Food can have a transportive quality that can transcend where or when you are and take you somewhere and sometime else. However, food’s histories and transcendent qualities are never only personal.

Krystal Marsh eats her way across history

Using these recipes privileges cultural memory and tradition over efficiency and precision. Thus, we participate in the ritual of cooking not as a means of scientific inquiry or perfection, but to strengthen the community ties that bring us together at the table.

Alexandrea Pérez Allison on cookbooks and modernity.