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Welcome to Editor's Notebook and the world of food history. Here is where we post all the information that goes stale quickly in print. Come back weekly (at least). Here, too, you can read about your fellow subscribers to FHN. Be sure to page down for our conversations from the past two or so months. There are book comments at the bottom. If you have something to tell about, click on "Contact Us" above or right here at editor@foodhistorynews.com. I like hearing from you! Cheers -- Sandy Oliver. February 1, 2010 In this issue: Last print Food History News has gone out. Clarissa Dillon's website. Nancy Baggett to regale ChoW on Valentines. Gourmet's collection goes to Fales. Prospect Books publishes symposia papers. Great Migration and Southern cooking in NYC. Food History Symposium. Happy Candlemas. The last printed version of Food History News went into the mail last Monday and many of you have received yours by now (providing you subscribed and if you didn't, it is too late.) This issue was dedicated to an exploration of samp, hominy, and posole and in the doing of it, I came to understand why I had not made a frontal attack on it sooner. I will endeavor to keep news here on this page as I have done for sometime, sometimes more regularly than others. General website improvements are in order-we are up to 1400 or so museums in the directory, the resources page needs fixing up, and lots of additions. I have posted the footnotes for FHN80 and will gradually add others from past issues. Please do keep coming back. Our Clarissa Dillon of Haverford, PA, has a website. Clarissa, hearth cook extraordinaire, garnered her PhD from nearby Bryn Mawr by writing about women's work in colonial Pennsylvania, has been a friend of Food History News and of me since the beginning. She has had, however, to be dragged kicking and screaming into the twentieth century so the fact of her website http://www.clarissadillon.info/ is truly remarkable. For heaven's sakes, visit it so she knows it is worthwhile. In actual fact, Clarissa was one of three causes of FHN's existence. She proposed to ALHFAM members that there be a way of sharing information. I thought that was good idea. It took two more good ideas though to push me over the edge into publishing. Nancy Baggett stays on top of food trends with more tenacity than anyone else I know, and at the same time has a great deal of curiosity about the past. She will speak to the Culinary Historians of Washington, DC (ChoW) on Sunday, February 14, 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. about "Evolution of the Romantic Heart Shape and Flavors of Valentine Confections." ChoW meets at the Bethesda/Chevy Chase Regional Services Center, Meeting Room A, 4805 Edgemoor Lane, Bethesda, MD. This is a free event, no reservations necessary. Nancy has just authored Kneadlessly Simple-Fabulous, Fuss-Free No-Knead Breads, dedicated to the no-knead bread phenomenon started by the New York Times a couple years ago, and I noticed, adopted immediately by all the bona fide intellectuals I know. When Gourmet Magazine closed up shop in October, their collection of 3,500 reference books were acquired by New York University's Fales Library. Author Rozanne Gold donated $14,000 to buy the collection. You probably know that Gourmet was a venerable publication, one of the earliest food magazines. Prospect Books published proceedings from the 17th Leeds Symposium held in York, England. Usually held on some April weekend, the Leeds symposium is more intimate than the Oxford one. This set of proceedings was edited by Ivan Day and has an essay by an American, Susan Plaisted, who held forth on baking in bee hive ovens. To see more about Over a Red-Hot Stove you can visit Prospect's website: http://www.kal69.dial.pipex.com/shop/system/index.html. Prospect still keeps wonderful stuff coming. I don't know how they do it, and probably Tom Jaines who keeps it glued together doesn't know either. "The Great Migration & Southern Cooking in New York City" is the topic on February 18, 2010, at the Museum of the City of New York, in partnership with the Southern Foodways Alliance and Mississippi Development Authority/Division of Tourism. Jessica Harris, author of a forthcoming history of African-American foodways, and one of the 50 founders of the Southern Foodways Alliance will lead the discussion, focusing on how The Great Migration transformed the culinary culture of the North. She will be joined by Ted Lee, one of the James Beard award-winning Charleston Lee brothers who is working on a book of essays about New York City food culture. The work will certainly examine the influence that South Carolina natives have had on New York, but at its core, the book will be a celebration of the multicultural delights of our nation's culinary capitol. John T Edge will moderate the discussion. For more information visit here to learn more about the event and purchase a ticket. Third Annual Historic Foodways Symposium: The theme this year is "Meats...for the use of the table,…". The date is Saturday, February 27, 2010, from 9:00am- 7:30pm to be held at the Pennsbury Manor (Morrisville, PA). Speakers and topics include: Of Turtles, Catfish, & Other Great Philadelphia Foods: The Archaeology of Philadelphia's Culinary Past, 1750-1850 - Teagan Schweitzer, Ph.D. candidate- Univ. of Penn. Domestic Animals in Colonial North America- Barbara Corson, VMD. 18th & 19th Century Hog & Beef Butchering and Meat Preservation Before Refrigeration - Dave Miller, Historian & Butcher. The $75 registration fee includes a resource packet, light breakfast, lunch featuring period-correct dishes, potluck dinner, optional tour of Pennsbury Manor, and access to some well-known historians. We have also arranged for a select group of sutlers to sell their wares during the course of the program. New this year after the formal presentations and tour of the site, is an optional potluck dinner featuring sausage made using an 18th century recipe, a hearty soup, and other items brought by you and your fellow attendees. Deborah writes, "We hope you will join us, even if you are not able to travel with food... do not worry! There will be plenty for all! The nearby Hampton Inn & Suites has agreed to offer a special discount for attendees of the program…a double room with two double beds for $89.00/night + tax (normally $139.00!).You must make your own reservations with the inn before Monday Feb. 22. Call 215-860-1700 (use code DPP). To register on line, please visit www.deborahspantry.com or