On the Table - the curious home of Gary Allen, Food Writer & Dillettante

October is fast approaching & already the nights are cooler and the prospect of long slow-cooked meals is looking more attractive. This week, boeuf bourguignon... can cassoulet and choucroute garnie be far behind?
Our latest book, Sausage: A Global History, is finally out, so we published an article to provide a kind of back-story: “A Vegetarian Unmade,” at Roll Magazine.
It’s been a busy month.
You can, if you wish, follow us on Facebook, and Twitter. Still more of our online scribbles can be found at A Quiet Little Table in the Corner.

The presidential election is still over a year away, but we’re already dyspeptic from hearing about it on the news. As preventative medicine, this month’s quotes (from On the Table’s culinary quote collection) chooses a few non-political items from TV journalists:

You can never have enough garlic. With enough garlic, you can eat The New York Times. Morley Safer 

You can find your way across this country using burger joints the way a navigator uses stars. Charles Kuralt 

The federal government has sponsored research that has produced a tomato that is perfect in every respect, except that you can’t eat it. We should make every effort to make sure this disease, often referred to as “progress,” doesn’t spread. Andy Rooney 

Researchers have discovered that chocolate produces some of the same reactions in the brain as marijuana. The researchers also discovered other similarities between the two but can’t remember what they are. Matt Lauer

