Make me a simple, scrollable website titled Foods from Necessity to Luxury: A Time Machine Through the Kitchen. Paste the entire text of this essay onto the homepage: Foods from Necessity to Luxury: Why Your Leftovers May Be Tomorrow’s Lobster When I walk into my kitchen, I don’t see a gallery of sacred artifacts. I see ingredients that beg to be reimagined. A can of chickpeas? A soup, a hummus, a crispy snack. Leftover rice? The foundation for fried rice, arancini, maybe onigiri. My cooking is not dictated by orthodoxy, but by what’s available—by necessity. And this philosophy isn’t modern rebellion. It’s historical continuity. Many of the dishes we now serve atop white tablecloths, that we order with reverence or reproduce with YouTube precision, were born not of indulgence but of survival. Their elevation—from scraps and substitutes to status symbols—is a journey that traverses class, culture, and time. This paper is a time machine through that journey. It is tempting to believe that culinary excellence was always intentional—that today’s delicacies were always destined for glory. But that is a fiction, and a dangerous one. In tracing the histories of dishes like sushi, carbonara, foie gras, lobster, ramen, oysters, and fried chicken, I aim to recover their origins in scarcity, war, toil, and improvisation. These dishes are reminders that creativity thrives under constraint. And as a home cook, I argue this should liberate us from culinary orthodoxy. Recipes are not commandments—they are records of innovation born in context. Finally, since our class engages with “time travel” as both method and metaphor, I will turn forward and ask: what foods today might make their own ascents from mundane to mythical? What will tomorrow's fine dining canon remember of our leftovers? Sushi did not begin in Michelin-starred omakase counters. Long before it was associated with pristine fish and precise knife work, it was a preservation method. Its earliest ancestor, narezushi, emerged along the Mekong River centuries before the Common Era, where people packed fish into fermented rice to delay spoilage. The rice itself was discarded; the value lay in the pickled protein, its longevity vital in a world without refrigeration. From Southeast Asia, the technique made its way through China and into Japan, where by the 8th century it appeared in imperial records. As Japanese tastes evolved and food production became more localized, the technique slowly transformed. By the Muromachi period, vinegar was added to the rice to mimic the sourness of fermentation and make the dish more immediately edible. This practical tweak marked a shift—from preservation to pleasure. By the Edo period, this evolution had accelerated. The urban working class in bustling Edo (modern-day Tokyo) demanded quick, affordable meals. In response, a cook named Hanaya Yohei is said to have created nigiri sushi in the early 19th century—an unfermented, hand-pressed mound of vinegared rice topped with fresh fish. It was designed for convenience, sold at roadside stalls, eaten without utensils, and wrapped in paper for portability. There was nothing sacred or elite about it. Sushi, in this form, was fast food for laborers. Onigiri, too, speaks to this history of practicality. The rice ball, often overlooked in sushi’s shadow, is in many ways even more ancient. Archaeological evidence of charred rice clumps has been found in Japan’s Ishikawa Prefecture, dating back to the Yayoi period (300 BCE–250 CE). These rudimentary onigiri were ideal for farmers and soldiers alike: easy to carry, simple to prepare, filling, and durable. Literary records in the 8th-century Hitachi Fudoki and the diaries of court ladies in the Heian era reveal that onigiri was a staple not of feasts, but of function. It traveled through time not as a delicacy, but as a trusted companion in lunchboxes, wrapped in bamboo leaves, eaten quickly before returning to work. And yet today, in Japanese konbini (convenience stores), onigiri is carefully packaged in engineered plastic sleeves that preserve the crispness of the seaweed. Fillings range from salted plum to soy-marinated wagyu. What was once rustic is now refined. This arc—of humble, utilitarian food becoming aestheticized, even fetishized—appears again and again across the culinary world. In postwar Italy, another classic was born from constraint: carbonara. Its current reputation might suggest a centuries-old recipe, fixed and revered. In truth, the dish likely emerged during the Allied occupation of Italy in the 1940s. American soldiers brought with them powdered egg rations and bacon. Italian civilians, facing shortages and desperate to feed their families, folded these foreign ingredients into pasta, adding local cheese and black pepper when available. The result was hearty, high-calorie, and deeply satisfying. The story that the name comes from “carbonari,” or coal miners, is often repeated, but likely apocryphal. More accurate is the image of a war-torn city adapting to its new, uncomfortable abundance: military surplus. That carbonara now sits at the center of heated debates over authenticity—whether pancetta is acceptable, or if cream is an unforgivable sin—is, frankly, ironic. The dish’s very origin lies in flexibility. As a home cook, I’ve made carbonara with poached eggs instead of raw yolks, scallions when I lacked black pepper, or parmesan when I couldn’t find pecorino. And it’s always delicious. But to suggest such substitutions publicly often invites ridicule. We idolize tradition while ignoring how those traditions were born—through scarcity, improvisation, and necessity. Nowhere is this irony starker than in the case of foie gras. Today, it is a lightning