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Why We Eat What We Eat: How Columbus Changed the Way the World Eats
Raymond Sokolov, the Leisure & Arts Editor of The Wall Street Journal describes how Christopher Columbus changed the way the world eats in Why We Eat What We Eat .
Sokolov says that Columbus greatly influenced our eating habits when such New World delights as tomatoes, chocolate, green beans, chili peppers, and maize were introduced into cuisine throughout the world and when the delicacies of the Old World found their way into the cooking pots of America.
Sokolov says that Columbus greatly influenced our eating habits when such New World delights as tomatoes, chocolate, green beans, chili peppers, and maize were introduced into cuisine throughout the world and when the delicacies of the Old World found their way into the cooking pots of America.
254 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1991
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
November 4, 2019
Kinda hard to absorb but truly so eye opening to read about the travel of ingredients and “cuisine” around the world. If you’ve ever talked about authenticity I think you’ll really enjoy this. I would really love an update from the author 30 years later.
July 1, 2014
The central thesis of this book is fascinating, though ultimately kind of obvious: the encounter between the Old World and the New changed the way that every person on earth eats. Before Columbus, there were no tomatoes in Italian food, no chilies in Thai or Chinese food, no potatoes anywhere in Europe at all. Likewise, there were no pork or cheese in Mexican cuisine.
Beyond pointing these things out, though, Sokolov gives micro-histories of both regions and dishes. This is a difficult task because of the depth of the changes that occurred. Can a complete or, even thorough, account be given of the food-ways of Puerto Rico, given its status as colony that was also a central hub of trade between Span and the Americas and even Asia? Hardly. That is a book unto itself. So also with most of the topics that must be covered in a book on this subject. Potatoes have a chapter, as do tomatoes and several tubers, and all of these chapters are full of interesting information (mostly). But none of them answer all the questions I have about the history of that item. (That's not true. I had almost no questions about manioc.) A book about tomatoes, a book about potatoes, a book about apples...these would be more thorough. However, I understand that Sokolov didn't set out to write all those books, that he wanted a survey of the main topics. In this regard he does a good job.
Of course there are some elements of style with which I could quibble. Sokolov is a journalist/columnist/writer of articles, and the style with which he writes is sometimes more wending than direct and the narrative structure of some chapters sometimes gets a little lost (again, a hazard of the topic). While at other times, it is obvious he is very excited about what he has learned and wants to share, for instance, every known dish that was recorded as being eaten in (Mexico?) by the conquistadors, including both the original native and Spanish interpretive names. And though his in-text citations are great, I would nonetheless have appreciated a bibliography.
So, I know this doesn't sound like a 4-star review, and sort of nit-picky. But it was a very good book, but suffered from problems of programming. Its key failing was incompleteness, a fault that, if remedies, would make this book more than a thousand pages long.
Finally, among the best parts of this book was the extended discussion on authenticity. In food culture now, authenticity is often seen as the greatest good, though "authenticity" is a tenuous claim or to make or defend. What is an authentic apple pie? The one your mother made? Your grandmother? Do you make it the same as your cousin? Do you make it the same every time? How can we convey a cultural idea from one group to another when the second has no understanding of the first?
In fact, how do we define authenticity within a culture? Almost all the dishes eaten anywhere were all invented in the past 400 years, and most of them far more recently than that. They seem ancient and unchanging to use, but are in fact in a constant state of flux. All cuisines of the world are constantly encountering others and sharing with them, including our own personal cuisines. If that is the case, then what is authentic? What is a hybrid and what is a bastardization? This, ultimately, was the great thought-experiment of this book, rather than the main thesis. How do me create and maintain, and can we label an preserve a certain authenticity? What are the implications of that stance? Indeed, a more fluid understanding is ultimately best for all.
Beyond pointing these things out, though, Sokolov gives micro-histories of both regions and dishes. This is a difficult task because of the depth of the changes that occurred. Can a complete or, even thorough, account be given of the food-ways of Puerto Rico, given its status as colony that was also a central hub of trade between Span and the Americas and even Asia? Hardly. That is a book unto itself. So also with most of the topics that must be covered in a book on this subject. Potatoes have a chapter, as do tomatoes and several tubers, and all of these chapters are full of interesting information (mostly). But none of them answer all the questions I have about the history of that item. (That's not true. I had almost no questions about manioc.) A book about tomatoes, a book about potatoes, a book about apples...these would be more thorough. However, I understand that Sokolov didn't set out to write all those books, that he wanted a survey of the main topics. In this regard he does a good job.
Of course there are some elements of style with which I could quibble. Sokolov is a journalist/columnist/writer of articles, and the style with which he writes is sometimes more wending than direct and the narrative structure of some chapters sometimes gets a little lost (again, a hazard of the topic). While at other times, it is obvious he is very excited about what he has learned and wants to share, for instance, every known dish that was recorded as being eaten in (Mexico?) by the conquistadors, including both the original native and Spanish interpretive names. And though his in-text citations are great, I would nonetheless have appreciated a bibliography.
