Comfortably Hungry

Don’t miss the special episode on The Watercress Queen to celebrate International Women’s Day (8/3/26) - released on Thursday 5th March.
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Don’t forget you can follow me on Instagram or Bluesky @mrssbilton or find out more about my work on sambilton.com.
A huge thank you to Thomas Ntinas of The Delicious Legacy for doing the sound mixing on this season of the podcast.
Comfortably Hungry is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



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Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries curious yellowish-white waxen lumps encased in the remnants of wooden containers have been unearthed from Irelands peat bogs by turf cutters and farmers. Some specimens weigh several kilos. Many are thought to date back thousands of years to the Bronze age, when the people of Ireland buried supplies of butter.
Maeve Sikora, Keeper of Irish Antiquities and Isabella Mulhall Assistant Keeper of Irish Antiquities from the National Museum of Ireland (NMI) in Dublin join me in this episode to tell us more about bog butter.
If you enjoyed the podcast you can become a paid subscriber to the Comfortably Hungry Substack (which means you’ll receive additional content) or show your appreciation by leaving a small, one off tip here.
Useful Links
National Museum of Ireland in Dublin
Butter Museum in Cork
‘A History of Bog Butter in Ireland’ by Maeve Sikora and Isabella Mulhall in Irish Food History: A Companion (2025)
Don’t forget you can follow me on Instagram or Bluesky @mrssbilton or find out more about my work on sambilton.com.
A huge thank you to Thomas Ntinas of The Delicious Legacy for doing the sound mixing on this season of the podcast.
Comfortably Hungry is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit comfortablyhungry.substack.com/subscribe

In today’s episode we will be journeying back thousands of years to ancient Mesopotamia, the land between the rivers Euphrates and Tigris. I will be exploring arguably the earliest beer culture in the world with Dr Tate Paulette archaeologist and Associate Professor of History at North Carolina State University. Tate is also the author of In The Land of Ninkasi: A History of Beer in Ancient Mesopotamia.
If you enjoyed the podcast you can become a paid subscriber to the Comfortably Hungry Substack (which means you’ll receive additional content) or show your appreciation by leaving a small, one off tip here.
Useful Links
In The Land of Ninkasi: A History of Beer in Ancient Mesopotamia by Tate Paulette (2024)
You can watch a short video from Yale University about Babylonian cooking over on YouTube.
There Are Rivers in the Sky - Elif Shafak (2025)
Don’t forget you can follow me on Instagram or Bluesky @mrssbilton or find out more about my work on sambilton.com.
A huge thank you to Thomas Ntinas of The Delicious Legacy for doing the sound mixing on this season of the podcast.
Comfortably Hungry is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit comfortablyhungry.substack.com/subscribe

In Episode 4 I chat to food writer Di Murrell about her experiences with her husband Tam of living and working on canals in Britain and France. Canals were played an essential part in how food and fuel was transported around Britain but it is a way of life that has all but disappeared. Among their various roles Di and Tam were involved in transporting limes in the depths of winter to cordial manufacturer Roses on what was known as the ‘lime run’. Forget messing about on the river - working life on the canals was truly hard graft.
If you enjoyed the podcast you can become a paid subscriber to the Comfortably Hungry Substack (which means you’ll receive additional content) or show your appreciation by leaving a small, one off tip here.
Useful Links
You can find out more about Di and Tam’s canal adventures on the A Foodie Afloat website or on her more recent blog Written In My Kitchen.
Petits Propos Culinaires the journal which gave Di her first break in food writing is now published by Equinox (and edited by me!). Di has published several articles in the journal over the years.
The Sophie Coe Prize is the longest-running and most generous prize for writing in food history in the English language, given once a year for an essay or article of up to 10,000 words on any aspect of the history of food. Entries for this year’s award close on 24 April 2026.
You can discover more about Britain’s waterway history at a number of canal museums across the country such as London, Stoke Bruerne and Ellesmere Port or by visiting the Canal & River Trust
Suggested Reading
* Barges & Bread: Canals & Grain to Bread & Baking
* A Foodie Afloat
The following aren’t about working life on the rivers but are fun reads to get you in the mood:
* The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Graham (1908)
* Three Men and a Boat - Jerome K Jerome (1889)
* An Inland Voyage - Robert Louis Stevenson (1878)
Don’t forget you can follow me on Instagram or Bluesky @mrssbilton or find out more about my work on sambilton.com.
A huge thank you to Thomas Ntinas of The Delicious Legacy for doing the sound mixing on this season of the podcast.
Comfortably Hungry is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit comfortablyhungry.substack.com/subscribe

In Episode 3 I discuss what borsch means to Ukrainians with activist, chef and author Olia Hercules who recently published her family memoir Strong Roots. We chat about how water has shaped Ukraine and why it is so important for this proud nation to reclaim their national dish.
If you enjoyed the podcast you can become a paid subscriber to the Comfortably Hungry Substack (which means you’ll receive additional content) or show your appreciation by leaving a small, one off tip here.
Useful Links
You can find out more about Olia and her events on her website and follow her on Instagram and Bluesky.
Olia’s books include:
* Strong Roots (2025)
* Home Food: Recipes to Comfort and Connect (2022)
* Summer Kitchens (2020)
* Kaukasis (2017)
* Mamouska (2015)
Chef Louis P de Gouy, quoted at the start of this episode, trained under August Escoffier and had a sterling career working in luxury hotels before becoming the in-house chef for Gourmet magazine. In his Soup Book was published posthumously in 1949, two years after his death.
Don’t forget you can follow me on Instagram or Bluesky @mrssbilton or find out more about my work on sambilton.com.
A huge thank you to Thomas Ntinas of The Delicious Legacy for doing the sound mixing on this season of the podcast.
Comfortably Hungry is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.



This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit comfortablyhungry.substack.com/subscribe