Not Just Stew · The atlas · Contents
Open the atlas with search and your kitchen

The atlas

Where each cuisine came from, what shaped it and how to cook it, region by region. Every dish as tradition built it, then what a modern chef would change. Every claim sourced from inside the tradition, and the ones we could not stand behind, named.

Ingredients: 466 entries

West Africa Central Africa The Horn North Africa East Africa and the Islands Southern Africa The Levant and Anatolia The Gulf and Arabia Persia and the Caucasus The Indian subcontinent The Sinosphere Mainland Southeast Asia Maritime Southeast Asia Korea and Japan Central Asia and the steppe The Mediterranean Iberia France and the Alps Central Europe The Nordics and the Baltic The Slavic east and the Balkans Britain and Ireland Mesoamerica The Caribbean The Andes Amazonia The Southern Cone North America Mainland Brazil Aotearoa and Australia Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia

The food worlds the atlas has written, drawn without borders. Every one is in the list below.

Africa

Not a cuisine, and not fifty four cuisines either. A set of ecological bands, where the cooking changes as the land does.

21 volumes · 228 dishes

West Africa

The Atlantic coast, the forest belt and the palm

Central Africa

The Congo basin and the seed thickeners

The Horn

Highland ferments and the Red Sea trade

North Africa

The Mediterranean, the Nile and the Sahara

East Africa and the Islands

The Indian Ocean monsoon world

Southern Africa

Maize, relish and the most layered plate

Asia

From the Levant to the Sinosphere. The largest and most internally various region in the atlas, and the one that will need splitting hardest.

57 volumes · 533 dishes

The Levant and Anatolia

Wheat, olive, yoghurt and the mezze table

The Gulf and Arabia

Rice, dates, dried lime and the monsoon trade

Persia and the Caucasus

Rice as craft, sour fruit as seasoning

The Indian subcontinent

Too large to be one region. Will need splitting.

The Sinosphere

Likewise. Eight cuisines at least, not one.

Mainland Southeast Asia

Rice, fish sauce and raw herbs across four borders

Maritime Southeast Asia

Coconut, chilli and the spice islands

Korea and Japan

Ferment, dashi and the discipline of restraint

Central Asia and the steppe

Wheat, mutton and the noodle road

Europe

A Mediterranean that behaves as one food world, and a north that does not. Borders help here even less than they do elsewhere.

37 volumes · 360 dishes

The Mediterranean

One food world, many flags

Iberia

The Atlantic edge, cured pork and the Moorish inheritance

France and the Alps

Not one cuisine. Alsace and Provence share only a border.

Central Europe

Pork, cabbage, paprika and the long winter

The Nordics and the Baltic

Preserving as the founding technique

The Slavic east and the Balkans

Sour, smoked and fermented

Britain and Ireland

The one this atlas is written from, and owes the hardest look

The Americas

Mesoamerica, the Andes and Amazonia are three unrelated food worlds inside one landmass, which is the clearest case anywhere for this structure.

43 volumes · 421 dishes

Mesoamerica

Nixtamal, chilli and the oldest maize technology

The Caribbean

Indigenous, African, Indian and indenture on one plate

The Andes

Potato, quinoa, altitude and freeze drying

Amazonia

Cassava again, and a forest larder barely written down

The Southern Cone

Beef, fire and the Italian migration

North America

Regional cuisines, not one. Indigenous foodways first.

Mainland Brazil

Dendê, cattle interior, cerrado dairy and coffee, not one country-sized cuisine

Oceania and the Pacific

Indigenous foodways as their own subject rather than a footnote, and the largest ocean on earth treated as a region rather than a gap.

14 volumes · 121 dishes

Aotearoa and Australia

Maori and Aboriginal foodways as the subject, not the garnish

Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia

The earth oven, taro and the largest ocean