So, I know this doesn't sound like a 4-star review, and sort of nit-picky. But it was a very good book, but suffered from problems of programming. Its key failing was incompleteness, a fault that, if remedies, would make this book more than a thousand pages long.
Finally, among the best parts of this book was the extended discussion on authenticity. In food culture now, authenticity is often seen as the greatest good, though "authenticity" is a tenuous claim or to make or defend. What is an authentic apple pie? The one your mother made? Your grandmother? Do you make it the same as your cousin? Do you make it the same every time? How can we convey a cultural idea from one group to another when the second has no understanding of the first?
In fact, how do we define authenticity within a culture? Almost all the dishes eaten anywhere were all invented in the past 400 years, and most of them far more recently than that. They seem ancient and unchanging to use, but are in fact in a constant state of flux. All cuisines of the world are constantly encountering others and sharing with them, including our own personal cuisines. If that is the case, then what is authentic? What is a hybrid and what is a bastardization? This, ultimately, was the great thought-experiment of this book, rather than the main thesis. How do me create and maintain, and can we label an preserve a certain authenticity? What are the implications of that stance? Indeed, a more fluid understanding is ultimately best for all.
September 28, 2018
Interesting amalgamation of select food related history.
The books consists of an introduction explaining the author's main thesis - that what we eat changed drastically after Columbus discovered the Americas - and then devolves into chapters focused on important food locales (mostly countries) followed by chapters focusing on specific foods relevant to his main argument. The introductory material was rather strong, but the remaining chapters were not all of equal merit and caused the book to feel disjointed and sometimes redundant. For example, the chapter on tomatoes I found fascinating while the chapter on strawberries provided little of interest.
However, for a book published in 1991, many of the points Sokolov makes are still extremely relevant, the chapter on Puerto Rico being particularly insightful in light of current events. I would recommend this book for history buffs, but also those involved in the business of food (chefs and the like). Sokolov's views on "authentic" cuisine are perhaps the most meaningful highlight of this gastronomic world tour.
The books consists of an introduction explaining the author's main thesis - that what we eat changed drastically after Columbus discovered the Americas - and then devolves into chapters focused on important food locales (mostly countries) followed by chapters focusing on specific foods relevant to his main argument. The introductory material was rather strong, but the remaining chapters were not all of equal merit and caused the book to feel disjointed and sometimes redundant. For example, the chapter on tomatoes I found fascinating while the chapter on strawberries provided little of interest.
However, for a book published in 1991, many of the points Sokolov makes are still extremely relevant, the chapter on Puerto Rico being particularly insightful in light of current events. I would recommend this book for history buffs, but also those involved in the business of food (chefs and the like). Sokolov's views on "authentic" cuisine are perhaps the most meaningful highlight of this gastronomic world tour.
April 22, 2026
The decision to read this book had its origins in a discussion I had with a friend about the cuisine of Ancient Rome. We were poking fun at the enthusiasts of the Roman Empire, most of whom probably could not describe what the Ancient Romans ate. It occurred to us that culinary history is a very neglected topic.
It further occurred to us that many people take food for granted. In the modern United States many different culinary traditions mixed and united to form the foods that we all know and enjoy on a regular basis. Things like hamburgers and pizza, but these foods had a long history of development and are relatively recent innovations.
One is immediately reminded of the classic work by Eric Hobsbawm on the invention of tradition. For me personally it also reminded me of an article I read some time ago by Marianna Giusti about Alberto Grandi, who, himself inspired by Hobsbawm, has set out to establish the recent origin of most 'traditional' Italian dishes.
Sokolov's book is thoroughly in line with this type of thinking, criticizing the idea of an immutable national cuisine. He writes of how recipe books, a fad originating, surprisingly enough, only in the 1950s and 1960s, recorded the national dishes of, say, France, and treated them as if French food had always been the way it was in 1960.
In reality, of course, French cuisine, like every other cuisine, is constantly evolving. Sokolov notes how the dishes of great historical French chefs like Careme and Escoffier were very different to what is done now, and I really appreciated how this book was a foray into anthropology and even nationalist studies as well as a book about food.
It is very fascinating how 'national cuisines' arose alongside national languages and national cultures. They were part and parcel of the modern nationalist project. I suspect an entire book could be written about this aspect alone, and we could see, perhaps, a sort of 'cuisine continuum' connecting France with Italy and Spain until modern nationalism created sharper divides just as it did linguistically.
For example, Sokolov notes that Southern Italian cuisine uses what Northern Italians consider an excessive amount of tomato sauce. This suggests to me that Northern Italian cuisine might be closer to French cuisine, but it is the tomato-heavy pasta dishes of Southern Italy that we most associate with 'Italian' in the United States.
This ought to be no surprise as it is known that most Italian immigrants to the United States came from the poorer regions of the Mezzogiorno, and it is the classic example of the Pizza Effect.
Interestingly enough there was much Pizza Effect going on in this book too. Turkeys found by Spaniards, imported by England, bred into certain varieties, and then sent back to the Americas so that the pilgrims ate English turkeys for Thanksgiving instead of North American wild turkeys.
That is just one of many examples.
