Esculent
A food podcast that explores how humans have defined what is, and isn’t, edible.
Episodes
Thousands of television episodes leave a mark – not only on digital archives of our food media-saturated world – but on the host, the performer, as well. In the final episode of our second season with chefs, we speak with Chef Martin Yan, the host of Yan Can Cook. We discuss Chef Yan’s decades of work wth PBS, the importance of culinary education, not only entertainment, and the development of his archive with UC Davis Library. We ...
Can we tell the story of a chef from 1490? Join podcast regular Professor Daniela Gutiérrez Flores as we attempt to recreate a recipe from Mestre Robert, a 15th-century chef and the author of Libre del Coch, the first printed cookbook. Join our reenactment where we speculate salt use, concern over squash cooking, and a huge sensory disagreement over rose water.
Tasting & Viewing: Menjar Blanc de Carabasses by Mestre Robert in L...
Well-baked bread is an art in and of itself, but in this episode, we look at a few representational mediums of yeasty dough: poetry, photography, and animation, as forms that give new light to a thousand-year-old practice. Baker Jim Franks discusses his new book of poetry, Existential Bread (Drag City, 2025), and one of my favorite animations of food ever, evoking faint memories for both of us, just like a whiff of a good loaf.
I first smelled the freshly nixtamalized masa from Emmanuel Galvan of Bolita at the Gilman Wine Block, where the tender, vegetal umami scent carried above the crowds right into my nose. This episode, we focus on technological and labor challenges of nixtamalization in the present, specifically right in Berkeley – complicating the many ways nixtamalization makes corn esculent.
Tasting: Tessier Wine’s Pinot Noir
Viewing: “Memory,” th...
We are back with a dive into the archive featuring Chef Brandon Jew of Mister Jiu’s restaurant in San Francisco - featuring historic menus and historic buildings, and how this influences canonical Chinese American recipes like Peking Duck. We kick off Season 4: Chefs Pt. 2 with our literary inquiries into the work of Chefs, and how words, archives, and texts make the esculent.
Tasting: A whiff of UC Davis Special Collections
Season 4, Chefs is here: we revisit the dynamic role of the chef in popular culture through culinary literatures, from 15th-century cookbooks to PBS television series.
Tasting: A Russell Stover head of an Easter Bunny (context provided, sort of).
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Host: Elizabeth McQueen Producer: Stace Baran Theme by Ronan Delisle Audio Support from Jenevieve Bohmann
Can baking brownies save the planet? I’m a little embarrassed I even wrote this question out, but this rhetoric exemplifies the argument of our esteemed guest’s new book: The Problem with Solutions: Why Silicon Valley Can't Hack the Future of Food (UC Press, 2024). For our final episode of this season, we are joined by Julie Guthman, Distinguished Professor of Community Studies Emerita at the University of California, Santa Cruz. W...
Authenticity. An idea that has plagued many conversations on food. This week, we are joined by Professor Ignacio M. Sánchez Prado, the Jarvis Thurston and Mona van Duyn Professor in Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis. We interrogate the role of authenticity in constructing Mexican national identity through another culinary idea: that of the taco. We discuss the taco’s malleable history across regions, including Taco B...
How are processed and natural contested categories - rather than objective definitions- of food? These questions are at the center of Professor Charlotte Biltekoff’s new book, Real Food, Real Facts: Processed Food and the Politics of Knowledge. Joined by a special guest, Dan Polsby of Best Friends Wine, to introduce our tasting and complicate “real” wine, we discuss food science, industry, and the Food Inc. documentaries.
Tasting: ...
We start off our third season featuring a conversation with Fabiola Santiago of Mi Oaxaca, exploring how indigenous knowledge is linked with mezcal and the colonial exploitation that occurs within Oaxaca today. From Mexico’s tourism board to the role of service and hospitality workers in disseminating knowledge around mezcal, this season, we are all about the big ideas that shape the esculent.
Viewing: Mexico Tourism Board’s 2014 c...
