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I think a term that may be helpful for you here is foodway, a relative of folkway. To be lazy and lift it directly from Wikipedia,

> In social science, foodways are the cultural, social, and economic practices relating to the production and consumption of food. Foodways often refers to the intersection of food in culture, traditions, and history.

You might be interested in Louisiana's food history. The cajun vs creole dynamic is fascinating, drawing from indigenous, slave, domestic and aristocratic cuisines—the aristocracy in question being both American and French. Cajun cuisine is influenced more heavily by subsistence cooking, similar to northeast Thai cuisine (Isan cuisine is very spicy for the exact reasons mentioned by the other comment), while New Orleans' creole cuisine is much more heavily-influenced by the aristocracy of France and Spain, in the way that Thai cuisine in Bangkok orients itself around the royal court.

The most well-known older cajun cookbooks, River Road Recipes and Talk About Good!, are time capsules of mid-century American cooking that give us a snapshot of post-WWII, pre-Julia Child American cookery and also happen to provide a very on-the-ground view of Southern, and specifically Louisianian, cooking smack in the middle of the Civil Rights era. You can find used copies of both for cheap online, and while neither is especially useful for actual cooking in 2019 (shortening and salad oil, anyone?) both are a great look at the distinctly American foodways that Julia Child tried, more or less successfully, to smash with her great book, which introduced the idea of the "foodie" in the US. Speaking of cajun cuisine specifically, I don't know that Paul Prudhomme or Emeril Lagasse would exist without Julia's influence, and writers like George Graham are definite beneficiaries of her legacy.

But "food culture" is just history, and thinking about what that means can be endlessly interesting. English cuisine has this hilarious reputation of being absolute shit, and yet it's been shaped by so many amazing historical influences that you can't help but be fascinated by it. Baked beans and blood sausage for breakfast, the first popular Western curries, marmite, tea, and a limitless number of classist rules about who gets to eat what and when, and on what holidays. Why are French and English cheeses so different in 2019? The answer is WWII, but not for cheese snobs it's not. For them it's just the right way to make a particular cheese. Both are valid replies! Why does Whole Foods in the US sell Mulligatawny soup? Because of the British colonization of India that began to westernize south Asian food . Why is there a whole cookbook for Patrick O'Brian fans? Because of the same English navy that, in part, gave us Mulligatawny soup. These are all foodways, going back centuries and still on your supermarket shelf today.

Books like "Near A Thousand Tables" or "Salt" or "Cod" would probably be very interesting to you. "The Book of Jewish Food" by Claudia Roden is an incredible history of diasporic foodways. Cuban cuisine in Miami is an interesting example of diasporic food—Cuban immigrants have, for the most part, been able to hold on to the middle-class status they arrived with, and their food heritage is a cool example of ways that traditions have been maintained by a moneyed class, as opposed to something like Dhania chicken in Kenya, which is a curry that was invented by poor laborers imported from India who didn't have the money to bring their cuisine along with them. Dhania chicken is, by the way, one of the best things you'll ever taste.

Anyway, sorry for the essay and I hope some of that is of interest to you. Just the history of British curries could fill several volumes, and it covers so much ground that it might make a great place for you to start. Shit, I feel like "White Teeth" by Zadie Smith is basically a novel about curry, which it most certainly isn't, but it's a solid launchpad for the great mashup of cuisines that gives English food its horrible reputation, its romance, its colonial history and its obvious place at the intersection of East and West. There's no other cuisine that has representation, if only tendrils, in upstate New York, downtown Calcutta, and every grocery store in New Zealand, from baked beans to beer.

Thanks!

• Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. Cronon, William.
  
  
• Selling 'Em by the Sack: White Castle and the Creation of American Food. Hogan, David Gerard.
  
  
• Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet. Levenstein, Harvey.
  
  
• The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. Pollan, Michael.
  
  
• Manifestos on the Future of Food and Seed. Shiva, Vandana et al.
  
  
• The Jungle. Sinclair, Upton.
  
  
• Banana Cultures: Agriculture, Consumption, and Environmental Change in Honduras & the United States. Soluri, John.
  
  
• The Fruits of Natural Advantage: Making the Industrial Countryside in California. Stoll, Steven.
  
  
• Corn and Capitalism: How a Botanical Bastard Grew to Global Dominance. Warman, Arturo.
  
  Very cool to see the actual course listing information. I'd forgotten what it was like to flip through an actual paper course catalog with that kind of stuff in it. Thank god for the internet.
  
