Words that come from people's names are called eponyms, and English is full of them. Most of the time we use them without any sense that there was once an…
Source: Wikipedia
The ancient city of Cyrene sat on the North African coast, in what is now Libya. Founded by Greek settlers in the seventh century BC, it became one of…
We tend to assume that simple things are old things. If an object is uncomplicated and useful, surely someone thought of it long ago. In fact, the gap between when…
Soup is the most universal thing people cook. It stretches scarce ingredients, it uses the parts of an animal nobody else wants, and it turns up in some form in…
Food fears are not a modern invention. Long before anyone was arguing online about ingredients, entire societies decided that perfectly ordinary foods were poisonous, corrupting, or medically dangerous — and…
Ask what a country tastes like and you will usually get one answer, repeated by nearly everyone who lives there. National dishes are more than recipes; they are edible shorthand…