by Jonathan Bennett | Nov 18, 2025 | Recipes
Continuing his reflections on the great meals of history and literature, Jonathan Bennett recalls a feast where appetite became an instrument of power. Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin enjoyed his food. By the time of his death in 1953 he had grown stout enough that the...
by Jonathan Bennett | Oct 28, 2025 | Recipes
In this first installment of a series on the greatest meals ever (or never) served, Jonathan Bennett reconstructs a feast so vulgar that it achieved immortality. Written in the first century by Petronius, courtier to Nero and self-styled arbiter elegantiae, the...
by Nigel Scotchmer | Oct 14, 2025 | Recipes
Nigel explains how the Roman precursor to our modern toilet brush, the xylospongium, gave us our grilled meat on a stick, our modern kebabs…and then he concludes with an original Parthian recipe. The other day, while fulminating on the algorithmic vacuity of Facebook,...
by Nigel Scotchmer | Sep 2, 2025 | Recipes
Nigel writes about a long-forgotten chapter of Roman history: the rise and recipes of Rattus Romanus, consul, Stoic, and father of fusion cuisine. Everyone knows the great suffering rats endured during the Black Death. For centuries, historians, poets,...
by Nigel Scotchmer | Mar 13, 2025 | Recipes
Filippa the Flaxen, Queen of East Anglia, with hair like soft strands of warm gold, shimmering in sunlight, the colour of the muted sun, is seldom remembered these days. Once upon a time, though, her people, the Flax, were cultivated and eaten in much greater...
by Nigel Scotchmer | Feb 24, 2025 | Recipes
Many people know the great-grandson of Antonov von Anchovy, the popular musician Bonjovy, who, despite promising to be there for the family, proved to be livin’ on a prayer, and ran from his family after being wild in the streets, hunted and wanted dead or alive. It...