In the tradition of Michael Pollan, Anthony Bourdain, and Mark Bittman, “a surprising, flavorsome tour of ancient cuisines” (Kirkus ★)—from Neolithic bread to ancient Roman fish sauce—and why reviving the foods of the past is the key to saving the future.
Many of us are worried (or at least we should be) about the impacts of globalization, pollution, and biotechnology on our diets. Whether it’s monoculture crops, hormone-fed beef, or high-fructose corn syrup, industrially-produced foods have troubling consequences for us and the planet. But as culinary diversity diminishes, many people are looking to a surprising place to safeguard the future: into the past.
The Lost Supper explores an idea that is quickly spreading among restaurateurs, food producers, scientists, and gastronomes around the world: that the key to healthy and sustainable eating lies not in looking forward, but in looking back to the foods that have sustained us through our half-million-year existence as a species.
Acclaimed author Taras Grescoe introduces readers to the surprising and forgotten flavors whose revival is captivating food-lovers around the world: ancient sourdough bread last baked by Egyptian pharaohs; raw-milk farmhouse cheese from critically endangered British dairy cattle; ham from Spanish pata negra pigs that have been foraging on acorns on a secluded island since before the United States was a nation; and olive oil from wild olive trees uniquely capable of resisting quickly evolving pests and modern pathogens.
From Ancient Roman fish sauce to Aztec caviar to the long-thought-extinct silphium, The Lost Supper is a deep dive into the latest frontier of global gastronomy—the archaeology of taste. Through vivid writing, history, and first-hand culinary experience, Grescoe sets out a provocative case: in order to save these foods, he argues, we’ve got to eat them.
Published in partnership with the David Suzuki Institute.
My Review
Thanks to the publisher for my copy of this books and to Anne for organising the blog tour.
The premise of this book is that the current state of world food supplies is dire and looking to the past for food ideas. I like the premise, I like trying different food, so I was looking forward to this book.
The author travels to Mexico, Turkey, various parts of the US, various parts of Canada, England and Italy. He discusses archaeological exploration of lost foods, like garum or silphion, with specialists in the subjects. His trip to Turkey brings some of these together in a botanical garden feast.
I enjoyed the writing, Trescoe is an entertaining food and travel writer. I felt like I was traveling along with him. His travels are fascinating and he meets some delightfully interesting people along the way. I love trying new food when I go travelling, so it made me a bit envious of the variety of food he’s tried and cooked. Have I mentioned, I love good food.
I particularly enjoyed his rhapsody about cheese. I love cheese; I live in Lincolnshire – I can buy Lincolnshire Poacher or Cote Hill Red if I want. They go well with tea bread and jam. Lincolnshire Poacher also make butter and sell raw milk.
[DO NOT DRINK RAW MILK! It’s fine to make butter and cheese from because the processing makes it safe, but pasteurisation saves lives.]
Trescoe talks about the importance of slow food, and saving unusual, heirloom varieties for the genetic variety and for environmental reasons. I agree, to an extent. The loss of heirloom varieties that are adapted to their specific environment is troubling, because it might be one of those varieties that saves us if a disease, such as xyllela ravaging the olive trees of south eastern Italy, cuts through monocultures. Some of those monocultures are heirloom varieties, unfortunately – thus xyllela killing 2000 year old trees, and the trees being saved by resistant varieties that are grafted on to the old trees.
His discussion of spices and the importance we once placed on accessing them is an important reminder that what was once difficult to access and thus an elite food, is now easy to get hold of and we have devalued it. All food is like that, really. It was once hard to produce food, and those who could afford to eat rich or varied food showed it off.
