October 6, 2025

Revisiting Historical Recipes

Hello

After you’ve found an historic recipe, sourced appropriate ingredients, figured out the maddeningly imprecise quantities, and grappled with instructions that are often little more than a reminder for someone who already knows how to cook the dish, you’re left with an insoluble mystery: how should it taste? If you’re in search of some notion of authenticity, that is the ultimate stumbling block. There is just no way to know.

Or maybe there is. I spoke to Marieke Hendriksen of the Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences in Amsterdam, who with her colleagues recently published a paper outlining a procedure for approaching the taste of the past rigorously.

You can listen here

Take care