Welcome to a project that is truly close to my heart. As an archaeologist, I began with a simple goal: to explore the remnants of early agriculture, hunter gatherer lifeways, and the foods people cooked and shared. But the work quickly grew into something bigger. The deeper I went, the more I realized I was not just studying ingredients. I was tracing comfort, celebration, survival, and the everyday dishes people earned through hard work. In the past, eating took time, skill, and effort. You did not simply pop into a grocery store and choose from a shelf.

This project is still ongoing, and so far I have compiled and tested more than 400 original historical recipes. Whenever possible, I recreate each dish using the source recipe as it was recorded. I also lean into historically accurate ingredients, techniques, cooking vessels, and utensils to bring the food as close to its original form as I can.

The collection spans thousands of years and a wide range of cultures across the globe, roughly from 2500 BCE through the twentieth century. Some entries also come from my own family’s Romany background, along with other GTR recipes that have been passed down orally over the last century and a half.

Along the way, I have discovered how fragile food history can be. Many ingredients have been lost to time, substituted, omitted, or reshaped as recipes were adapted to changing tastes. Some recipes survive as little more than a list, like an Elizabethan lavender cake that is barely holding on by a thread, yet still whispering its way into the present.

Above all, this has been a labour of love. As I have catalogued, tested, and cooked, the preparation, the ingredients, and the stories have become inseparable, each dish carrying a small piece of the world that made it. These foods deserve a place in our collective memory, and preserving them matters. My long term goal is to gather the full collection into a book so these recipes are not simply remembered, but kept alive.