Food: A Cultural Culinary History

Learn how the entirety of human civilization-war, trade, politics, art, religion, and more-has been shaped by our interaction with food in this delicious course.

• By This Professor
• 01: Hunting, Gathering, and Stone Age Cooking
• 02: What Early Agriculturalists Ate
• 03: Egypt and the Gift of the Nile
• 04: Ancient Judea-From Eden to Kosher Laws
• 05: Classical Greece-Wine, Olive Oil, and Trade
• 06: The Alexandrian Exchange and the Four Humors
• 07: Ancient India-Sacred Cows and Ayurveda
• 08: Yin and Yang of Classical Chinese Cuisine
• 09: Dining in Republican and Imperial Rome
• 10: Early Christianity-Food Rituals and Asceticism
• 11: Europe's Dark Ages and Charlemagne
• 12: Islam-A Thousand and One Nights of Cooking
• 13: Carnival in the High Middle Ages
• 14: International Gothic Cuisine
• 15: A Renaissance in the Kitchen
• 16: Aztecs and the Roots of Mexican Cooking
• 17: 1492-Globalization and Fusion Cuisines
• 18: 16th-Century Manners and Reformation Diets
• 19: Papal Rome and the Spanish Golden Age
• 20: The Birth of French Haute Cuisine
• 21: Elizabethan England, Puritans, Country Food
• 22: Dutch Treat-Coffee, Tea, Sugar, Tobacco
• 23: African and Aboriginal Cuisines
• 24: Edo, Japan-Samurai Dining and Zen Aesthetics
• 25: Colonial Cookery in North America
• 26: Eating in the Early Industrial Revolution
• 27: Romantics, Vegetarians, Utopians
• 28: First Restaurants, Chefs, and Gastronomy
• 29: Big Business and the Homogenization of Food
• 30: Food Imperialism around the World
• 31: Immigrant Cuisines and Ethnic Restaurants
• 32: War, Nutritionism, and the Great Depression
• 33: World War II and the Advent of Fast Food
• 34: Counterculture-From Hippies to Foodies
• 35: Science of New Dishes and New Organisms
• 36: The Past as Prologue?