Examining the Hangover Cure in the Western “El Dorado”: Was Asafoetida Known in the Old West?

For some forgotten reason, I recently watched the 1966 Western El Dorado. It’s one of the better Westerns I have seen, with more humor and a lot less racism than the typical Western (though there’s a short cringe-worthy stereotyping of a Chinese person near the end). The film has a top-notch cast and crew: the […]

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A Curry Powder Recipe from 1818

The Universal Receipt Book - 1818 - curry powder recipe - splice of pages 153 and 154

On one of the rare occasions when the Bloglovin’ web interface works with my complicated browser set-up, I ran across a fascinating piece of data visualization. It was a Data Visualization of Eight Flavors from the Four Pounds Flour blog in which the author used the Google Ngram Viewer to highlight the eight flavors in her […]

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Curry Leaves

Murraya koenigii (curry leaf) tree

(Updated 10/2/2016:  fixed broken links)   The above photo of a Murraya koenigii (curry leaf) tree (taken at the Singapore Botanic Gardens) is certainly not the most exciting or artful of my photos, but it is an interesting plant. The curry leaf tree is not the source of curry powder, and not even the source of […]

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