For a long time New Orleans sold food to the public through public markets, much like those found in Paris at the time. This was in contrast to how food was largely sold elsewhere in the United States. In this week's The Hungry Historians, we explore the New Orleans public markets, considering their strengths and weaknesses, and whether they might represent an alternative way for food purchasing in the future.

We are very pleased to have with us for this discussion Ashley Rose Young. She published on this subject in 2025 with her Oxford University Press book Nourishing Networks: The Public Culture of Food in New Orleans. You can find more about Ashley on her website.

This episode is sponsored by ⁠⁠Bloomsbury Food Library⁠⁠, an essential resource for students, researchers, and scholars studying food, offering the widest-ranging existing collection of food studies content.

The rise of indigenous restaurants in Canada since the 1970s has helped to surface the foodways of indigenous peoples but has also helped to highlight the colonial repression of these older foods and cultures. In this week’s The Hungry Historians, we discuss the contrast of settler colonialism and indigenous resistance through the role played by restaurants. L. Sasha Gora wrote on this subject in her 2025 book, Culinary Claims: Indigenous Restaurant Politics in Canada, which was published by University of Toronto Press.

Our conversation with Sasha ranges from the politics of colonialism as played out through food to the purpose and symbolism of indigenous restaurants, including just what we really mean by the term indigenous restaurant.

This episode is sponsored by ⁠⁠Bloomsbury Food Library⁠⁠, an essential resource for students, researchers, and scholars studying food, offering the widest-ranging existing collection of food studies content.

Sauces are often important parts of a meal, but a part that we don’t think too much about when studying the history of food. In this week’s episode Kelly A. Spring discusses how sauces define our meals and influence the way we think about ourselves and the food that we eat. This discussion is with Andrew Donnelly, Beth M. Forrest and Deirdre Murphy, authors of an edited collection called From Garum to Mole: Sauces and Identity in the Western World, which was released by the Oxford University Press in 2026.

This episode is sponsored by ⁠⁠Bloomsbury Food Library⁠⁠, an essential resource for students, researchers, and scholars studying food, offering the widest-ranging existing collection of food studies content.

When Elizabeth A. DeWolfe delved into her sources about the notorious case of Madeleine Pollard verses her former lover, Congressman William C.P. Breckinridge, she discovered that food was used as a clue and a method of connection for Jane Tucker (using the alias Agnes Parker), the woman Breckinridge employed to spy on Madeleine. In this week’s episode of The Hungry Historians, Matt Phillpott and Kelly Spring talk with Elizabeth DeWolfe about her research and how food became an essential ingredient in the tale of an eighteenth century American scandal.

Elizabeth DeWolfe published this research in 2025 as Alias Agnes: The Notorious Tale of A Gilded Age Spy, through the University Press of Kentuck. You can learn more about Elizabeth at her website https://www.elizabethdewolfe.com.

This episode is sponsored by ⁠⁠Bloomsbury Food Library⁠⁠, an essential resource for students, researchers, and scholars studying food, offering the widest-ranging existing collection of food studies content.

Tomatoes arrived in Egypt in the 16th century but quickly became ubiquitous with Egyptian foodways. In this episode we talk with Anny Gaul, an assistant professor of Arabic Studies at the University of Maryland. Anny published in 2025, Nile Nightshade: An Egyptian culinary history of the tomato, through the University of California Press. She also runs the popular food blog Cooking with Gaul.

You can learn more about Anny Gaul on her website and buy her book on the University of California Press website and other bookstores.

This episode is sponsored by ⁠⁠Bloomsbury Food Library⁠⁠, an essential resource for students, researchers, and scholars studying food, offering the widest-ranging existing collection of food studies content.

How do people think about their own cuisines and those of their neighbouring countries? How does this ‘feeling’ reflect on our political attitudes and our defence of what we see as ours? In this week’s episode of The Hungry Historians Matt and Kelly talk with Hanna Kassab, Associate Professor at East Carolina University. Hanna describes his discoveries from travelling to various countries and exploring their attitudes to their cuisines. This was for his 2025 book, Post-Colonial Realism: Cultural Conflicts, Cuisine, and the Changing International System from Routledge.

You can learn more about Dr Hanna Kassab on his ECU profile page and follow him on X and YouTube.

This episode is sponsored by ⁠⁠Bloomsbury Food Library⁠⁠, an essential resource for students, researchers, and scholars studying food, offering the widest-ranging existing collection of food studies content.

Food is politics, and politics is food. In this week’s episode Matt and Kelly talk with Andrea Freeman about her 2024 book Ruin their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food, in the United States, from the trail of tears to school lunch, which was published by Macmillan.

Andrea’s study makes the argument that food policy and laws in the US have created and maintained racial and social inequality. Using history to understand this ‘food oppression’.

Andrea Freeman works at the Southwestern Law School Lost Angeles and you can learn more about her on her profile page.

This episode is sponsored by ⁠⁠Bloomsbury Food Library⁠⁠, an essential resource for students, researchers, and scholars studying food, offering the widest-ranging existing collection of food studies content.

Widely available in nature, berries are of such significance to Northern and Eastern Europeans and have become essential foods across the world. Berries are more than what you think they are; bananas are berries for example! In today's discussion with Heather Arndt Anderson we learn about the historical use of berries, our attempts to make artificial versions, and what might happen to berries in the future.

Heather Arndt Anderson published Berries: A Global History with Reaktion Books in 2018. You can find out more about her at her Instagram page and at Superabundant.

This episode is sponsored by ⁠⁠Bloomsbury Food Library⁠⁠, an essential resource for students, researchers, and scholars studying food, offering the widest-ranging existing collection of food studies content.