While reading Paul Freedman's " Spices and Medieval Imagination" , I paused on a vivid image: an older Parisian gentleman in 1390 writing the Le Menagier de Paris , an entire household and cooking encyclopedia for his young wife. More than four hundred recipes, notes, hints, observations... A personal lifetime album, the kind someone today might offer as a wedding gift, a condensed summary of wisdom gathered over decades. And it made me think about how deeply food is woven in

Looking through old recipes I found tucked away in a drawer, I noticed that ingredients were measured by the cup, the spoon, and "the...