Rare and exotic foods have favored positions in the canon of culinary aphrodisiacs. Consider the truffle, the piranha and the labor of harvesting a plate full of sparrow tongues. Foods from far-off lands have the spicy whisper of perilous adventure, and there’s nothing quite like a hint of mystery to stimulate the imagination. For example, Aztec concubines taught the conquistadors to drink hot chocolate; when the Spaniards carried the exotic substance across the sea to Europe, they brought with it the rumor that the drink was an aphrodisiac. And during the reign of Charles I, when rice was still a luxury in Europe, noble Casanovas swore by the improbable aphrodisiac of rice boiled in milk and flavored with cinnamon.

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What does our music say about us? When it comes to food, it says we have dirty minds. For example, Elvis cut “Milk Cow Blues Boogie” in 1955. It was his third record. Several country artists had already recorded the song, which is credited to a bootlegger and bluesman named Kokomo Arnold. “Milk Cow Blues” works perfectly as a blues, country and rock number, which illustrates how much the three types of music have in common when it comes to sentiment:

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Incongruous on the stately town square of Dolores Hidalgo, Guanajuato, the baile is but one of many unexpected mini-fiestas we’ve encountered as we travel through Mexico during the winter holidays. The grotesque dance is a far cry from the yuletide tableaus we’ve come to expect in the U.S., but perhaps no less bizarre: adult men dressed as women with huge asses versus adult men dressed as “Christmas elves”? Who’s to say? Although I never found out exactly what the dance in Dolores Hidalgo signified, it is likely a holdover from the wild holiday traditions of ancient Europe and Mexico.

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In keeping with American tendencies, Thanksgiving is a bastard holiday, cobbled together from homegrown traditions and the hokey imaginings of 19th century writers, along with actual historical facts. The facts are thus: The “first American Thanksgiving” was probably observed in the South, not at Plymouth, and it would have been a day devoted to prayer, not pie. As for the famous Plymouth pilgrims? The settlers that staggered off the Mayflower to strike up a miserable township on the rocky shore did not call themselves pilgrims. At the time, they were known by cagier names: separatists (religious idealists) and strangers (various dreamy and desperate characters the separatists had recruited in order to swell their meager ranks and coffers). The settlers wore colorful clothing and did not favor buckles, though they did sport the tall broad-brimmed hats, which you may remember from your elementary school days.

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Although tricks and treats have been part of Halloween tradition for ages, October 31st didn’t become a candy-centric holiday until the 1950s, when aggressive marketing campaigns began to tell Americans a different story about All Hallows’ Eve. And naturally, the story was about candy. Perhaps this is appropriate. Our larger story as a people is, in a sense, a story of candy.

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Despite his service as legislator, the governor of Virginia, minister to France, secretary of state, and president of the United States, Jefferson likely believed his famous statement: "The greatest service which can be rendered any country is to add a useful plant to its culture." In honor of the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, we explore the author's lesser-known contribution to American culture: his influence on the country's culinary tradition.

In an era when red meat and rum predominated, Jefferson directed his prodigious intelligence toward his health. Dinner with Jefferson sounds like dinner with Pollan because much of Pollan's manifesto "In Defense of Food" could be taken directly from the Jefferson playbook: exercise daily, use high-quality olive oil, don't overcook vegetables, practice moderation with complex carbohydrates and red meat, drink wine in moderation, eat plenty of fresh local organic vegetables.

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Although Coney Island is at the epicenter of hot dog history, the dog did not originate on the boardwalk. The lowbrow snack is the bastard American descendant of sausages brought to the New World by immigrants from Germany and Austria (hence the origin of a word that has been getting a lot of press lately: "wiener," which stems from the name of Austria's capital, Vienna, or Wien). Sausage vending was a relatively inexpensive home business for upwardly mobile immigrants, and by the 1860s, the strolling meat purveyors were a fixture of urban street scenes. On September 1894, the Duluth News Tribune described a visit to Chicago:

More numerous than the lunch wagon is the strolling salesman of "red hots." This individual clothed in ragged trousers, a white coat and cook's cap, and unlimited cheek, obstructs the night prowler at every corner. He carries a tank in which are swimming and sizzling hundreds of Frankforters or Wieners. These mysterious denizens of the steaming deep are sold for five cents, which modest charge includes an allowance of horseradish or some other tear-producing substance.

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As a Yankee, I wouldn't dare to pontificate on the contentious history of barbecue as a food -- better leave that to the Southerners. But as an enthusiast of grilled meat and backyards, I certainly feel qualified to hold forth on that other use of the word "barbecue": the outdoor cookout.

As far as popular human activities go, roasting animals over outdoor fires is right up there with sex and fighting. Every culture has some version of the pursuit -- from the Argentinean asado to the traditional Hawaiian luau. Rituals and traditions swirl around grilling, from the profound (ancient Hawaiians roasted the pig as an offering to the gods) to the prosaic (Dad's famous beer-based barbecue sauce). The word "barbecue" was introduced to the American colonies from Haiti and originally referred to the grilling rack, and then to the meat itself. By 1733 it also denoted a social gathering that revolved around roasting an animal. By 1931, Northerners and Westerners would be using the word to describe any outdoor event involving meat and coals. (Incidentally, the word "asado" has a similar dual meaning in South America, where it used to describe a grilling technique and a social function.)

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Danny was just down from the mountains of Jalisco. The jug came straight from a little distillery in the town of Tequila, Jalisco, which sits on a hill above rolling fields of agave -- the domain of the ancient Cuervo and Sauza families, and home to hundreds of better distilleries. As Cinco de Mayo draws near, our thoughts drift to this tequila Valhalla and it seems an appropriate time to spill some ink on the drink beloved to sophisticates and sorority girls alike. 

