Literary scholar Rebecca May Johnson earned her PhD studying Homer’s Odyssey, but now she’s analyzing a new kind of text: Marcella Hazan’s tomato sauce recipe. Johnson reveals how studying a recipe isn’t all that different from studying Ancient Greek, and what you can learn from cooking the same recipe a thousand times. Plus, Hetty McKinnon celebrates vegetables and her father's legacy in her latest cookbook, Tenderheart; Kenji López-Alt and Chris close out their egg-peeling debate with help from our listeners; Dan Pashman cements tinned fish as much more than a passing fad; and we prepare Chicken Fatteh from Jordan.

Questions in this episode

"Can I continue to reuse the oil from my fried chicken?"

"I'm allergic to mushrooms. Are there alternative vegetables I can use to achieve the same umami flavor?"