  Also, you helped me figure out what book I was trying to remember in this comment! It was The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals by Michael Pollan. IIRC, it was an awesome concept and 75% of it was an absolutely fantastic read, but one of the sections (maybe the third one?) was bit uninspired. Still overall worth the read, for sure, just be prepared to slog through one section. (And don't skip it, because what it discusses is still relevant to the final section, even if it's not as entertaining as the rest of the book.) It's worth it in particular for anybody living in an industrialized "modern" nation; it provides some of the come-to-Jesus moments that we all need to hear periodically. It's not on the level of Fast Food Nation in that regard (which is required reading for every American and Canadian, as far as I'm concerned), but still.
  
  EDIT: And that helped me remember another book I've heard recommended, also by Michael Pollan: In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto.
  
  You're on a roll, friend.

In the Shadow of Slavery: Africa’s Botanical Legacy in the Atlantic World does a great job of showing how many foods we take for granted today actually came from Africa and were connected to the slave trade in the Americas.

The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice is a book I'm reading now about the history and geography of spice and the spice trades.

For a nonacademic resource, Michael Pollan's The Botany of Desire is an excellent plants'-eye approach to four important crops. Although only two of them (apples, potatoes) are food, the approach is really engaging and thought-provoking. Pollan's more famous book, The Omnivore's Dilemma is good, but focuses primarily on corn.

Similarly non-academic but smart, Deborah Valenze's Milk: A Local and Global History presents an interesting history of milk, how colonization and different breeds of cows influenced cultures of milk, etc.

Since you are interested in cuisines and how they changed, I also recommend:

Stirring the Pot: A History of African Cuisine by James McCann

Cookery and Dining in Ancient Rome by Apicus.

I haven't read this in quite a while, but you may be interested in checking out A History of Everyday Things. It may not be quite laser focused on food, but presents a great look at the lives of every day people in France during the Early Modern period.

Potato does a great job of exploring the socioeconomic effects of the potato on various populations in the world.

Cannibals and Kings is more on the anthropology side, but there is a least one really good chapter that discusses reasons why certain cultures developed religious dietary restrictions.

A History of White Castle is an interesting read about the conditions that brought about the rise of the fast food industry in the US.

India specific answer. Based on Indian Food - A Historical Companion by K.T. Achaya, Indian food seems to have retained similar flavor profiles and overall techniques and meal composition.

Spices used were similar, except long pepper and black pepper were used more heavily for spicing rather than New World spices such as chili peppers. Native ingredients such as gourds, sqashes, tubers, starchy roots, shallots, were similarly used a lot more than New World vegetables like tomatoes, potatoes, onions etc.

When it comes to meats, a lot more wild game and sea food was used in cooking, as well as a lot of domesticated animals like horse and cow. They were mostly roasted on open fires.

Rice based dishes such as rice and lentils and clarified butter are also largely the same.

From what i have read, it seems like the old Indian dishes would be quite palatable today as well.

The British took a long time to warm up to Indian foods.

Many of the anglo-indian dishes came about as a result of the fact that English wives couldn't train Indian chefs.

This is a really interesting document from the time.

And the influence was definitely two way.

Indians now use cauliflowers, for example, which I believe the Brits introduced.

Bear in mind that the general Imperial British worldview was that the British were the pinnacle of civilisation and success, that "foreign" things were uncivilised and vulgar.

As the occupation continued though, there was increasing cross pollination including dishes like mulligatawny soup, kedgeree, chutney etc...

Tastes of Paradise by Wolfgang Schivelbusch is an absolutely amazing book. The author explains that spices were thought to come from an Earthly Paradise mythically tied to the Garden of Eden and the quest to find it was central to Western history. Kurlansky's The Big Oyster, a history of New York City told through its relationship with oysters is wonderful. But I'm an oyster geek.

This. https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0345476395/ Fantastic book on the subject. Oyster bars in NYC were political hangouts, business meeting places, sometime brothels. All while waiting for your ferry which you sometimes missed because you were having too much fun.

I haven't finished it, but Clarence Birdseye's biography begins rather well! He's the pioneer of frozen food. https://www.amazon.com/Birdseye-Adventures-Curious-Mark-Kurlansky/dp/0767930304

I think What Caesar Did For My Salad will be right up your alley! It covers the origin of a wide array of dishes and is a really simple yet informative read.

The first that comes to mind is Lizzie Collingham's The Taste of Empire: How Britain's Quest for Food Shaped the Modern World

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potassium_nitrate#Food_preservation

It's used but it's less common nowadays. A lot of recipes call for stuff like this that's a dyed sodium nitrite. But you can still find recipes that call for it.


I'm not sure about availability in stores.