Sokolov flavors the writing with lots of fun neologisms like olivaceous and idiocuisine, which is interesting and creative. I wish I could invent words so readily, and now I might even try.
By far the best part of the book is the first half or so, which describes the impact of the Columbian Exchange and the evolution of various national and regional cuisines.
Probably the chapter that stands out the most is the one involving Mexico. Whole books have been written on the global triumph of Mexican food. Interestingly enough the Aztecs, who lacked livestock such as pigs and cows, ate many insects and even algae.
But the introduction of Spanish livestock transformed Aztec cuisine into Mexican cuisine, and Sokolov makes an interesting point that Mexico is even more of a melting pot than the United States. Mexican food with the Aztec traditions at its base is truly unique, and has exploded in popularity throughout the world.
Its distinguishing characteristics are heavy use of corn, tomatoes, chili peppers, and so on.
But I was pleasantly surprised to learn much about Puerto Rico in this book. I was even more surprised to learn that Puerto Rican cuisine is perhaps the most innovative and inventive of all. To this we could add the Peruvian culinary tradition, that is full of oddities like purple potatoes and llamas. The Incas, unlike the Aztecs, had llamas and guinea pigs as meat sources. Still very strange by our modern standards.
This made me realize that while Mexican food has come to dominate American supermarkets, Americans have little knowledge on other Hispanic cuisines. It reminded me of an article written by the Slavicist Ewa Thompson, who specializes in Polish history and literature.
Thompson wrote an article castigating the field of Slavonic Studies as constituting, in reality, just Russian studies. Using an analogy with Ralph Ellison's influential work 'The Invisible Man' about the invisibility of the African-American in US society, Thompson argued that non-Russian Slavs are invisible in Slavonic Studies.
Could we say that in the consciousness of modern Americans non-Mexican Hispanics are invisible? I see a similarity between the dominance of Russia in all things Slavic and the overwhelming presence of Mexico in all things Hispanic.
This is not at all to suggest anything negative about Mexican culture or food, and that Mexican dishes have become so ubiquitous is, in my opinion, all to the good. But I feel that Americans tend to equate Hispanic and Mexican, when there are rich culinary traditions from Colombia, Peru, Puerto Rico (and the Caribbean generally), Central America, and elsewhere that are very different from Mexican traditions and interesting and unique in their own ways.
In an interview with Radical Imagination the Boricuan activist and poet Felipe Luciano also alluded to the invisibility of Puerto Ricans in the United States, echoing Ellison's influence. Sokolov mentions that as Latin Americans immigrate to the US in larger numbers we may see the growing popularity of Hispanic cuisines other than Mexican, and I certainly hope that happens.
Sokolov notes that the Spanish Empire was the great catalyst in the transformation of global cuisine. The Spanish Empire was the first global empire and it not only created the global economy, but began a great Columbian Exchange of foods that completely transformed the way everyone eats.
Just the potato and cassava alone have transformed the cuisines of Africa and Asia. It was a surprise to learn that many people in the Third World are dependent on these plants, using them, and sweet potatoes, in almost every dish.
The tomato, the great enhancer, has also acquired enormous popularity. Then we have chocolate, and vanilla, which both originated in Mexico. The chili pepper of course, the spread of which Sokolov has some interesting theories around. He suggests, for instance, that the chili pepper became popular in places where it could be easily grown for one, but also for two, where there was already a tradition of pungent spices. So the chili pepper became very popular in, for instance, India and Southern China, but less so in Northern China.
There is an amusing section on the migration of coconuts, which will make any fan of Monty Python chuckle at the famous scene in Holy Grail. But Sokolov does not think much of migrating coconuts, and argues that they must have been introduced by the Spanish or the Portuguese. Just how is unclear, though what is clear is that there is a shared cuisine between South America and Africa, which leads Sokolov to posit, convincingly in my view, that the coconut was brought by, or with, African slaves.
Interesting in that regard too is an author he cited who argued that the coconut was possibly introduced to even West Africa through a European (Portuguese) medium. Mackinder reminded us that Sub-Saharan Africa was once as isolated and unknown as the Americas, and here Sokolov argues that even East and West Africa were largely isolated from one another before the European Age of Discovery and the globalization of trade networks by sea.
There's also a neat little theory the author proposes linking deep-fried cuisine from the Caribbean to the Middle East. Sokolov suggests that Muslim traders and invaders brought the idea of Falafel to North and West Africa, which it inspired many African dishes. This tradition was then brought to the Americas with the Africa slave diaspora. Could there be a sort of shared 'deep-fried belt' stretching across the Equator from the Caribbean to India? It's an entertaining idea.
All of this was fascinating and delightful to read. But the second half of the book starts to bog down as Sokolov examines a number of case studies on particular foods. It became tedious when every chapter opened with a new 'it all began with' story, monotonously for every single food.
The origin story for the olive, and the pistachio, and the date palm, etc etc. This was harder to read but it was still of interest.
Unfortunately the concluding chapter was the worst and seemed to me awkwardly juxtaposed with the rest of the book. The last forty pages or so deal with the nouvelle cuisine, and I gather that Sokolov's point with this was to suggest that food is always evolving and we may be on the cusp of another culinary revolution (albeit less dramatic than Columbus's), which is an interesting idea.
