855: Retro Recipes with Bobby Hicks & On Taste with Davide Risso and Gabriella Morini

This week, former bartender turned culinary historian Bobby Hicks joins us to talk about his passion for retro cooking. He gives us a history lesson on how recipes evolved thanks to industrial advances, and explains the thinking behind his redos of post-World War II-era recipes, like his carrot croquettes. Bobby Hicks is the author of Retro Recipes: Vintage Dishes with a Modern Twist (amazon.com/Retro-Recipes-Vintage-Dishes-Modern…), and he left us with an amazing recipe for Tomato Aspic (splendidtable.org/story/2026/08/28/tomato-aspic). Then, we turn to the science behind human taste with Italian scientists Davide Risso and Gabriella Morini. They talk about distinguishing taste from flavor, how humans use a combination of senses to taste, how preferences change over time, and how understanding the fascinating taste preferences of animals (mosquitoes!) helps us understand taste in humans. Davide Risso is a molecular biologist with a PhD from the University of Bologna, and Gabriella Morini is a professor of taste and food sciences at the University of Gastronomic Sciences of Pollenzo, Italy. They co-authored On Taste in Humans and Other Animals. (amazon.com/Taste-Animals-Traditions-Perspectiv…)

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Broadcast dates for this episode:

August 28, 2026 (originally aired)

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