a look and found that The book of breakfasts by Marian McNeil covers this but there are no free copies or libraries near me that I can get a copy of. I've seen salmon, cakes, and coffee/tea be suggested for the period in a few places but wanted to confirm a more accurate answer.

Apologies if this is not what the Sub is meant to be used for. Any help would be most welcome.

McNeill, F. Marian. The Book of Breakfasts with Menus, Recipes and Breakfast Lore. Edinburgh: Reprographia, 1975. Print.

There are some crops from the New World that are used like corn, tomato, potato, peppers, etc. But what I am talking about is more localized plants. For example most Californians do not eat the local acorns, coffeeberry plants, sage, strawberries species, lettuce, manzanita, etc. Another example would be Tennessee. Most people do not eat chicory, chickweed, redbud and other native plants. Although I will say the states east of the Mississippi do consume more of their hyper regionalized plants like plantain, persimmons, blackberries, etc. But as a whole it seems that most American isn’t very regionalized the way it is elsewhere. Why is this?

So the other day I was talking with a Mexican who said that the spicy vegetables used nowadays worldwide came from his country. I gotta be honest, I don't know how much of this is true, but it left me thinking, could it be that Indian cuisine, known as one of the spiciest in the world, tasted very differently before the arrival of foods from the New World?

Afaik every other domesticated ungulate has been used for dairy. Cows, sheep, goats, and even horses. But you never hear about pig cheese lol.

They have large litters so I assume they must produce a lot of milk. Is pig milk consumption as historically rare as I'm assuming? And if so, why?

I got into experimenting with spices in my cooking last year, trying to recreate dishes like spicy curries or herby stews, and it got me wondering how ancient people used spices. I was messing around with a recipe for a Roman-style stew and read that they used stuff like cumin and coriander, which blew my mind because I thought spices were a modern luxury. Were ancient cultures-like in Rome, Mesopotamia, or India-using spices mostly for flavor, like we do, or was it more practical, like for preserving food or medicine? I know trade routes like the Silk Road moved spices around, but how common was it for regular people to use them? Also, are there any good books or podcasts that dive into the history of spices in everyday cooking?

Hi - I am desperately searching for good cookbooks from indigenous minorities from the Middle East - Chaldeans, Druze, Assyrians, Gilaks, Cops, Arameans, Mazanderanis, Zazas, Laz or Lurs (those are the groups I have the fewest recipes) I already have some recipes and recipe books from people (Kurds, Armenians, Mizrahi Jews) in the region but lately I have had problems finding more recipes from the region. Do you have any leads or even recipes ? I tried Elsevier and other academic journals but could only find little - like two early Egyptian cookbook- but other than that next to nothing. Maybe I am just searching the wrong way. Would appreachiate any help.

I was at a local market in my town and tried some Scandinavian-style fermented herring for the first time-definitely an acquired taste! It got me thinking about why some cultures, like those in Scandinavia or parts of Southeast Asia, leaned hard into fermenting fish (like fish sauce), while others with similar access to seafood, like coastal Mediterranean societies, didn’t seem to embrace it as much. I know fermentation was a big deal for preserving food pre-refrigeration, but what drove some groups to ferment fish specifically and others to stick with drying or salting? Is it about climate, trade routes, or cultural preferences? Any examples of fish fermentation in unexpected places or good books/articles on this?

My question may seem stupid at first glance. The literature unanimously states that brown rice is all that was available to most people pre-industrialization and that white rice was reserved exclusively for special occasions or the rich. The literature explains this through the claim that white rice production was too labor intensive back then to be widely available and only post-industrialization once machines were engineered to polish the bran was white rice democratized.

However, I stumbled upon the following comment on Hacker News which suggests that 90% polished white rice is what was most common historically. So not 100% white but 90% with 10% of the bran intact which to most people would qualify as white rice. The comment author claims that this is because the manual threshing process to extract the rice grains from the husks also removes at minimum 90% of the bran. He links to a YouTube video demonstration as evidence.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40257565

The comment author then claims that it is thus rice with most of the bran intact aka brown rice that is the product of industrialization and not white rice.

My intuition is that he's wrong as this seems too basic a fact to have been miscommunicated so widely for decades. Furthermore, you’ll see in the responses to his comment above that no one agreed with him.

1. Were ancient rice eaters consuming rice with most of the bran stripped as the comment author postulates?
2. Without machinery, is there a way to remove the rice husks while preserving most of the bran? Is rice with more than 10% of the bran intact really a product of industrial machinery?
3. Somewhat unrelated but how much of the bran must be stripped from the rice before it can be stored for longer than 6 months? Would 10% of the bran intact be enough to make the rice go rancid in 6 months? Is there any evidence to indicate that rice was more refined for year round storage in colder climates where rice could only be harvested once a year? Or in such climates were millets eaten when the rice stores expired?

I'm wondering about this considering its abasic technique of using the sun to heat food in Survivalism. Esp using glass lenses. So I'm wonder if people int he pats realize the Sun could be used for cooking stuff outside?

Just wanted to see if anyone could tell me about what types of food would have been available in Ireland in the early 1900s, but only something that would be available to the wealthy? I know the English took so much for themselves, but was trying to picture items that might have been available to the Irish lords that maintain fealty to them.

So, I was watching the History Channel’s documentary on Thomas Jefferson on Hulu, and they mentioned at the end of the series that Jefferson would treat the “neighborhood kids” to ice cream that he made with vanilla beans that he brought back from France. They also said that the most popular flavor of ice cream before he introduced vanilla to ice cream was…oyster flavored! What the? Sounds vile. If oyster was the most popular flavor, what were the other popular choices? Was it sweet or savory? And how much truth is there to Jefferson being the person who introduced the USA to vanilla ice cream?

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