But it is just an endless litany of fancy French terms and name-dropping of famous French chefs from the 60s and 70s. I recognized none of the names, I knew none of the dishes, many of which were unique creations of the chefs and which do not even appear in an internet search.
At this point it might be worth mentioning that my normal practice is to jot down notes of words and phrases I'm unfamiliar with, and it soon became clear to me that I would have to devote an entire separate set of notes for this book.
This was fun and enjoyable for the most part, writing down and looking up each new food and new word (I learned a great number of Spanish words for instance), but it became annoying in this section. I found myself writing down every French term for a scalloped salmon cooked 'a la japonaise' and whatever else.
As this is a book about food I suppose I can't complain, as the target audience likely is familiar with this sort of thing, but I typically do not read cookbooks or know much about the world of high cuisine. So most of this went over my head.
Yet, I am overall very glad to have read this book. Particularly in regards to the chapters about Hispanic food, both inside and outside of Mexico, and how the plants of the Old and New World combined to and evolved since Columbus to produce the foods we all know and love today. I feel that this is something that most people never think about, and this book was very eye-opening.
My only very slight complaint would be that, once again, Lambanog is not mentioned, not even in the chapter about the Philippines. Sokolov does write about tequila and mezcal, but does not mention how the distillation techniques were adapted from the Filipino tradition for making vino de coco. This seems to me to be a wonderful example of cultural exchange between Asia and the Americas, and a useful demonstration on how different plants and practices can converge to make new products. In this case, instead of using traditional Filipino stills to ferment coconuts, the people of Mexico used them to ferment agave, which gave the world tequila.
Lately I have been trying to be more daring in experimenting with foods unfamiliar to me. Mostly I've been trying Mexican food, but having read this book there are many other foods I would like to try. I don't know if I'll ever be as daring as Sokolov, who writes that he drank a rather questionable chicha morada from a street vendor in Cuzco, but if I explore some new foods and find something I like it will be due to his book.
It further occurred to us that many people take food for granted. In the modern United States many different culinary traditions mixed and united to form the foods that we all know and enjoy on a regular basis. Things like hamburgers and pizza, but these foods had a long history of development and are relatively recent innovations.
One is immediately reminded of the classic work by Eric Hobsbawm on the invention of tradition. For me personally it also reminded me of an article I read some time ago by Marianna Giusti about Alberto Grandi, who, himself inspired by Hobsbawm, has set out to establish the recent origin of most 'traditional' Italian dishes.
Sokolov's book is thoroughly in line with this type of thinking, criticizing the idea of an immutable national cuisine. He writes of how recipe books, a fad originating, surprisingly enough, only in the 1950s and 1960s, recorded the national dishes of, say, France, and treated them as if French food had always been the way it was in 1960.
In reality, of course, French cuisine, like every other cuisine, is constantly evolving. Sokolov notes how the dishes of great historical French chefs like Careme and Escoffier were very different to what is done now, and I really appreciated how this book was a foray into anthropology and even nationalist studies as well as a book about food.
It is very fascinating how 'national cuisines' arose alongside national languages and national cultures. They were part and parcel of the modern nationalist project. I suspect an entire book could be written about this aspect alone, and we could see, perhaps, a sort of 'cuisine continuum' connecting France with Italy and Spain until modern nationalism created sharper divides just as it did linguistically.
For example, Sokolov notes that Southern Italian cuisine uses what Northern Italians consider an excessive amount of tomato sauce. This suggests to me that Northern Italian cuisine might be closer to French cuisine, but it is the tomato-heavy pasta dishes of Southern Italy that we most associate with 'Italian' in the United States.
This ought to be no surprise as it is known that most Italian immigrants to the United States came from the poorer regions of the Mezzogiorno, and it is the classic example of the Pizza Effect.
Interestingly enough there was much Pizza Effect going on in this book too. Turkeys found by Spaniards, imported by England, bred into certain varieties, and then sent back to the Americas so that the pilgrims ate English turkeys for Thanksgiving instead of North American wild turkeys.
That is just one of many examples.
Sokolov flavors the writing with lots of fun neologisms like olivaceous and idiocuisine, which is interesting and creative. I wish I could invent words so readily, and now I might even try.
By far the best part of the book is the first half or so, which describes the impact of the Columbian Exchange and the evolution of various national and regional cuisines.
Probably the chapter that stands out the most is the one involving Mexico. Whole books have been written on the global triumph of Mexican food. Interestingly enough the Aztecs, who lacked livestock such as pigs and cows, ate many insects and even algae.
But the introduction of Spanish livestock transformed Aztec cuisine into Mexican cuisine, and Sokolov makes an interesting point that Mexico is even more of a melting pot than the United States. Mexican food with the Aztec traditions at its base is truly unique, and has exploded in popularity throughout the world.
Its distinguishing characteristics are heavy use of corn, tomatoes, chili peppers, and so on.
