Of power, pleasure and the past
There is a quiet joy in reading a book that is short, engaging and visually rich without sacrificing substance. Pan Macmillan India’s Edible series offers just that—concise, accessible histories of foods and drinks that have shaped human experience across centuries. While each title in the 10-book-series is a standalone exploration, I found myself particularly drawn to three of them: Saffron by Ramin Ganeshram, Chocolate by Alexander Badenoch and Sarah Moss, and Cocktails by Joseph M Carlin.
The books trace the global journey of three indulgent substances, revealing unexpected connections between the world’s most precious spice, its most beloved indulgence and its most spirited libations. In doing so, they reveal how even the most refined flavours have been touched by commerce, conquest and cultural change.
Food and drink, at their heart, are stories—of human ingenuity, global exchange, and even conflict. In Saffron, Ganeshram charts the remarkable story of the world’s most expensive spice. Often literally worth its weight in gold, saffron has left its mark on civilisations across millennia. Ganeshram begins with saffron’s origins, possibly in ancient Greece, and follows its spread via early trade routes. Saffron’s role was never limited to the kitchen. The book highlights its ceremonial, medicinal and cultural significance; it appears in cave art, the frescoes of Santorini, the dyed wrappings of Egyptian mummies and the robes of Buddhist monks. Alexander the Great bathed in it to heal his wounds. It played a part in ancient cosmetics. Its vibrant gold hue and scent made it a symbol of power, purity, and sensuality.
Ganeshram explores the spice’s far-reaching impact, from shaping cuisine to sparking trade wars. The book offers helpful tips to spot real saffron in a market full of counter-feits. What emerges is not just the history of an ingredient but a global narrative of desire and luxury.
In Chocolate, Alexander Badenoch and Sarah Moss take the reader on a journey that begins in Mesoamerican temples and ends in supermarket aisles. The book opens with the early use of cacao by the Mayans and Aztecs, who drank it and used the beans as currency.
From there, the story moves to Europe, where Spanish explorers introduced cacao in the 16th century. Over the centuries, chocolate shifted from a sacred and elite ritual drink to a sweetened commodity embraced by European high society. The book also examines how the Industrial Revolution transformed chocolate from a luxury into a mass commodity, concurrently “whitening” its image by associating it with milk, innocence, childhood and domesticity.
The authors also trace chocolate’s enduring associations with love and pleasure—it has long been considered an aphrodisiac — and its prominence in cultural moments. But they also address its darker sides: its deep entanglement with colonialism, the use of slave labour in historical cocoa production and the contemporary concerns around ethical sourcing.
It also investigates the gendered marketing of chocolate, specifically how it was sold to women and as a representation of women’s sexuality, which frequently appears in popular culture as a substitute for sex.
Cocktails tells a different kind of story—of invention, leisure and transformation through taste. Carlin traces the cocktail’s roots to the 17th-century rum punch, a five-ingredient concoction popular in England and the American colonies. He identifies 1806 America as the moment when the “cocktail” took its modern form, spirits, sugar, water and bitters.
From there, the cocktail becomes a symbol of modern life. The book shows how American taverns were key to the cocktail’s rise, aided by innovations like mechanically harvested ice.
Carlin examines the cocktail’s global spread, initially via American travellers, and later through the establishment of “American Bars” in European cities. But his book also covers the cultural phenomenon that followed: The cocktail party, the cocktail dress, even cocktail-themed foods and political terms like the “Molotov cocktail.”
The books do not shy away from harder truths. Saffron’s market is rife with counterfeiting and labour issues. Chocolate’s legacy includes slavery and ongoing questions about fair trade. The cocktail’s glamour is built, in part, on colonial histories and gendered rituals. The series does not attempt exhaustive analysis; it opens windows onto bigger stories of how taste is made, how luxury travels, and how even the most pleasurable items can carry complex, sometimes uncomfortable, histories.
Individually, each book tells a focused story. Together, they reveal the astonishing global lives of ingredients and inventions that many of us take for granted. What unites these volumes is their economy and charm. The writing is accessible without being simplistic and the format encourages curiosity. The books are illustrated with rich visuals (most of them coloured) that ground the history in material culture and include recipes for those who want to try more of these culinary delights besides reading. The finer things in life, these books suggest, are not just delicious; they are deeply, often unexpectedly, revealing.
This article was originally published in the September 1-15, 2025 print edition of Down To Earth