Food history with patience, texture, and consequence.
New Books in Food treats cookbooks, essays, and scholarship as entry points into larger cultural histories. Its conversations move from bacon, rum, Caribbean cooking, and Jewish foodways toward questions of identity, extraction, climate, care, and everyday appetite.
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New Books in Food treats food as a serious historical source without draining it of sensory life. The show is built around long-form conversations with authors, scholars, chefs, writers, and public-program speakers. A recent episode on American bacon begins with the present-day food phenomenon, then asks how that popularity had to be made over time. Another follows rum through Canadian history, where an ordinary drink becomes tied to merchants, soldiers, farmers, colonial markets, and changing habits. The Caribbean Cookbook episode centers regional cooking through the knowledge of Ralston Williams, described in its episodes as a Caribbean chef with deep passion and knowledge for his region's cooking. Other installments widen the frame through Jewish food history, Ashkenazi cuisine, Chinese restaurants, fermenting, foraging, and the resourcefulness of historical kitchens. The show is patient. It lets an answer build. Its best conversations use food details as openings into harder questions about land, migration, religion, tourism, climate, and care. Chiang Mai 2015 is a good example, moving from culinary travel and memoir into smoke, illness, hill tribes, cash crops, deforestation, and the ethics of eating in a warming world. The emphasis is rarely on novelty alone. The show wants the background conditions. It asks where a taste came from, who paid for it, who preserved it, and what meanings gathered around it. That gives the feed a distinctive intellectual texture. It can move from steaming bowls of egg drop soup and kosher Chinese restaurants to colonial rum economies without changing its basic method. The structure stays guided and conversational. Hosts set up the book or event, introduce the guest, and then let the argument open at length. The tone is warm rather than chatty. It is academic, but not sealed off from ordinary listeners. Definitions, chronology, and context tend to arrive inside the conversation instead of as homework. The result is food media for people who want appetite connected to archives, politics, memory, and moral consequence.
Made for: For curious readers, culinary-history listeners, and food people who want context beyond taste. It especially suits those drawn to scholarship made conversational.
What sets it apart: The show’s strength is its library-like range: academic books, essays, cookbooks, and public programs all become careful conversations about food systems and cultural memory. It favors guided depth over personality-driven banter.
This podcast is a channel on the New Books Network. The New Books Network is an academic audio library dedicated to public education. In each episode you will hear scholars discuss their recently published research with another expert in their field. Discover our 150+ channels and browse our 28,000+ episodes on our website: newbooksnetwork.com Subscribe to our free weekly Substack newsletter to get informative, engaging content straight to your inbox: https://newbooksnetwork.substack.com/ Follow us on Instagram and Bluesky to learn about more our latest interviews: @newbooksnetwork Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Food becomes evidence here, connecting cookbooks, restaurants, travel, ethics, and colonial commerce to the histories surrounding everyday appetite.
New Books in Food treats eating as a route into history, ethics, identity, and power. Its conversations stay close to a book, essay, or public program, giving guests room to explain how familiar foods carry larger stories.
A Renaissance chef puts rose water in pasta dough; your boxed mac suddenly has competition.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A memoir where smoke, food, and land use remain tightly linked.
New Books Network's Gastronomica feed offers a compact, thoughtful look at Kemi Bajan's Chiang Mai 2015, where memoir, failed culinary tourism, and northern Thailand's smoky skies sit side by side.
A history of rum as commerce, conquest, and cultural change in early colonial Canada.
Rum gives this episode a clean route into early colonial Canadian history, as Alan Greer follows the drink through British conquest, Quebec commerce, shifting habits around alcohol, and the wheat trade.
A patient, kitchen-minded tour of taste, gut chemistry, and the scrambled egg waiting beyond the science.
Food chemistry feels approachable in this conversation with Dr. Patricia O'Hara about Food Chemistry in Small Bites. The episode traces taste from bitter receptors that may have helped humans avoid poisonous foods to the gut microbiome's chemical signals, framing appetite as…
Kosher Chinese food becomes a compact history of Jewish life and adaptation.
Andrew Ko's talk at YIVO uses kosher Chinese food as a way into a wider history of Ashkenazi Jewish life in New York. It moves through Bernstein on Essex, the Chinese Kosher Cookbook, and the 1960s and 1970s, with the strongest moments coming from the details: chicken livers in…
A careful food-history episode that turns a familiar dish into a layered look at method and lineage.
Macaroni and cheese is the entry point, but the episode is really about how a familiar dish picks up history along the way. Karima Moyer-Nocchi is a steady guide through that line from Ancient Rome to Renaissance kitchens and papal patronage, with a good eye for what old…
A thoughtful food journey through haze, illness, and the politics of authenticity.
Chiang Mai 2015 tracks a search for authentic food through northern Thailand's smoke crisis, where culinary travel is pulled into illness, climate, and care.
A food ethics conversation becomes an inquiry into when moral commitments can change with the social world around them.
Josh Milburn's discussion turns a question about acting on ideas of the good into a useful test for political philosophy. If those commitments involve, or help produce, rights violations, are they unreasonable as such, or only because the surrounding social conditions make them…
Bourbon talk, barrel stories, messy good pours.
Bourbon reviews with memory, candor, and community.
Everyday life, thought through together.
This episode features an interview with author Hannah Garth about her book 'Food Justice Undone', exploring lessons for building a better food justice movement.
This episode features an interview with Dr.
This episode features an interview with Dr.
This episode features an interview with author Meg Bernhard about her book 'Wine' from Bloomsbury's Object Lessons series, exploring wine as both an agricultural product and cultural commodity tied to ritual, socialization, and addiction.
This episode features an interview with Bradley J.
Kyle Johansson interviews philosopher Josh Milburn about his book 'Food, Justice, and Animals: Feeding the World Respectfully'.
Writer and historian Kemi Bajan discusses her essay 'Chiang Mai 2015' from the Spring 2025 issue of Gastronomica.
Gastronomica's Rosie Song interviews Eve Bratman and Anna Purchase about their essay on spotted lanternfly honey, published in the fall 2026 issue (volume 26, number three).
This episode features an interview with Kasey Jernigan, Assistant Professor of Anthropology and American Studies at the University of Virginia, discussing her upcoming book 'Commod Bods: Embodied Heritage, Foodways, and Indigeneity'.
This episode features an interview with Dr.
This episode features an interview with Caribbean chef Rawlston Williams about his cookbook 'The Caribbean Cookbook', exploring Caribbean culinary traditions and food culture.
This episode explores the historical and contemporary practices of fermenting and foraging in Jewish kitchens, featuring author Jane Ziegelman discussing resourcefulness in food culture.
This episode features an interview with author Christian Henderson about his book 'Monarchies of Extraction: The Gulf States in the Global Food System,' exploring how Gulf monarchies influence global food systems through extractive practices.
Alyssa James speaks with writer and historian Kemi Bajan about "Chiang Mai 2015." Bajan frames the piece as a memoir of failed culinary tourism in northern Thailand, where smoky skies complicate the search for authentic food and connect illness, climate, and care.
Miranda Melcher talks with Alan Greer about Canada in the Age of Rum, a 2026 McGill-Queens University Press book on colonial Canadian drinking and trade.
Patricia O'Hara's Food Chemistry in Small Bites turns liquid nitrogen ice cream, Maillard browning, and baby carrots into a chemistry lesson about everyday cooking.
YIVO hosts a public program on Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese food.
Miranda Melcher speaks with Karima Moyer-Norki about her book The Epic History of Macaroni and Cheese from Ancient Rome to Modern America.