But I was pleasantly surprised to learn much about Puerto Rico in this book. I was even more surprised to learn that Puerto Rican cuisine is perhaps the most innovative and inventive of all. To this we could add the Peruvian culinary tradition, that is full of oddities like purple potatoes and llamas. The Incas, unlike the Aztecs, had llamas and guinea pigs as meat sources. Still very strange by our modern standards.
This made me realize that while Mexican food has come to dominate American supermarkets, Americans have little knowledge on other Hispanic cuisines. It reminded me of an article written by the Slavicist Ewa Thompson, who specializes in Polish history and literature.
Thompson wrote an article castigating the field of Slavonic Studies as constituting, in reality, just Russian studies. Using an analogy with Ralph Ellison's influential work 'The Invisible Man' about the invisibility of the African-American in US society, Thompson argued that non-Russian Slavs are invisible in Slavonic Studies.
Could we say that in the consciousness of modern Americans non-Mexican Hispanics are invisible? I see a similarity between the dominance of Russia in all things Slavic and the overwhelming presence of Mexico in all things Hispanic.
This is not at all to suggest anything negative about Mexican culture or food, and that Mexican dishes have become so ubiquitous is, in my opinion, all to the good. But I feel that Americans tend to equate Hispanic and Mexican, when there are rich culinary traditions from Colombia, Peru, Puerto Rico (and the Caribbean generally), Central America, and elsewhere that are very different from Mexican traditions and interesting and unique in their own ways.
In an interview with Radical Imagination the Boricuan activist and poet Felipe Luciano also alluded to the invisibility of Puerto Ricans in the United States, echoing Ellison's influence. Sokolov mentions that as Latin Americans immigrate to the US in larger numbers we may see the growing popularity of Hispanic cuisines other than Mexican, and I certainly hope that happens.
Sokolov notes that the Spanish Empire was the great catalyst in the transformation of global cuisine. The Spanish Empire was the first global empire and it not only created the global economy, but began a great Columbian Exchange of foods that completely transformed the way everyone eats.
Just the potato and cassava alone have transformed the cuisines of Africa and Asia. It was a surprise to learn that many people in the Third World are dependent on these plants, using them, and sweet potatoes, in almost every dish.
The tomato, the great enhancer, has also acquired enormous popularity. Then we have chocolate, and vanilla, which both originated in Mexico. The chili pepper of course, the spread of which Sokolov has some interesting theories around. He suggests, for instance, that the chili pepper became popular in places where it could be easily grown for one, but also for two, where there was already a tradition of pungent spices. So the chili pepper became very popular in, for instance, India and Southern China, but less so in Northern China.
There is an amusing section on the migration of coconuts, which will make any fan of Monty Python chuckle at the famous scene in Holy Grail. But Sokolov does not think much of migrating coconuts, and argues that they must have been introduced by the Spanish or the Portuguese. Just how is unclear, though what is clear is that there is a shared cuisine between South America and Africa, which leads Sokolov to posit, convincingly in my view, that the coconut was brought by, or with, African slaves.
Interesting in that regard too is an author he cited who argued that the coconut was possibly introduced to even West Africa through a European (Portuguese) medium. Mackinder reminded us that Sub-Saharan Africa was once as isolated and unknown as the Americas, and here Sokolov argues that even East and West Africa were largely isolated from one another before the European Age of Discovery and the globalization of trade networks by sea.
There's also a neat little theory the author proposes linking deep-fried cuisine from the Caribbean to the Middle East. Sokolov suggests that Muslim traders and invaders brought the idea of Falafel to North and West Africa, which it inspired many African dishes. This tradition was then brought to the Americas with the Africa slave diaspora. Could there be a sort of shared 'deep-fried belt' stretching across the Equator from the Caribbean to India? It's an entertaining idea.
All of this was fascinating and delightful to read. But the second half of the book starts to bog down as Sokolov examines a number of case studies on particular foods. It became tedious when every chapter opened with a new 'it all began with' story, monotonously for every single food.
The origin story for the olive, and the pistachio, and the date palm, etc etc. This was harder to read but it was still of interest.
Unfortunately the concluding chapter was the worst and seemed to me awkwardly juxtaposed with the rest of the book. The last forty pages or so deal with the nouvelle cuisine, and I gather that Sokolov's point with this was to suggest that food is always evolving and we may be on the cusp of another culinary revolution (albeit less dramatic than Columbus's), which is an interesting idea.
But it is just an endless litany of fancy French terms and name-dropping of famous French chefs from the 60s and 70s. I recognized none of the names, I knew none of the dishes, many of which were unique creations of the chefs and which do not even appear in an internet search.
At this point it might be worth mentioning that my normal practice is to jot down notes of words and phrases I'm unfamiliar with, and it soon became clear to me that I would have to devote an entire separate set of notes for this book.
This was fun and enjoyable for the most part, writing down and looking up each new food and new word (I learned a great number of Spanish words for instance), but it became annoying in this section. I found myself writing down every French term for a scalloped salmon cooked 'a la japonaise' and whatever else.
As this is a book about food I suppose I can't complain, as the target audience likely is familiar with this sort of thing, but I typically do not read cookbooks or know much about the world of high cuisine. So most of this went over my head.
