This story was originally published in our May/June 2023 issue as "The Archaeology of Flavor." Click here to subscribe to read more stories like this one.
When it comes to ancient foods, archaeologists can easily glean main ingredients based on butchered bones and plant remains found in cooking areas. But every chef — and diner — knows dietary staples don’t make meals delectable or distinctive. It’s flavor, rendered through spices, herbs and culinary craft, that defines a dish. Certain flavors have come to distinguish the cuisines of different cultures, like umami in Japan or herbes de Provence in southern France. In the 1970s, cookbook author Elizabeth Rozin named this phenomenon the Flavor Principle.
“Chefs talk about this all the time, but archaeologists do not,” says Christine Hastorf, an archaeologist and professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who urges her colleagues to think more about flavor. Communities “inherit not just dishes and not just meals, but they inherit flavors.”