rod for ethical debates and a stand-in for decadence, served in small portions on white plates in high-end restaurants. But its roots are ancient and surprisingly practical. As early as 2500 BCE, Egyptians noticed that migratory birds gorged themselves before long flights, storing fat in their livers. By restraining and force-feeding geese, they replicated this biological impulse for human consumption. The Romans took the technique further, feeding geese figs to sweeten the liver. The practice spread across the Mediterranean and found a home in medieval Jewish communities, particularly in Alsace, where kosher laws forbade cooking with lard or butter, making rendered goose fat a crucial substitute. Foie gras, in that context, was not a luxury—it was a solution. It provided dense calories in the winter, and the liver, though rich, was only one component of the bird's use. It wasn’t until the 18th and 19th centuries, under the influence of French gastronomic nationalism, that foie gras was elevated to the realm of delicacy. By then, its humble, ethnic, even diasporic history had been scrubbed away. Prestige, once again, was built atop the scaffolding of practicality. A similar transformation happened along the rocky coasts of the Atlantic. In colonial New England, lobster was viewed with disdain. It was so abundant that it washed ashore in heaps after storms. Farmers used it as fertilizer, and it was fed to prisoners, indentured servants, and children. Some colonies even passed laws limiting how often one could be served lobster per week—it was seen as inhumane. Oysters, too, were plentiful and cheap. In 19th-century New York, oyster cellars were ubiquitous and democratic: spaces where dockworkers, immigrants, and sex workers gathered to eat salty bivalves pulled from the Hudson River. What changed was not the food, but the context. As industrial overharvesting depleted oyster beds and lobster populations, these once-plentiful foods became scarce. Scarcity bred exclusivity, and exclusivity attracted the upper class. With the help of railroads and refrigerated transport, lobster was rebranded in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a delicacy for inland diners. Oysters migrated from cellar dives to marble countertops. The same oyster that once cost a few cents became an object of terroir, paired with champagne and accompanied by tasting notes. Luxury had not changed its ingredients—only its story. These rebrandings are not isolated. Consider ramen: today, it is just as likely to be found in a 7-Eleven cup as in a Michelin-starred restaurant. Its beginnings, however, are a product of cross-cultural mingling and urban necessity. Chinese laborers introduced hand-pulled wheat noodles to Japan in the late 19th century. In the port city of Yokohama, Japanese cooks adapted these noodles to local tastes, adding soy-based broths, miso, and eventually pork bones. The dish evolved rapidly during Japan’s modernization and urbanization, especially in the postwar era when food scarcity forced communities to stretch every resource. Cheap, filling, and fast, ramen became a staple of the working class. By the 1950s, Momofuku Ando had industrialized it, inventing instant noodles—one of the most enduring food products of the modern world. Today, ramen is revered both for its convenience and its complexity. Some shops age their soy sauces like wine, simmer broths for 48 hours, and import custom wheat from Hokkaido. That these elevated versions coexist with styrofoam cups costing less than a dollar does not diminish either. Instead, it reveals how class, context, and cultural narrative mold the meaning of food. So too with fried chicken. Its story is less about elevation than about multiplicity. The frying technique came to the American South with Scottish immigrants, but it was enslaved Africans who seasoned it, perfected it, and turned it into the icon it became. It was cheap, portable, and could be eaten cold, making it a practical food for laborers and travelers. It also became central to Black culinary identity—served at family gatherings, church socials, and Sunday dinners. Over time, it was commodified by fast food chains and later reclaimed by chefs seeking to honor its roots. But fried chicken never belonged to just one tradition. Korean varieties double-fry and lacquer the bird in gochujang glaze; Japanese karaage marinates it in ginger and soy; West African versions stew it in tomato and onion sauce before crisping it in oil. What all these dishes share is not technique, or ingredients, or even culture. What they share is a trajectory: from necessity to luxury, from survival to symbol. They began not with abundance, but with hunger. And that, more than anything, is the legacy I want to honor in my own cooking. Against the Cult of Authenticity Too often, we fixate on the idea that food must adhere to some original or “pure” form to be considered legitimate. We use words like “authentic” as if they were objective measures of quality, when in fact they are highly subjective constructs—laden with nostalgia, nationalism, and marketing. What gets called “authentic” is rarely the first version of a dish, but rather the version most familiar to dominant cultural narratives or institutionalized in cookbooks. To chase authenticity is often to chase a mirage—a selective memory frozen in time. This pursuit becomes particularly suffocating in a globalized world where ingredients and techniques cross borders constantly. When food becomes anchored to authenticity, creativity is punished. A ramen bowl that swaps pork for mushrooms is deemed “inauthentic,” even if the substitution is in the same spirit of resourcefulness that defined the dish in postwar