What makes someone a historian

They are curious, methodical, rational, analytical, and logical. Does this sound like you? Take our free career test to find out if historian is one of your top career matches. The workplace of a historian is one of focus and quiet. Many historians spend most of their time in offices at colleges or universities, in libraries, or in classrooms.

They may do some travel to historical sites or archives for research purposes. Historians are also known as: Professional Historian. What is a Historian? What does a Historian do? So much was done in the '70s and '80s. This is just a whole new way of looking at things that no one has thought of before.

It's completely virgin territory, twenty years ago. Some types of food histories have been saturated. The single subject food book, there's just so many of them, every single topic's been done. There's books on salt, peanuts, milk, saffron, corn, pizza, everything's been covered. And now, there's nothing left in that sub-genre of food history. But in food books in general, there's another book published every day. Albala: Several things.

Like any history, it tells you about people's preferences and fears. Since most people made their living making food or processing food, it's a big part of history that's been left out since people were focusing on war and politics and things like that. Another, and this is more from the culinary history side, is that we study music and art history, but really don't think about what people ate and why.

And I think that just understanding the aesthetic value of the past food is completely new territory. That also includes food in art, in literature, music. We're sort of missing that whole aspect of people's lives. For me personally, it's also like traveling to another country and finding new flavors and new ways of combining things and new cooking techniques that are, I think, very interesting if people follow the cookbooks faithfully.

They don't, usually. To follow the recipes exactly, sometimes it's difficult because you don't have the same ingredients or heat source or cooking utensils, but the recipes always work when you follow them. What was the most fascinating discovery you made while digging through the old food literature?

Albala: One that was a revelation for me was a recipe in a book called "The Good Housewife's Handmaid for the Kitchen," which was , I think. There was a recipe for a rabbit cooked in a pipkin. And I tried it, it's basically just a cut of rabbit, onions, and raisins, and a little half cup of verjuice, which is the juice from red grapes. Put it into the pot and it cooks. And I remember saying, this is going to burn. With that little liquid, it's going to burn. And I tried it, and it burned.

What I realized was I actually had to use an actual pipkin, a clay vessel which is rounded on the bottom with three legs and a handle that sticks out, and you use a stick to lift out of the fire. I made one of those, and then it worked fine. Like, how did this work? And the recipe specifically calls for the vessel. The result of this is that not only did it not burn, but it's an amazing recipe.

It's exquisite. I would never had made sense of that recipe without following exactly what it said. Want recipes and food news emailed directly to you? Sign up for the new Food newsletter here! Artbound Start watching. Fine Cut Start watching. SoCal Wanderer Start watching. Earth Focus Presents Start watching.

Begin typing your search term above and press enter to search. Press ESC to cancel. Skip to content Home Philosophy When can you call yourself a historian? Ben Davis July 4, When can you call yourself a historian? When an argumentative essay a historian refutes possible counterclaims in order? Which strategy would a historian most likely use? What are factors that can affect the point of view of a history writer? How does history impact society? Why we should know our history?