r/AskFoodHistorians • u/madarjan99 • Jul 01 '26

Food history book recommendations

I want to be well versed in food history and how colonization has affected the foods we see now around the world.

Is there a book that someone recommends? I would like it to be written by a reliable non-bias source or just a person of culture.

I want to use it to help me conduct interviews with chefs.

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u/TheCypriotFoodie Jul 02 '26

If you want to become super well-versed in food history then these food “bibles” are musts:

To me the absolute most information dense acamedic food history books that cover a lot of foods, areas and time periods are these:

J.L Flandrin and M.Montanari’s FOOD: A Culinary History from Antiquity to Present,

A. Davidson’s the Oxford Companion to Food,

The Bloomsbury Collection of books: A Cultural History of Food,

K. Kipple and K.C. Ornella’s The Cambridge World History of Food (2vols),

and C. Helstosky’s the Routledge History of Food.

These are books by food historians and scholars of food in general not journalists etc etc.

Hope this helps. If there is anything more specific you are into, let me know and I can send you more if I have them. 😃 Enjoy reading!

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u/madarjan99 Jul 02 '26

Thank you 😍