Japan. A curry that uses quinoa instead of rice gets dismissed, even though both are grains serving the same function of absorbing spice. Instead of asking whether something is authentic, we should be asking: does it nourish? Does it make sense in context? This false reverence for authenticity also reproduces anxiety, especially in home cooks. Recipes become commandments rather than starting points. Deviations feel like violations. I’ve cooked meals where I’ve substituted whatever green I had in the fridge for the specified herb, not because I was trying to “innovate,” but because I didn’t want to waste food. And yet, I’ve found myself hesitating to share such meals with others, afraid of being seen as disrespecting tradition. That fear is a product of how rigidly we police culinary boundaries. But history doesn’t support this rigidity. Sushi was once a preservation method. Carbonara was war-time improvisation. Fried chicken was a confluence of Scottish frying and African seasoning. These foods were never about fidelity to a script; they were about working with what was available. They were about survival, adaptation, and flavor. If anything, the true spirit of authenticity lies in that impulse—to feed, to adapt, to create. As a home cook, I take comfort in that lineage. I rarely follow recipes to the letter, not out of rebellion, but because I recognize the wisdom of the past not as fixed law but as guidance. Cooking, for me, is a conversation with ingredients and time. It is seasonal, situational, intuitive. The dishes I make may not be “authentic” in the orthodox sense, but they are honest—and that, to me, is a deeper form of truth. Ultimately, food should not be a museum piece. It is not sacred in the way monuments are. It is sacred in the way language is—always changing, always alive. And if we are to truly honor culinary history, we must also give ourselves permission to extend it. What Will Become Gourmet? If the past teaches us anything, it’s that food ascends the social ladder not through inherent value, but through shifting contexts. Lobster was once fed to prisoners. Oysters were working-class snacks. Ramen was fast food. So the question becomes: what food of today might be reinterpreted—fetishized, reinvented, and elevated—by the taste-makers of tomorrow? Spam musubi is a compelling candidate. Currently associated with Hawaiian convenience stores and military rations, it carries a stigma of being processed, lowbrow, inelegant. And yet it is deeply layered: a postwar fusion of American and Japanese influence, cheap but satisfying, portable, nostalgic. In the hands of a Michelin-starred chef, the rice could be seasoned with yuzu and black garlic; the spam could be house-cured, seared, and glazed in umeboshi syrup. This is not hypothetical—it is already happening in places like Los Angeles and Tokyo. The reinterpretation is less reinvention than rediscovery, a way of saying: “this was always worthy of attention.” Canned beans, too, may rise. They are shelf-stable, sustainable, high-protein, and affordable. In a future shaped by supply-chain fragility and climate change, these qualities will become virtues. We may see heirloom varieties of chickpeas auctioned like rare wines. We may see chefs fermenting navy beans, using bean broths for sauces, or layering cannellini purées into $100 tasting menus. Much like fermentation has returned to high-end kitchens, preservation may be reimagined not as compromise, but as craft. Instant noodles might become the vintage vinyl of food: mass-produced, democratic, and now—retro-cool. Imagine a ramen bar in 2075 showcasing discontinued Nissin flavors from 2023, each dish a curated artifact of nostalgia. This kind of elevation is not absurd. It is historically consistent. Foods become luxury when scarcity, memory, or reinterpretation grants them cultural value. Plant-based ingredients once seen as inferior or transitional—like jackfruit, seitan, or lentils—may emerge not as substitutes, but as stars. Jackfruit might be prized not because it mimics pork, but because its fibrous texture and tropical notes offer something unique. Lentils may become the centerpiece of New Nordic dishes. Already, restaurants like Eleven Madison Park have reorganized their tasting menus around vegetables, not meat—a move driven by both ethics and aesthetics. And then there are cultural factors. As more regions of the world enter culinary conversations long dominated by European or East Asian paradigms, we might see West African stews, Filipino canned sardines, or Appalachian pickled beans elevated not through Western validation, but through a shift in global cultural capital. Today’s comfort food may become tomorrow’s avant-garde. But more provocatively, we might also see luxury redefined altogether. As climate instability threatens conventional agriculture, taste may follow necessity once again. Foods that require little water, that can be preserved for months, that grow in unpredictable climates—these will gain not just nutritional value, but cultural prestige. Millet, sorghum, moringa, amaranth—all ancient grains, all once marginalized—may become the cornerstones of tomorrow’s “gourmet.” In the end, food becomes luxurious not because of what it is, but because of how it is positioned. The lobster did not change; our view of it did. And if time is the ultimate seasoning, then every humble meal today is simply aging—waiting for its moment. Style it like a clean historical zine—nothing too fancy, just readable fonts, nice spacing, and a subtle “time travel” or retro-food theme. Include a footer that says: Created by Connor Deng for History 181J: Time Machines with Professor John Gaddis. All citations available upon request.