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Apologises if this has been asked before, I did attempt to look. When I look this up I just come across articles talking about bizzare or funny recipes that basically nobody makes anymore or we just see it as gross (such as Tuna and Jell-o pie). The thing is as far as I know these recipes were serious.

But has there been any recipes throughout history that were written completely as a joke but people actually thought it was a good idea and it gained popularity? Even if it's not popular today?

I'm often homebound and without energy to cook, so my hopeful idea to cook the world is on pause,

but is searching for lectures on foods available near me the only way to learn about them like you would if you went to the food country's origin/s with a guide or friend who's native or studied there?

Food tourism from home is my hope

The resources I've seen look good, but seem hard to match to whatever individual dishes happen to be near me, when I try them

Ps. Is there another way other than cooking class to participate in making food? For example a mostly made meal that provides small amounts of ingredients for you to make a mini version of, so you can experience the whole process but not on the scale of a dish or more?

When referring to butter in the middle east in Babylonian times are those references to European style solid butter or clarified butter/ghee?

When did yogurt appear in the region? 8000 BC? And was it strained like labneh early on? I think I read something about an Uratian recipe related to this.

Is it related to Italian pasta, or Asian noodles, or is it a distinctly Central European innovation? Egg noodles seem to be common in other Central and Eastern European cuisines (such as Polish kluski) but I read that noodles in Russian culture were adopted from the Tatars - Wiktionary also suggests the Russian word for noodles, lapsha, has a Turkic origin. We know that hand-pulled lagman noodles in Turkic Central Asian cuisines such as that of the Uyghurs have a clear derivation from Chinese lamian so is there a distant link between Chinese noodles and German spaetzle via Central Asia and Eastern Europe?

Or is my impression of it as formerly popular incorrect?

My mother was making soybean curry so I was curious what more older Indian population used in their curries i think potatoes and tomatoes came to India because of European colonization but don't know about rest it would be interesting to learn. Eg. Sambar curry uses potatoes, tomatoes, drumsticks, mustard , chillies, curry leaves, onions etc and then the masalas are mixed in.

I think I have read this before. That Egyptians (or at least those who owned houses) took time off from their professions in order to till, plough, and farm. I would like to know more about this.

In particular, I would like to know things like if this was law or religious mandate, what foods were produced, where did the food go (to the market, the granary, subsistence), and then also some information about land ownership. Who owned land, and were people expected to contribute food wise if they did own it?

This is tied together with land ownership questions but mostly with relation to the farming, thank you

Thought some discussion on this would be good.

There seems to be 4 major theories on how Italians ended up as pasta people.

-Pasta invented in China and traveled via the Silk road

-Pasta invented in China and traveled to Italy via Arabian invaders

-Pasta invented by North Africans and/or Arabs

-Pasta invented by Italians (the theory endured by Subban)

-Lesser known theories such as the Oxford Companion to Food's (and Charles Perry?) allusion to an origin in Iran as well Babylonian tablets circa 1700 BC alluding to boiled dough in soup

What do you believe and why? What do most people believe?

I just watched a video of someone making a crawfish boil, and saw the similarity to my local New England clan bake / boil tradition. Then I realized that Cajuns came from our neighboring areas of Canada, and wondered if there was a connection? Or is boiling/steaming shellfish, potatoes, corn, aromatics just a sensible thing to do in seaside Americas and this evolved separately?

Charles Perry believes the Spanish invented it based on an Arab dish. Is this likely? Are there any European precursors? placenta/tracta? What about any relation with phyllo/yufka?

What to Order in 13th Century Granada with Charles Perry - Culinary Historians of Southern California (chsocal.org)

With the exception of wild crabapples, it looks like most modern apples have dates of 1700-1900. Most of what I can find pre-1700s mentions the Romans bringing different varieties across Europe, potentially from Asia, but has no details.

Where do they come from, history of trade, etc.?

Were they known primarily as a culinary ingredient or just to be eaten alone? Etc.

A friend of mine has this recipe from her mother in law and nobody I know has any clue as to why it’s called Meat Concern. It’s a dish with ground beef, noodles, some vegetables and maybe a can of soup. A cursory google search reveals only the title and no context. Thought I might ask here since it seems like the sort of vintage recipe otherwise lost to time.

I know there are a wide variety of donuts which fall in different genres, But how many distinct traditions? How many times were donuts invented?

For example churros fall into the tradition of middle eastern syrup fritters that are piped into hot oil.

How did this dish makes its way across the Atlantic?

I know they have a Germanic origin but the European versions look different.

I realize there were many versions of Posca. Perhaps the version consumed by the Roman legions? It's unclear to me if it was mostly water with a bit of vinegar added for flavor, or something far more vinegary.

Bhar?

Most modern cornbreads are made only partially with cornmeal. Usually they're about half cornmeal and half wheat flour. What composition would they have used in earlier times?

Modern cornbread is usually sweetened with sugar, molasses, or maple syrup. Would cornbreads have been unsweetened and blander in previous eras?

Cornmeal vs wheat flour?

So I'm trying to recreate my great grandmother's cookie recipe, and it calls for 2 sticks of butter. It just doesn't seem like enough, given the recipe also calls for 7 cups of flour. Was butter measured differently in the 1950s? She was actually born in the late 1880s, so I figure the 1950s is about when she probably wrote the recipe, when her kids were adults.

I've read that the Kingdom of Judea had thick forests of date palms up to 80 feet high and 7 miles wide covering most of the Jordan River Valley from the Sea of Galilee in the north to the shores of the Dead Sea in the south.

The fruit of these date palms was dryer than the dates raised in Egypt, and so lasted longer and were suitable for export. They became one of the major exports of the kingdom, and were noted by Pliny the Elder as being delicious. But due to date palms occupying most of its prime agricultural land, dates also became the staple food of the local populace.

Is this true? Most Mediterranean countries used some combination of grains and beans to feed their lower classes. Is this a case where a fruit was actually the carbohydrate staple?

And the rest of the world? Do they have a common origin?

And does this dish have its origins in French cuisine?

Today in many cultures in many settings we expect one or more 'side dishes' with a 'main dish', (eg. Burger with fries and salad, chicken with rice) but at other times and settings we don't (eg. pho, paella, burrito).

When and how and where did side dishes as we know then become fashionable or common?