HOW WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR MAMMOTH?

This romp through the history of the world in 50 recipes is an easily digestible way of getting to know our ancestors. Starting in 10,000 BCE with tasty grilled mammoth from North America, we learn that hunting mammoth required precision and a very sharp flint spearhead. Mammoth meat would be tough, necessitating long cooking, but the result would be worth the effort as the tribe gathered round the fire. Fast forwarding to 1730 BCE, one of the oldest written recipes tells us that onion, leek and garlic were added to the Babylonians' lamb stew with barley, making it a dish that would be recognisable today. Mummified beef ribs accompanied Tutankhamun's grandparents to the afterlife. The bone density of Roman gladiators was noticeably greater than that of ordinary citizens, and this may have been down to a calcium-rich drink made of vinegar and vegetable-ash served after fight-training. Around 1350 CE a delicacy in the Holy Roman Empire was Blamensir, a dish made only of white ingredients such as almond, rice, goat's milk and chicken breast, with pike used instead of chicken during Lent. Spicy foods have a long history, but curry as we know it was developed in the Mughal empire from the 16th century to the 19th, at about the same time as Borscht emerged in the Polish-Lithuanian world. Across the pond, the legendary Alice B Toklas added half a pound of butter to her eight-egg omelette. And so we come to Afternoon Tea (c.1720, Kingdom of England) where the lady of the house brings out the inlaid tea caddy with an air of ritual solemnity. Fish and Chips (1860), on the other hand, must be eaten from an old newspaper. 245 pages.