Rachel Laudan
Rachel Laudan is a food historian, author of the prizewinning Cuisine and Empire: Cooking in World History.
Early life
Laudan grew up on a traditional family farm in South West England. Her father was Cambridge-educated and his opinion of farming as "the highest calling" could well have been carried by his daughter as she moved through life. Laudan's mother was the traditional image of a farmer's wife and cooked three meals a day for the family and the farm workers, every day of the year. This idyllic picture was noted by Laudan in an interview with The Austin Chronicle in 2013 where she comments "It created drudgery for my mother". Her mother cooked everything from scratch and despite Laudan not being forced to help her mother cook, or her father with the farm-work, she grew up surrounded by the food processes of farm to fork. A much repeated memory during interviews with Laudan tell of her father experimenting with grinding wheat to make his own flour. He removed the husks and then attempted to grind the grains by pounding with a pestle and mortar, followed by feeding the wheat through a meat grinder and eventually striking it with a hammer on a flagstone floor.However, Laudan was drawn more towards history as a subject, which she attributes to her awareness of "living in history" while growing up. From finding flints and artefacts from Roman times scattered around the farm to playing in the cloisters of Salisbury Cathedral, Laudan felt connected to the history around her. Consequently, after time spent in Nigeria with the Voluntary Service Overseas at the age of 18, she returned to study geology at Bristol University. Moving to University College London she attained her Ph.D. in History and Philosophy of Science in 1974.