Culinary Historians | How the Humble Anchovy Flavored Western Cuisine

Event Summary

NOTE THIS EVENT HAS ALREADY OCCURRED

Date(s): Wednesday, March 18, 2026
Time: 6:00pm-7:30pm
Venue: Downtown Branch of AADL
Jump to Event Details

Event Description

This is the hidden story of a small but mighty fish, the anchovy, and its outsized role in shaping Western cookery. From French haute cuisine to mass-produced British condiments, anchovies have been essential to enhancing numerous dishes, and yet— depending on the time, the place, and who was eating them— they’ve also been disdained as worthless little fish, too small, bony and inconsequential for popular or elite consumption. Christopher Beckman, a researcher and author, leads a tantalizing voyage through French and British gastronomic history and across Europe and the wider Mediterranean world to show how the evolving and ambiguous status of anchovies provides surprising insights into the relationship between food, class and status.

Christopher Beckman was born in San Francisco and has a doctorate in Near Eastern archaeology. He has lived and worked in the Middle East, Africa, and Europe for over two decades, and his research focuses on the links between material culture and subsistence patterns. He is the author of A Twist in the Tail: How the Humble Anchovy Flavoured Western Cuisine (Hurst, 2024).