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Rum is wicked with the taste of burnt sugar. The warmth of rum is not the fiery burn of whiskey but rather the decadent breath of the jungle. To drink rum is to indulge in indolence made possible by back-breaking labor. A good rum drink evokes not only the whisper of palms, but the creak of great sailing ships, and the slash of machetes in the cane. Do I drink rum to celebrate its legacy of brutality? No. But I'm a history nerd, and if I have the time to sit around and drink a rum cocktail, the activity is made more enjoyable by contemplating the layers of nuance shadowing a beverage that more often awakens images of simple sloth and excess: deck chairs, azure waters, paper umbrellas, spring break in Cabo.

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But what the hell is a Chicken Ring? Even the McNugget, that apotheosis of food facsimile, is stamped out of its processed chicken-amalgam paste to resemble "random" cuts of chicken; it tries to look like a food that may exist in nature (if nature had a deep fryer). But rings? It's like the White Castle people were like, "You know what? Fuck nature. Fuck it. Make the chicken into fucking rings."

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And, well, I can understand his righteous indignation. This is a hell of a sandwich town. The king, of course, is the once-humble po' boy, that torpedo of goodness barely contained by crisp, fluffy bread. Southern Italians invented the muffuletta, with its salamis and cheeses and chunky, lusciously oily olive salad. Then there are the oyster loaves, Vietnamese po' boys ... I mean, look: the typologies are strong.

So if you're going down to JazzFest this weekend -- or any other time – take some time to wander the halls of the New Orleans Sandwich Hall of Fame. Here's the first round of inductees, and a guide to where to eat them. And give us your nominees to the Sandwich Hall of Fame -- in New Orleans or elsewhere -- in the comments!

The Ur-Po' Boy: French Fry Po' Boy

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The history of the po' boy -- New Orleans' answer to the sub, hero and hoagie -- is like all creation myths, maybe a bit murky. There's controversy around the edges, but most people seem to agree that the po' boy was invented by the Martin brothers, Clovis and Bennie, who owned a restaurant and coffee stand in the French Quarter in the 1920s.

When the city's streetcar conductors organized a strike in 1929, the Martins, former conductors themselves, offered to feed any hungry strikers who came their way for free. To do so, they contracted with a baker, John Gendusa, to make exceptionally large, rectangular-shaped loaves of bread that they could fill quickly and cut into sandwiches big enough to feed the strikers and their families.

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"My Irish family never ate corned beef," the letter began. I'd just written a story about new immigrants in Queens, called "Where Curry Replaced Corned Beef and Cabbage," and a reader was gently protesting my mention of that stereotypical dish.

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In 1987, Poppy Tooker was running a cooking school in New Orleans when the Audubon Zoo asked her to cook for an exhibition, because, well, in New Orleans, there can be no event without food. She served calas, a sweet rice fritter she picked up from one of her teachers, the Creole chef Leon Soniat. "They were delicious and fun to make, so I liked them, but I didn't know they were special," she told me.

An older black gentleman picked one up, walking away. He came back a few moments later, weeping. "My momma used to make these when I was a boy," he said to her. "I forgot all about them until now."

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But what's "it"? Because while chef Peng is universally credited with inventing a dish called General Tso's chicken, he probably wouldn't recognize the crisp, sweet, red nuggets you get with pork fried rice for $4.95 with a choice of soda or soup. All that happened under his nose. It all got away from him.

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A reader, Duc N. Hoang, sent me a very thoughtful, very angry e-mail:

"How can you compare the indignity and suffering the Vietnamese went through during the French occupation to coffee? How can you say that colonialism is somehow excusable and acceptable to you because we now drink coffee? Can we say that the Spanish conquistador who annihilated the Native American is somehow acceptable because Europeans brought wine to Native Americans?"

My comment about colonialism was a joke, of course, and I apologize to anyone whom I've offended. But in that joke lies something else I hoped to express: that the history of colonialism and occupation is also fundamentally a history of cultural -- and therefore culinary -- exchange.

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I understand if you need to walk away right now to get a cup, because even just the mention of this stuff has that effect on people.

But for those still with us, imagine a short glass with a hard dose of sweetened condensed milk, the color of ivory and the texture of hot fudge. The glass wears a metal top hat, a filter with grounds and water, which dribbles in drops of thick coffee, crude-oil black and nearly as bitter. They sit, stacked in two layers, until you take a spoon and give it a turn. For a moment, the coffee and milk swirl around each other, hesitating before coming together, a phenomenon smarter people than me call sensitive chaos. You take a sip, and the sweetness hits first, full and rich. Then your mouth dries a bit, like the tide pulling back, and coffee leaves a mellow bitterness. You take another sip, and suddenly everything is right with the world.

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"They’re called virgin’s breasts," my friend translated. I admire that. Why go for the double entendre when the single will do?

But they’re not sexy pastries, even if they are rounds of sponge cake piled with sweetened ricotta and covered in marzipan. They’re devotional, an homage to Saint Agatha, patron saint of the Sicilian city of Catania. A beautiful if uncomfortably young virgin, Agatha caught the attention of Quintianus, the local Roman prefect. And, as early Christian stories go, it’s rarely a good thing when you catch the attention of the local Roman prefect. (This means things are going to get gnarly, so be warned.)

So Quintianus tried to kick it with Agatha, but his game was wack. Agatha’s heart belonged to Jesus, and that doesn’t make for a very competitive love triangle. And whatever charm he did have, he didn’t show it by banishing Agatha to a brothel, run by the incredibly named Aphrodisia.

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