COQ AU VIN and steak-and-kidney pudding may not bring to mind the principles of evolution. Yet evolutionary mechanisms may well be reflected in recipes for these tried-and-tested dishes.
Physicist Antonio Roque of the University of São Paulo in Brazil and colleagues analysed thousands of recipes () drawn from the French Larousse Gastronomique, the British New Penguin Cookery Book, three editions of the Brazilian Dona Benta spanning nearly 60 years, and a medieval cookbook. When they looked at how often ingredients appeared in recipes and ranked them accordingly, they saw a precise mathematical relationship across the board between an…
