Dish of the dayNorth AmericaLong project
Akutuq
Iñupiat whipped fat and berries, called "Eskimo ice cream" in the settler-coined but still widely used shorthand; the word itself means "to stir."
A working atlas of the world's cooking
Not just recipes. The whole cuisine.
Normandy runs on butter and cider, the Southwest on duck fat, Alsace on pork, beer and cabbage. All three are France. Each volume takes one food world and starts with the land and the trade. Then every dish, as the tradition cooks it and as a modern chef would change it.
Choose a food world
5 regions, 31 culinary regions, not one border
A cuisine is shaped by what grows, what trade brought, what religion permits and what empire imposed. Borders come a long way down that list, so this is organised by food world, not by flag.
Africa
Fifty four countries and no single cuisine. The cooking follows the land: the palm coast, the Congo basin, the highland ferments, the Nile and the Sahara, the monsoon shore, the maize south.
Asia
The largest region in the atlas, from the Levant to the Sinosphere: yoghurt and dried lime, sour fruit, fish sauce, coconut, dashi, steppe mutton.
Europe
The Mediterranean eats as one food world under many flags. The Nordic kitchen began with preserving, and the Slavic east is sour, smoked and fermented.
The Americas
Mesoamerica, the Andes and Amazonia are three unrelated food worlds on one landmass: nixtamal and chilli, potato and altitude, cassava and a forest larder barely written down.
Oceania and the Pacific
Aboriginal and Māori foodways each get a volume of their own, ahead of the settler kitchens. Beyond them, the earth oven, taro and the largest ocean on earth.
Within the hour
All 1,783 dishes by time and kit
Central Europe
Tiroler Kaspressknödel
Central Africa
Chikwangue, or kwanga
North America
Tire d'érable (maple taffy on snow)
Mainland Southeast Asia
Bánh khoái
Landed this week
The whole atlas
Atay, the three glasses
Green tea boiled, sweetened and poured from a height until it foams, drunk in three small glasses, each sweeter than the last
Couscous al-aish
Wheat or barley semolina rolled by hand to grain, steamed under cloth, with a powder of dried mallow leaf, and a broth of meat and onion poured over
Tichtar and lekhlee
Yellow mullet gutted, split along the back and dried two to five days without salt in the cool wind from November, and eaten ground to fibres
Poutargue, the Imraguen way
The mullet's double roe, pressed in sand, rinsed in sea water, dried for days, and later sealed in beeswax
Belghman and zrig
Barley toasted and ground, bound in a bowl with hot water, sugar, salt and fat, in about ten minutes; and milk thinned with water and sugar, drunk from a bowl
Lacciri haako
Sorghum couscous under a sauce of cowpea leaves with meat or fish, onion, pepper, dried fish, ground peanut and ground melon seed
Mì Quảng
Wide rice noodles, white and turmeric yellow, under a scant, thick nhưn of pork and shrimp, with peanuts, toasted rice paper, banana flower and herbs
Cao lầu
A lye soaked rice noodle, firm and pale yellow, with sliced soy and five spice braised pork, its scant braising liquor, crisp fried noodle squares, bean sprouts and Trà Quế herbs
Cơm gà Hội An
Aged rice soaked in turmeric and cooked in chicken broth with the fat, with poached hen shredded and dressed with onion, fried shallot and rau răm, pickled papaya and Trà Quế herbs
Bánh bao bánh vạc
The white rose: rice dough pressed thin into petals round shrimp and shallot, and its sister, bánh vạc, a folded parcel of shrimp paste, pork, wood ear and bamboo shoot, steamed and served with fried shallot and a sweet sour dip
How we work
Sourced from inside the tradition
181volumes written
1,783dishes, tradition and chef
31culinary regions
59UK restaurant companions
What we would not claim
Local sources first: writers and cooks from inside each tradition before anyone writing about it from outside. Every volume ends with the claims we checked and would not make.
The letter
One volume a month, nothing else
When a new volume lands, one email with what it covers and the dish to start with. No offers, no round ups, no daily anything.