August 24, 2016

Historical Foods: The Pepperoni Roll and Its Origins


The foods our ancestors ate are an important part of our family histories. They tell a lot about a family, such as occupation, income, region in which they lived, and the time period in which they lived. If you put all these things together, you get a pretty detailed picture of our ancestors based on the foods that were common to their diets. Even archaeologists use the study of foods to place people in their proper historical contexts. When they dig up unusually well-preserved remains, such as the old Medieval burial of a royal or noble in lead, or mummies, they often examine the contents of their stomachs to see what was in their last meal. The foods they find tell them so much about how that person lived, where they originated, what their health was like, what their social class was, and more. The history of food is intimately tied into the study of genealogy...