Yet, I am overall very glad to have read this book. Particularly in regards to the chapters about Hispanic food, both inside and outside of Mexico, and how the plants of the Old and New World combined to and evolved since Columbus to produce the foods we all know and love today. I feel that this is something that most people never think about, and this book was very eye-opening.
My only very slight complaint would be that, once again, Lambanog is not mentioned, not even in the chapter about the Philippines. Sokolov does write about tequila and mezcal, but does not mention how the distillation techniques were adapted from the Filipino tradition for making vino de coco. This seems to me to be a wonderful example of cultural exchange between Asia and the Americas, and a useful demonstration on how different plants and practices can converge to make new products. In this case, instead of using traditional Filipino stills to ferment coconuts, the people of Mexico used them to ferment agave, which gave the world tequila.
Lately I have been trying to be more daring in experimenting with foods unfamiliar to me. Mostly I've been trying Mexican food, but having read this book there are many other foods I would like to try. I don't know if I'll ever be as daring as Sokolov, who writes that he drank a rather questionable chicha morada from a street vendor in Cuzco, but if I explore some new foods and find something I like it will be due to his book.
June 12, 2018
The book starts off great--exploring the cuisines of the new and the old worlds around the time of spanish colonization, and how native cuisine influenced/adapted/survived colonization and influenced old-world cuisine. Near the middle, though, the book breaks apart into a collection of semi-related essays , unconnected to the initial premise. Not that they're bad reading, but it just feels like these pieces were written for a magazine and shoehorned in
September 13, 2011
Interesting. I'm glad I read this selection of food ethnography, but damned if it isn't an odd little book. Based on the title I thought it would be a tracing of commonplace American menus back through history; instead, it opens with chapters on a number of different Spanish countries and their culinary traditions. Okay, I thought, perhaps it's an examination of how Spanish-speaking countries' commonplace culinary habits were formed by los conquistadores - but no, then we start to veer to non-Spanish countries, even back to the Old World. All right then - it must be about how this particular exploratory era was a pivotal point in food history - nope! We veer abruptly back to modern times. Then the chapters change from focusing on a single country to focusing on a single food - many of which were already treated in the country chapters, as with Peru and potatoes. Along with his habit of name-dropping, the author's organizational skills are not quite my style.
But woven into this labyrinthine book (which felt much lengthier/information-rich than it looked) was a wealth of fascinating information and tidbits about all sorts of foods and places and times. The title is misleading: in many places, Sokolov focuses on why we DON'T eat what we don't eat, but these stories are just as fascinating if not more so (fruit too easily bruised to travel well; whims of geography, politics and economics; class-based food preferences; and so on.)
Reading a food narrative written twenty years ago is a fascinating window into the mindset of the late 1980s and early 90s: the author feels no need to condemn the largely meat-and-starch-based Puerto Rican diet the way I imagine a more contemporary author would, for example. Instead, he focuses his attention on examining why Puerto Rican food has not taken off as a cultural phenomenon in the way virtually-identical other Caribbean diets have. Really interesting and a valid question, which might be obscured by shrugging one's shoulders and assuming it's because it's not the healthiest diet for a Westerner.
I've come across a lot more critical than I intend to be, considering how much I enjoyed the historical gems uncovered here. I've glad I read this book and I would leaf through it again periodically. I also now want to try Peruvian food, mulberries, cherimoyas, and Utah scones. This is the danger of food writing... a danger which is very sweet.
But woven into this labyrinthine book (which felt much lengthier/information-rich than it looked) was a wealth of fascinating information and tidbits about all sorts of foods and places and times. The title is misleading: in many places, Sokolov focuses on why we DON'T eat what we don't eat, but these stories are just as fascinating if not more so (fruit too easily bruised to travel well; whims of geography, politics and economics; class-based food preferences; and so on.)
Reading a food narrative written twenty years ago is a fascinating window into the mindset of the late 1980s and early 90s: the author feels no need to condemn the largely meat-and-starch-based Puerto Rican diet the way I imagine a more contemporary author would, for example. Instead, he focuses his attention on examining why Puerto Rican food has not taken off as a cultural phenomenon in the way virtually-identical other Caribbean diets have. Really interesting and a valid question, which might be obscured by shrugging one's shoulders and assuming it's because it's not the healthiest diet for a Westerner.
I've come across a lot more critical than I intend to be, considering how much I enjoyed the historical gems uncovered here. I've glad I read this book and I would leaf through it again periodically. I also now want to try Peruvian food, mulberries, cherimoyas, and Utah scones. This is the danger of food writing... a danger which is very sweet.
May 14, 2021
My favorite self-appointed food-anthropologist of all time (#2? Probably Anthony Bourdain). This is sadly one of the few works Sokolov completed in book form that brings the pleasure of his regular Wall Street Journal and Natural History columns. His sense of the interconnectedness of ingredients, techniques, and cuisines that make up the world of food is astounding. I highly recommend this book if you are at all curious as to “why we eat what we eat.” Of course it could use some updating, as things have continued to change since 1991, but this remains a great read.
