Great Courses Review: Food A Cultural Culinary History

Taught by Professor Ken Albala

Pros: interesting content, wide variety of subjects, lots of references

Cons: 

This is a Great Courses series of 36 thirty minute lectures that start with humanity’s hunting and gathering in the ancient past all the way up to the experimental cooking of the 2000s. I saw this via my local library’s digital lending program (Hoopla).

I learned so much from these lectures. The breakdown is extensive with separate lectures for various religious groups, ethnic groups, time periods, etc. Even the early modern lectures that I thought I wouldn’t be interested in turned out to be fascinating.

The professor is enthusiastic and knowledgable, easy to listen to, and very clear. In a few lectures he actually reproduces recipes he discusses. I wish he’d done more of that (I originally thought he was going to do one of these per lecture).

If you like history and/or food, this course is delightful.