The history of civilisation through what we eat
As a food writer with an incurable curiosity about how our plates came to look the way they do, ‘A History of Food in 100 Recipes’ by William Sitwell felt like a book written for me.
It’s the sort of book you dip into intending to read a page or two and resurface an hour later having travelled from ancient Mesopotamia to a 20th century diner via a medieval kitchen hearth.
Sitwell’s central idea is simple and clever: tell the story of human civilisation through dishes people actually cooked and ate. Not grand banquets alone, but everyday foods that reveal trade routes, class divides, religious belief, colonial ambition and sheer human ingenuity.
The recipes act as historical anchors rather than practical instructions, which suits me perfectly. This is not a cookbook for the kitchen counter; it’s one for the armchair, ideally with a cup of tea.
One of the earliest recipes that caught my attention was the Mesopotamian beer bread. Beer, Sitwell reminds us, wasn’t just recreational; it was foundational. In early civilisations, fermented grain was safer than water and central to daily life. Bread soaked or made with beer tells us how closely linked sustenance and survival were. As someone from a culture with its own deep relationship to bread and brewing, I felt an immediate kinship there.
The Roman chapter, particularly around garum (pungent fermented fish sauce) is both revolting and fascinating. Sitwell doesn’t shy away from the sensory horror of it, but he also shows how vital it was to Roman cooking and commerce. It’s a useful reminder that taste is historical.
What we recoil from today might once have been the height of sophistication, much like oysters or blue cheese in more recent times.
Medieval recipes reveal a world obsessed with status and symbolism. Spices weren’t just about flavour; they were about wealth, power and global reach. Sitwell’s exploration of spice-heavy dishes underscores how food acted as a visible marker of class.
Reading this, I couldn’t help thinking about Ireland’s own history as a place shaped by what was absent as much as what was abundant, especially when later Achapters touch on potatoes and famine-era cooking.
What I liked most about the book is Sitwell’s tone. He’s knowledgeable without being pompous, curious rather than didactic. He allows food to be funny, political, accidental and sometimes downright grim. There’s a refreshing honesty in acknowledging that not all historical food was good, but it was meaningful.
Ultimately, ‘A History of Food in 100 Recipes’ reinforces why I love food history so much. Recipes are documents. They tell us who had power, who didn’t, what people feared, what they celebrated and how they coped.
Sitwell’s book is a reminder that every meal, no matter how humble, sits on top of centuries of human experience. And once you start seeing food that way, you never really eat the same again. JP McMahon has written a comprehensive book on ‘Irish food An Irish Food Story: 100 Foods that made us’. I still have to get my hands on this book but knowing JP, it promises to be just as excellent as ‘A History of Food in 100 Recipes’.