Take a trip down the annals of gastronomic history with Eaten. Discover old recipes and explore centuries of cooking, eating, and the people involved, in a series of essays and interviews, paired with a healthy serving of vintage illustrations.

Issue 27 of Eaten is devoted to ‘Temptation’ and the age-old human habit of yearning for the unattainable. Discover how desire, appetite and prohibition have long been entwined at the table, shaping what we crave precisely because we are told we cannot have it.

Features include an essay on pork in Ottoman culture and the westernisation of Istanbul’s kitchens, tracing the irresistible pull of the forbidden, all the way to a sausage-stuffed cassoulet; an article on Playboy magazine, ‘where erotica met the ingredient list’; and a trio of essays on reproduction and aphrodisiacs, and the long search for food that stirs the senses. Elsewhere, a history of the melon and its reputation as an emperor killer, an irony given the vast sums spent on acquiring it.