Sounds like an interesting theme. I don't think we have many culinary historians here (And I definitely am not one) so the best I can do for you is offer some ideas.
I recommend the website www.pass-the-garum.blogspot.com/ It's a blog dedicated to modern recreations of Ancient Roman cuisine. I've had the Parthian Chicken and it's a very delicious and distinct flavour.
You could also try looking into Indian and East Asian cuisine prior to the Columbian Exchange. It was very different to modern day food and drink due to the huge range new ingredients and species introduced by the Exchange.
Another possibility is to try recreate some of the Mayan civilization's drinks, namely their chocolate drink. It will have a different taste from modern day chocolate however as the Mayans prefered it cold and bitter. There is a link here.
I hope these ideas can help you with this task, good luck!
My position on this question is that virtually every food has historical significance. You can certainly go the route of re-creating dishes from historical eras. In that case, the links below should be helpful. You may also enjoy the BBC show The Supersizers Go…, which is available for free on Hulu. The hosts of that show attempt to re-create the food and lifestyle of various historical eras in Britain. Christopher Kimball, of America's Test Kitchen, also published a book a few years ago on his attempt to re-create a meal from the original Fannie Farmer cookbook, which you may find interesting as well. No doubt there are dozens of these. Someone may also have suggestions regarding specific meals eaten by historical figures at certain times, which might be a fun challenge to re-create.
But––and this may be a nerdy suggestion on my part––it might also be fun to plan a meal around some familiar commodity like sugar or coffee or wheat (or something else) and figure out what the deeper history of that food is as you research ways to prepare it. Sidney Mintz's Sweetness and Power is a classic commodity history that makes readers think about sugar in a completely different way. A quick look through his book would not only give you recipe ideas for sugar-related dishes, but could make for fascinating conversation about the relationship between your cake, slavery, the industrial revolution, and settler colonialism.
In the meantime, I'll just leave you with a quotation from the 1948 annual report of the Libby's company, which manufactures canned foods:
World War II proved again, as did World War I, that canned foods are indispensable to winning. In peace and in war they are far more than an important item in the diet. The American canned food industry, given its chance to grow under a system of free enterprise, has become one of the nation's greatest bulwarks against the enemies of freedom.
So it could be anything! Even Spam musubi -- a great way to think about the extension of American military power across the Pacific in the post-war era.
Sorry, we don't allow throughout history questions. These tend to produce threads which are collections of trivia, not the in-depth discussions about a particular topic we're looking for. If you have a specific question about a historical event or period or person, please feel free to re-compose your question and submit it again. Alternatively, you may PM /u/caffarelli to have your question considered for an upcoming Tuesday Trivia thread.