January 14, 2018
Not only do you learn about foods....but a lot about history as well.
August 19, 2025
i learned two, maybe three things from this book so it gets one star. otherwise this was a terrible book. very poorly organized and it was somehow a mix of a memoir and history but it seemed like the author was just spewing words. and most of the words were words i have never seen before back to back in majority of the sentences. at that point, just say you only want this book to reach the highest class of society. this book is inaccessible to people who haven't read every english dictionary that exists. and I am very against inaccessibility of knowledge from authors who either won't or dont know how to teach in a way that *most* people can understand. bye
April 30, 2021
I overall liked the book, but Raymond Sokolov covers a lot of topics. There are some chapters I wish he had gone into depth more and other he should have left out completely. This was a nice change of pace for me and I definitely want to read more foodie books. I perhaps wasn't the target audience which is why I lost interest towards the end.
June 16, 2023
If you’re interested in culinary history, this one takes the broad view. Regional European cuisines were founded on the eating habits of the dynasties, themselves funding and profiting from global exploration. This is a collection of Sokolov’s shorter essays and sometimes reads choppy. Still a joy.
November 28, 2017
I wish the author had stuck more closely to his stated purpose in writing this book. The book seemed to devolve inti a random jumble.
September 30, 2020
Interesting read but overly long. Writing style takes some getting used to also.
December 2, 2022
Meticulously researched with a scholarly presentation. If you thought you knew about the origin of foods, think again and read this book.
July 3, 2021
Very dated set of essays about how various foods started in one place and (because of colonialism and slavery and empire) were eventually eaten elsewhere. I would have found a less sweeping history much more compelling. The basic thesis is that there is no "authentic" cuisine. I did enjoy thinking, on a very self-centered basis, about what food traditions and recipes I am working to pass along to my daughters.
June 23, 2009
I would have given it 5 stars, except for the irritating tic of praising/exculpating Columbus every couple of chapters, as an intro to assessing the impact of his voyage (and the others it is standing in for) on what we eat. This is a book about how eating habits, and food sources, changed after the Columbian "exchange," which is to say, after new world and old world exchanged and fused grains, vegetables, animals, roots, and other edible matters ("exchange" is a euphemism also for slavery, disease, etc...). NS is most interested in Afro-Caribbean cuisines and foods, and is most rooted in NYC (he was a longtime reporter/editor for the Wall Street Journal, and wrote a monthly column on food for Natural History for years) such as Puerto Rico, Cartegena, Colombia, Bahia and the Philippines (the biggest 'Asian' entry in the bunch). He is pretty consistently interested in the directly Columbian/Spanish colonial legacy and the indigenous foods and cooking that mingle with it. Tho he has chapters on peppers, pumpkins and other specific foods, his main aim is to set this "revolution" on par with the nouvelle cuisine revolution of the 1970s, and even to dwarf that latter one.
I had just been thinking that it was a very early example of deconstructive writing, and a surprisingly popular/populist one, and he actually comes right out and says it. He even has a trip to talk to Claude Levi-Strauss and argues that his glimpse of L-S's archive of index cards showed the remoteness & limits of Structuralism, a philosophy ("") that saw patterns (esp in "raw" places and societies) that were rule-bound in their shaping of culture, and incapable of change. NS's tack is to instead show change (w/o necessarily analysing it in terms of political economy), and draw attention to the many subsequent lives of post-"exchange" fusions of the last 500+ years.
I had just been thinking that it was a very early example of deconstructive writing, and a surprisingly popular/populist one, and he actually comes right out and says it. He even has a trip to talk to Claude Levi-Strauss and argues that his glimpse of L-S's archive of index cards showed the remoteness & limits of Structuralism, a philosophy ("") that saw patterns (esp in "raw" places and societies) that were rule-bound in their shaping of culture, and incapable of change. NS's tack is to instead show change (w/o necessarily analysing it in terms of political economy), and draw attention to the many subsequent lives of post-"exchange" fusions of the last 500+ years.
April 24, 2013
A quick and very enjoyable read on global food patterns and how they came to be is Why We Eat What We Eat: How the Encounter Between the New World and the Old Chnaged the Way Everyone on the Planet Eats(published 1991) written by Raymond Sokolov, the former Travel and Culture writer for the Wall Street Journal. This is an easy, accessible entry point for those interested in food history as opposed to the more academic volume by historian Alfred Crosby entitled The Columbian Exchange, written in 1972.
The first part of the book covers six global hotspots of culinary melting pots where food worlds collided to create a new cuisine: Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Cartagena in Colombia, Bahia in Brazil, and Peru. Sokolov doesn't pretend that this is an exclusive list but rather is making the case in these cases the cuisine today is truly a coming together of different food traditions despite the underlying clash of civilizations.
The second part of the book is brief but follows a bibliographical overview of the development of two of the world's best known and most distinct food cultures, that of France and China. And the last part of the book looks at how certain fruits and vegetables spread around the world. There are few mistakes here and there such as suggesting the potato chip was invented in Saratoga Springs. The story is true but thinly fried potatoes were certainly eaten prior to a frazzled chef sending back a plate of fries to disgruntled diner who had complained that his fries were too thick.
