That Fancy Coffee Made From Poop Is Real and Wildly Complicated
Kopi luwak is coffee made from beans civets eat and poop out, and yes the story tastes like luxury, guilt, and chaotic biology.Read More 
Truffle Oil: The Aristocrat of Fake Smells
We pay a small fortune for an imitation perfume that smells like the idea of a truffle, not the real thing, and we applaud ourselves for being discerning.Read More 
Hakarl: How Iceland Ferments a Poisonous Shark and Sells It With Swagger
They take a urea-soaked Greenland shark, bury it like a secret, dry it till the poison is gone, and then invite you to pretend the ammonia is 'flavor'.Read More 
They Soak Fish In Lye And Eat It
They take dried cod, bathe it in caustic soda until it turns to jelly, wash the death out and serve it with pride - proper daft, innit.Read More 
Vanilla Demands A Hand
Every vanilla pod outside Mexico is the result of someone politely playing bee with a stick and a deadline.Read More 
That Pepper That Makes Your Mouth Tickle Like An Ex
Sichuan pepper doesn't burn you - it twerks your nerves with a molecule called sanshool, and America once banished the stuff because it might bring citrus disease. Drama, darling.Read More 
How Rome Sweetened Wine with Lead
They boiled grape must in lead kettles to make 'sapa' and then merrily sweetened wine with the resulting 'sugar of lead'-a culinary shortcut that invited lead into every goblet.Read More 
Deer Horns in My Cookies? Actually Yes
There was a time when bakers literally boiled stag antlers to make the leavener that gives old-school cookies their ghostly crispness.Read More 
They Properly Eat Chalk And Call It Medicine
People in places like West Africa and parts of the American South chew white clay and calabash chalk for minerals and stomach magic - sometimes it helps, sometimes it poisons you, and it is dead odd to watch.Read More 
Pineapples You Could Rent, Mate
In the 1700s people hired pineapples like posh ornaments to show off at dinner and barely ate the things - proper daft flexing, innit.Read More 