Food History

Rosie Belton has written a social history of food in New Zealand, a decade by decade look at what we ate, and how that food defined us. Audio

Professor Helen Leach has been studying hundreds of jam, pickle and chutney recipes in old magazines and cookbooks to uncover this country's hidden history of fruit and veg preservation. Audio

Erika Janik's written a global history of the apple. Also, Professor Julian Heyes of Massey University on New Zealand's hottest apple varieties, and how they get protected from counterfeiters. Audio

Spectrum offers a few tasty treats for Christmas lunch. Fancy some ginger gems, hot cheese scones, or colonial goose, cooked on a coal range stove? Justin Gregory is on hand when the old Shacklock… Audio

The history of pasta with Professor John Dickie of University College London, and we taste test a selection of penne pasta with Julie Clark of Floriditas. Audio

Sugar's history hasn't always been all that sweet. In the early days it was produced by slave labour and now it's implicated in obesity issues. Elizabeth Abbott's the writer of 'Sugar: A Bittersweet… Audio

Is there a New Zealand cuisine or have we been swept away into a miasma of 'Asian-Pacific fusion'? Food writers Helen Leach, Alexa Johnston and Ray McVinnie discuss with Lauraine Jacobs the state of… Audio

Cookbooks and Cultural Identity in the 20th Century. In this final Macmillan Brown lecture for 2008, Prof Helen Leach of the University of Otago exposes the way in which cultural identity can be… Audio

Cookery in the Colonial Era. Contact with the immigrants brought new types of kai and ways of cooking to Maori, explored by Prof Helen Leach of the University of Otago in the second of her 2008… Audio

Maori Cookery Before Cook. What impact did migration from a tropical homeland have on Maori cookery? They experienced drastic changes in their traditional foods, yet the rules that were part of their… Audio