Sokolov is a great writer, that alone should make you want to read this book. At numerous points, his wit and clever use of word actually had me laughing out loud on public transportation even.
The first part of the book covers six global hotspots of culinary melting pots where food worlds collided to create a new cuisine: Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Cartagena in Colombia, Bahia in Brazil, and Peru. Sokolov doesn't pretend that this is an exclusive list but rather is making the case in these cases the cuisine today is truly a coming together of different food traditions despite the underlying clash of civilizations.
The second part of the book is brief but follows a bibliographical overview of the development of two of the world's best known and most distinct food cultures, that of France and China. And the last part of the book looks at how certain fruits and vegetables spread around the world. There are few mistakes here and there such as suggesting the potato chip was invented in Saratoga Springs. The story is true but thinly fried potatoes were certainly eaten prior to a frazzled chef sending back a plate of fries to disgruntled diner who had complained that his fries were too thick.
Sokolov is a great writer, that alone should make you want to read this book. At numerous points, his wit and clever use of word actually had me laughing out loud on public transportation even.
March 30, 2011
The title was intriguing (arousing the curiosity or interest of).
On page 237 of my 1991 edition, the book is intended not "For most people
in the world this is of no direct importance, but to food-mad novelty seekers
in the industrial nations" is the presumed intended audience for the book,
and thus a motivation for the style of presentation (and hence the style
of this review).
There is a fair bit of useful information, though most of it is concentrated
in the later pages, where it became (for me) easier to read more than a
few pages at a time, wading through the diversions, as though being
conversationally entertained with asides, while the word cook piques
(stimulates (interest or curiosity)) the appetite, presents the "meat" of the
subject, wraps up with indirect references to explain his drawn out
(in "other" words, for stimulating contrast) creation, wrapping up the
discourse to a satisfying sense of repast, just before adjourning to the final
period of this tract.
The author is a professional writer establishing his knowledge, credentials,
and highly researched authority on the subject of food and food history and
philosophy, with prolific obscure references both ancient and modern,
and prose that is well peppered at close-spaced intervals with highbrow
vocabulary, and a modicum of lowbrow verbiage tossed in to show that he
can cover the bases, while residing at, if not heading, the table of elite food
aficionados and back-up food-o-files.
On page 237 of my 1991 edition, the book is intended not "For most people
in the world this is of no direct importance, but to food-mad novelty seekers
in the industrial nations" is the presumed intended audience for the book,
and thus a motivation for the style of presentation (and hence the style
of this review).
There is a fair bit of useful information, though most of it is concentrated
in the later pages, where it became (for me) easier to read more than a
few pages at a time, wading through the diversions, as though being
conversationally entertained with asides, while the word cook piques
(stimulates (interest or curiosity)) the appetite, presents the "meat" of the
subject, wraps up with indirect references to explain his drawn out
(in "other" words, for stimulating contrast) creation, wrapping up the
discourse to a satisfying sense of repast, just before adjourning to the final
period of this tract.
The author is a professional writer establishing his knowledge, credentials,
and highly researched authority on the subject of food and food history and
philosophy, with prolific obscure references both ancient and modern,
and prose that is well peppered at close-spaced intervals with highbrow
vocabulary, and a modicum of lowbrow verbiage tossed in to show that he
can cover the bases, while residing at, if not heading, the table of elite food
aficionados and back-up food-o-files.
September 24, 2012
Mouth-puckeringly dry humour... "Columbus may have been history's best example of someone who did great things without knowing what they were." Succinct and acerbic observations about the movement of food across nations, carried by explorers, and how the French tried to take credit for everything. A must-read if you love food and want to know the provenance and politics of what's on your plate.
February 22, 2008
Dapet di toko buku bekas juga, harganya cuma 10 rb perak. Oh no! hahahha... Tertarik ngeliat judulnya en pengen aja membaca sesuatu yang lain. Dan ternyata isinya gak mengecewakan, ternyata makanan pun punya banyak mata rantai..
April 21, 2009
Never again will I question the authenticity of food. The author explains how dramatically the world's cuisine changed in just 50 years after Columbus came to the New World. The world is an every-evolving place, even before global warming,airplanes, and the Internet.
September 9, 2009
A great, if somewhat verbose, look at how food cross borders and influences culture. Sokolov at one point wonders if the potato famine in Ireland hadn't occured, the course of history in America might have looked quite different.
March 13, 2010
Often quite speculational, this book was still richly informational. It was fun to read about a foodie's inspirations and investigations. I've looked at olives, corn, potatoes and newer (to me) foods in a new light. What could be more fun than food?!!
May 24, 2007
I've only just started this book and am about 2 chapters in. I'm loving his politics and his perspective on the convergence of "old world" and "new world" foods, language, and culture.
February 28, 2010
Journalist Raymond Sokolov sets out to examine the origins of commons foods and dishes. Fascinating mix of anthropology, linguistics, genetic research, and gastronomy.
July 28, 2015
all cooking is fusion
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