PS: If you encounter broken links, changed URLs—or know of wonderful sites we’ve missed—please drop us a line. It helps to keep this resource as useful as possible for all of us. To those of you who have introduced us to sites like the ones in this newsletter (such as Fabio Parasecoli), thanks, and keep them coming!
PPS: If you wish to change the e-mail address at which you receive these newsletters, or otherwise modify the way you receive our postings or—if you’ve received this newsletter by mistake, and/or don’t wish to receive future issues—you have our sincere apology and can have your e-mail address deleted from the list immediately. We’re happy (and continuously amazed) that so few people have decided to leave the list but, should you choose to be one of them, let us know and we’ll see that your in-box is never afflicted by these updates again. You’ll find links at the bottom of this page to fix everything to your liking.
10 Wine Myths Debunked
(accepted wisdom... not so much)
Archaeological Team Prepares 4,000-year-old Hittite Meals 
(according to archaeologist Aykut Çınaroğlu, Chef Ömür Akk—an excavation team member—used “recipes” from clay tablets, recreating as closely as possible the techniques and equipment of the period)
Archaeologists Find Earliest Evidence of Humans Cooking with Fire 
(Kenneth Miller, writing in Discover, on the work of archaeologist Paul Goldberg)
Best-Tasting, Biggest American Fruit You Probably Haven’t Tasted, The
(Andrew Moore, enraptured by pawpaws, in The Washington Post)
Blessed Be My Freshly Slaughtered Dinner
(Kate Murphy, in The New York Times, on the ethics—and recent fashionability—of killing one’s own meat)
Boundaries of Taste, The
(special food-centered issue of Guernica: a magazine of art & politics)
Canning History: When Propaganda Encouraged Patriotic Preserves 
(Jessica Stoller-Conrad’s report, on NPR, about wartime efforts to conserve food)
Chew on This: The Science of Great NYC Bagels (It’s Not the Water)
(NPR takes a bite out of a much-loved myth)
Cultures and Cuisines
(“an illustrated guide to the culture and cuisine of Brazil”)
Fifth Flavor, The
(Roland Kelts, finding himself through umami, in Guernica)
Food as Therapy
(“Elements of the History of Nutrition in Ancient Greece and Rome,” 
Francesco Perono Cacciafoco’s posting at academia.edu)
French Bread History: Making Medieval/Renaissance Bread
(Les Leftovers, working without a net—or contemporary recipes, since there are none—to try to resurrect some pain perdú)
From Poison to Passion: The Secret History of the Tomato
(Sara Bir at modern farmer)
From the Crack Cocaine of Its Day to Craft Gin
(a juniper-scented addition to the history of alcohol, in The Economist)
Great Sushi Craze of 1905, The 
(“The Unexpected History of Japanese Food in America, From Edo Bay to the Bowery,” Part 1 of H.D. Miller’s article at eccentricculinary.com)
Hot Dog!
(sidewalk history on a bun; from the Museum of the City of New York)
How Black Chefs Paved the Way for American Cuisine
(Michael Twitty sets the record straight, at First We Feast)
Humans Hunted for Meat 2 Million Years Ago
(Robin McKie, writing in The Guardian, on recent work of anthropologist Henry Bunn: “We no longer needed to invest internal resources on huge digestive tracts that were previously required to process vegetation and fruit, which are more difficult to digest. Freed from that task by meat, the new, energy-rich resources were then diverted inside our bodies and used to fuel our growing brains.”)
Illustrated History of Soul Food, An
(Adrian Miller, writing at First We Feast)
My Great Grandmother’s Industrially Processed Food
(Rachel Laudan on methods used in mass-production of food in the nineteenth century)
New Rules of Oyster Eating, The
(Rowan Jacobsen, the proprietor-maven at Oysterater, shucks and tells at Lucky Peach)
Paleo Diet: Big Brains Needed Carbs: Importance of Dietary Carbohydrate in Human Evolution
(“...archaeological, anthropological, genetic, physiological and anatomical data [indicate] carbohydrate consumption, particularly in the form of starch, was critical for the accelerated expansion of the human brain over the last million years…”; article in Science Daily)
Peppermills
(Jan Whitaker discusses the once-common giant peppermills and how they got so big)
Popular Drinks of the Georgian Era
(a surprising number of ways to meet your daily vegetable requirements)
Price of Wine, The
(disentangling wine price and perceived quality at Priceonomics)
Rare History Well Done
(“meat in America;” a BackStory podcast from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities)
Riots and Rye: Bread and the French Revolution 
(Michael R. Lynn, writes about passion the French have for bread, for the Ultimate History Project)
Scientists Who Found Gluten Sensitivity Evidence have now Shown it Doesn’t Exist
(Jennifer Welsh, at Business Insider, on the rigorous tests that disproved the popular belief in gluten’s effects on non-celiac consumers)
Searching for the “Grey Market” Foods of New York City
(Malcolm T. Nicholson’s quest to find, and sample, forbidden food and drink)
Seduction of Stink, The
(Fuchsia Dunlop writes, in Saveur, of the disgusting/enchanting fermented foods of Shaoxing, China)
Slaughter, The
(Stewart Sinclair—no relation to The Jungle’s author—writes, in The Dallas Morning News, about the ethics of taking an animal’s life for food)
Sorghum: A Love Story
(Julian Brunt, waxes euphoric in the magazine of the Southern Fan Beverage Institute, about a Mississippi tradition)
Sugar Crazy: The Story of our Doughnut Obsession
(Michael Krondl, an historian who has begun to specialize in sweet treats, dishes in Zester Daily)
Syneresis and Other Geeky Jargon for Cooks
(Valerie Ryan, in The Boston Globe, on the pleasures of food science)
To Go
(Jan Whitaker on the history of take-out food)
4 Things to Consider When Researching Literary Agents
Beautiful Cookbooks with Stories and Personality Sell Best, Says Editor
Diana Henry: How to Write a Cookbook
Judging a Book by its Cover: What Book Publicists—and Media—Want to See on the Outside of a Book
Fresh Loaf, The
My African Food Map
Nigerian Lazy Chef
What’s Cooking, Uncle Sam?
(“The Government’s Effect on the American Diet;” based on a 2011 exhibit at The National Archives Museum; also check “A Menu of Food-Related Primary Sources”)
Except, of course, for the usual legalistic mumbo-jumbo and commercial flim-flam:
Your privacy is important to us. We will not give, sell or share your e-mail address with anyone, for any purpose—ever. Nonetheless, we will expose you to the following irredeemably brazen plugs: 
Want to support On the Table, without spending a dime of your own money on it? 
It’s easy. Whenever you want to shop on Amazon. Com, click on any of the book links below, then whatever you buy there (it doesn’t even have to be one of our books) will earn a commission for this newsletter.
Here endeth the sales pitch(es)...
...for the moment, anyway.

Parkinson’s dinner paired different rare wines and liquors with each of the courses, which included such delicacies as fresh oysters, green turtle soup, game birds, diamond-back terrapin, out-of-season fruits and vegetables, pièces montées, and several dessert courses showcasing rich pastries, ice cream, cakes, and puddings. Each of Parkinson’s courses was designed to meld familiar dishes with novel presentations. Special praise went to an artful and luscious sorbet that he created using an expensive Hungarian Tokaj wine.