ABSTRACT
Culinary culture is a complex human achievement, often having a long history. Cooking and eating habits take root in groups of people who are exposed to certain established foods and ways of preparation from infancy. These practices become contagious to other groups of people. In this respect, culinary cultures resemble plagues, for they often affect people living far from the locus of infection. Ideas, habits and artefacts in the production and consumption of food, once invented, tend to spread widely throughout time and space. Thus they may flourish far from the point of origin, even globally. There are, however, important differences between the diffusion of culinary cultures and disease. One distinction is the apparent rule that people adopt culinary cultural elements only if they experience them as being palatable. In the case of plagues, one has to speak of involuntary victims of germs, rather than active adapters inclined to new experiences.
