The pioneering food writer and historian talks of her fear of running out of words – even as she is writing her 22nd book

My lunch companion is a living institution. Self-taught cook, traveller, recipe collector, historian and anthropologist Claudia Roden has reshaped how we think about food, its cultural heritage and social meaning.

It’s not just celebrated chefs such as Yotam Ottolenghi and Moro’s Samantha Clark who pay tribute to her pioneering work. The historian Simon Schama once observed that “she is no more a simple cookbook writer than Marcel Proust was a biscuit baker”.