Back again. This season hosts four thinkers, shaping and questioning the ideas that make food esculent.
Reading: Excerpt from Professor Kyla Wazana Tompkins' new book, Deviant Matter (NYU Press, 2024)
Tasting: Kermit Lynch Wine Merchant: 2023 Coteaux du Loir Rouge “Cuvée du Rosier”
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Host: Elizabeth McQueen Producer: Stace Baran Theme by Ronan Delisle Audio Support from Jenevieve Bohman...
The celebrity chef is not a modern concept, as we discuss with Paul Freedman, Professor of History at Yale. Joined by podcast regular Professor Daniela Gutiérrez-Flores, we discuss early modern history, how food comes in and out of fashion, and what artistry might indicate in food history. And the conclusion of Season 2: Historians!
Professor Freedman specializes in medieval social history, the history of Catalonia, comparative stu...
What does it take to understand food historically? This episode takes a philosophical turn as Jeffrey Pilcher, Professor of Food History, joins the podcast to discuss what it means to study, write, and taste food history.
Jeffrey Pilcher is a Professor of History and Food Studies at the University of Toronto, Where he directs the Culinaria Research Centre. He is the author of several books, including Food in World History, 3d ed (2...
Corporate power is a relentless force in shaping how and what we eat. Join us this week with Professor Enrique C. Ochoa, author of the upcoming book México Between Feast and Famine: Food, Corporate Power, and Inequality, to discuss the role of corporations in constructing a thread of Mexico’s culinary history.
Enrique C. Ochoa is Professor of History and Latin American Studies at California State University, Los Angeles
Viewing: Di...
Much of food history is a history of trade: how crops, plants, and tastes move around the world. Professor Andrés Reséndez discusses a trade route often overlooked in the 16th and 17th centuries, that of the Manila Galleons, one that can be overshadowed by the intellectually exhausted narrative of the Columbian Exchange. We also eat corn puffs. And an extra special reading by poet Rick Barot from his book, The Galleons.
Is meat modern? We explore this question and more with a historical dive into human relations with animals across the Atlantic from 1492 (yes, that 1492). Professor Marcy Norton (University of Pennsylvania) brings insights from her new book, The Tame and the Wild (Harvard University Press, 2024) We discuss colonialism, Western concepts of esculent, and pre-colonial Indigenous life with animals in the Americas.
Tasting: Impossible ...
Welcome to Season 2: Historians! Dr. Shantel George visits Esculent from the University of Glasgow to discuss the history of the Kola nut, West African spirituality in food history, and community in research.
Tasting: Coca-cola
Viewing: Series finale of Mad Men, Season 7, Episode 14 (AMC)
Read more about Dr. George’s research and publications
Stay up to date with Esculent on our Instagram
Host: Elizabeth McQueen Producer: Stace Ba...
We are back! Season 2: Historians, is here. Join us for six episodes exploring food history: from research methods to turning points in the history of chefs to influential commodities and more.
Read more about Dr. Amr Shahat's research.
Stay up to date with Esculent on our Instagram
Host: Elizabeth McQueen Producer: Stace Baran Theme by Ronan Delisle Audio Support from Jenevieve Bohmann
A belated season trailer - we're still getting the hang of it. Listen to find out why season one begins with chefs, and get a hint at what is coming up in 2025! Cooking with Beer on Emeril Live, Food Network (Season 1, Episode 13, 2002) Chef's Table, Netflix (Season 1, Episode 1, 2015)
Stay up to date with Esculent on Instagram
Host: Elizabeth McQueen Producer: Stace Baran Theme by Ronan Delisle Audio Support from Jenevieve Bohman...
Our first live podcast welcomes Chefs Norma LIstman and Saqib Keval. Join us as we taste their historically complex dish of fermented peanuts, the first dish served at their restaurant, Masala y Maiz. Our conversation covers their commitments to radical transparency and rethinking the restaurant model, as well as the limits of representation in a capitalist system, including in their most recent appearance on Netflix's Chef's Table...
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