A Brief History of Hummus

During the years when Ariel and I attended culinary school together, back in the early ’90s, the word “hummus” came up only once. It was during French class: “In French, the word for hummus is pois chiche,” the teacher said, instructing us on how to say “chickpea,” which, in fact, is what “hummus” means in Arabic. Someone laughed, said it rhymes with hashish, and that was more or less the extent of the conversation. It wasn’t a part of the syllabus, nor was it an ingredient that we used in the school’s kitchen. We didn’t even eat hummus outside of our studies, although food was our entire world. Twenty-two years later, when Ariel and I met with the designer Dan Alexander to dream, plan, and create a book about hummus, it happened, of all places, in Paris.