I really, really enjoyed the final chapters on bread making and I’m seriously considering attempting to make sourdough bread. He talks a lot about the traditional foods of the Coast Salish of the Pacific coast of Canada, especially the bulb known as camas, that was replaced by potatoes as settlers pushed the indigenous population out of their gardens. I didn’t know much about the people or cultures of the area, and I found this really fascinating, especially hearing from Indigenous people about their food, culture and history. I’m constantly horrified by the acts of settler colonisers from Europe in the last several hundred years. I know I can’t change the past but we need to acknowledge the damage done and make reparations where possible, we need to learn from the past and not repeat the same mistakes. Grescoe seems to be of a similar mind. He’s very honest about his own distress about the changes around Vancouver Island in his own lifetime, and honestly seems to want to acknowledge his own privilege as a person of European descent on Indigenous American land, in this respect at least.
Unfortunately the author gets a few things wrong. Given how enjoyable I found this book, I’m reluctant to criticise, but I’m also a massive pedant, and I can’t not correct incorrect information.
He repeats the claim that American children will live shorter, sicker lives than their parents. This claim was pulled out of a doctor’s posterior in 2005 as part of the ‘obesity epidemic’ panic. See Maintenance Phase podcast for details; actually, just binge Maintenance Phase – it’s brilliant and an entry point into understanding diet culture and fat activism. If Books Could Kill is also a good podcast.
If you don’t trust Aubrey and Michael, the claim has also be questioned in other sources:
https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-28191865
Grescoe treats Michael Pollen as a reliable source. He is not.
He’s also wrong about seed oils. See this episode of Unbiased Science Podcast.
The author also has a problem with GMOs, but it seems to be based on believing myths. There’s nothing to be afraid of in GMOs and they actually mean that farmers use less pesticides over all. Even ‘organic’ farms use chemicals, except they use larger amounts and some of them are quite dangerous.
I recommend the following podcast by Unbiased Science:
Reading this book after reading Divide, by Anna Jones, and learning about the reality of farming today, made my alarms go off. Something wasn’t right. So I did some looking around and I found the phrase I was looking for in a Jacobin article by food historian, Rachel Lauden from 2015: ‘Culinary Luddites’. Lauden makes the excellent point that it’s hard work to produce ‘artisanal’ or ‘farmhouse’ food. Much of the burden is on the poor and women to produce the food that will be/historically was eaten by the wealthy, not the people who produced the food.
Grescoe claims he isn’t writing from a position of privilege, but he has the time and money to travel the world, seeking out expensive and rare ingredients. Most people don’t have the time to cook three meals a day, and humans have been eating prepared meals since we started living in towns, 8000 – 10000 years ago. It’s inaccessible to the poor and the disabled. Modern processed food means I can be certain the food I buy is safe, will store for long periods of time and is something I could actually eat – texture and digestibility is important!
I’d love to make spelt and honey bread every day, eaten with locally made cheese, butter and home-made chutney. I’ve tried it – it’s expensive, time consuming when I don’t have the energy, and the variation in taste and texture mean that I sometimes wouldn’t be able to eat it at all. I’m stretching my budget to get meal kits so that I can have a variety of veg every week. I’ve discovered that I don’t like the texture of lentils, so that’s out of the window. I have limits on the tastes and textures I can tolerate, I can’t eat much red meat and won’t eat cod.
It takes a lot of my energy to cook those meals, to clean up after cooking, and I’m lucky to have electricity to store that food at safe temperatures. That’s not possible for a lot of people. For many, that cheap meat is the only meat they can afford. That refined bread is the only bread they can manage because of the texture. It’s classist and ableist to assume that everyone can buy ‘slow food’, ‘farmhouse cheese’, grass-fed meat, and organic food. Sorry Trescoe, you are writing from a position of privilege and you need to acknowledge it.
In conclusion, this book was a mixed bag; I really did enjoy the writing and learning from experts about this history of food and attempts to revive old foods, but my pedantry can’t allow the errors to be ignored.
Taras Grescoe is the author of seven nonfiction books and a widely read commentator on the interplay of food, travel, and the environment.
His journalism has been published in many of the world’s leading newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, the Guardian, and National Geographic.
He lives in Montreal, Quebec.
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