print out forms to register. Telephone registration also accepted. Happy Candlemas on February 2. Americans call it Ground Hog's Day and have concocted a silly fiction about the winter being half over if a wood chuck does or doesn't see his shadow. Candlemas marks the halfway point between the winter solstice and the vernal equinox and I am here to tell you than winter is half over tomorrow whether ground hog or no. We customarily observe the day with a meal of all-island produced food. On the menu will be turkey, lobster, crab quiche, onion pie, carrot slaw, baked and venison-sausage-stuffed potatoes, baked apples and goodness knows what else. No cheese because we have no cows. The drinkables are tame unless someone makes wine. January 19, 2010 In this issue: Wining, Dining and Lobbying.Chocolate in archaeology. Historic apples in Australia. Free popcorn wagon. Penelope Bingham. Oxford Symposium 2010. Cul. Hist. of Atlanta. Wining and dining are and have been components of the lobbyists trade from Year One. In her biography of Sam Ward, King of the Lobby: The Life and Times of Sam Ward Man-About-Washington in the Gilded Age, Kathryn Allamong Jacob lays out in luscious detail how Sam combined food (menus provided) wine, and interesting and influential people to help his clients as he lobbied for all sort of legislation in Washington during the years after the Civil War. He lived well, avoided corrupt practices, and was wildly successful. A New York paper in 1876 reported, "As a lobbyist he holds that the first step towards inducing a senator or representative to vote in any desired way is to clear his judgment and vanish his prejudices by a comfortable dinner." The details of this method are marvelous, and Sam, whose sister was abolitionist Julia Ward Howe and whose best friend was poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, is a fascinating character. Kathryn Jacob's day job is at Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute of Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, as Curator of Manuscripts, and the author of two other books, one about Washington elites post Civil War. The details: King of the Lobby: The Life and Times of Sam Ward Man-About-Washington in the Gilded Age, Kathryn Allamong Jacob, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, ISBN: 13: 978-0-8018-9397-1 $40.00. See the website. Evidence of chocolate beverage making during the 1500s cropped up in a St. Augustine, Florida, archaeological dig recently. A molinillo, used to froth the cocoa, was found in a well in an area of the city associated historically with street vendors, according to the article in the St. Augustine Record. It is a find unique to this part of the country and implies historical connections to Mexico and Central America whence the cocoa beans would have been brought. Historic apple varieties are being preserved by the National Trust of Australia who concluded that food heritage deserved preservation as much as historic buildings. They have propagated several rare heirloom varieties and are selling plants to home gardeners to grow. Among the 18 varieties are Winter Banana, King Cole, Coral Crab, Adams Pearman, Beauty of Bath, Chenango Strawberry, Cox's Orange Pippin, Devonshire Quarrendon, Gooseberry Pippin, Huon Belle, Magnum Roundways Bonham, Peasgoods Nonsuch, Pittmaston Pine, and Pomme de Neige. Some of these names will be familiar to heirloom apple fanciers in the States, a heritage we share with Australia thanks to our shared English origins. In the U.S. similar efforts are underway by the Renewing America's Food Traditions coalition, Slow Food, and various apple preservation groups and orchards. Meanwhile, free popcorn wagon, anyone? The U.S. National Trust for Historic Preservation has posted information on its website about a 1916-era popcorn wagon that is free to a good home. In Milwaukee. WI, on Downer Avenue, the popcorn wagon was removed to make room for a new parking garage, but the owner, Michael Eitel, has no plans now to replace it. Too much cost and bother associated with bringing it up to health codes. Penelope Bingham of Chicago, IL, a Food History News reader, is a Road Scholar for the Illinois Humanities Council. She is presenting cookbook-themed programs across the state. For example, she was in Fowler, IL, to talk about "Who Cooks? American Cookbooks and Changes in Gender Roles" in a program sponsored by the Fowler Development Association. In this newspaper interview, Penelope discusses some of her observations about community cook books, for example, noting the increased informality with first names (Jane Doe) instead of full titles (Mrs. John Doe), about shifts in ingredients from scratch to manufactured products in ingredients, and even shifts from cookbooks directed entirely to women, to those addressing either a male or female cook. Oxford Symposium 2010 has announced its topic and call for presentations. The Symposium has been shifted form its traditional early September slot to July. This year July 9-11, and it will be located at Oxford University's St. Catherine's College (St. Catz).The theme is Cured, Fermented and Smoked Foods, and featured plenary speakers this year include anthopologist Sidney Mintz, food writer Harold McGee and food historian Ivan Day. Patsy Iddision's email says, "Anyone may propose to present a paper at the Symposium. Prospective authors should submit a 500-1000 word abstract setting out your ideas and showing your main lines of argument by Monday, 15 February. Please include your contact details and send it via email to: editor@oxfordsymposium.org.uk." Virtually everything you need to know about the symposium and attendant activities will be found here. Culinary Historians of Atlanta will meet January 20, 2010 at 7:30 p.m. Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts, 1927 Lakeside Parkway, Tucker, GA, 30084. They are planning a Swapmeet. Organizer Deb Duchon wrote "Bring a kitchen item to swap. For instance, an old cookbook that you don't use anymore. An extra knife or whisk. A gadget that someone gave you (re-gifts accepted). Extra placemats, napkins, pots/pans -- anything kitchen related. I'm bringing some parsley plants. Totally voluntary." The program will be a panel discussion of the new book, Eating History, by Andrew F. Smith with panelists Glenn Mack, Le Cordon Bleu, Chef Carlin Breinig, Home Cooking Personal Chef Service, Dr. Roger Dickerson, Georgia Tech; each will speak about one chapter in the book. This program is free and open to the public. Their next meeting will be February 23, 7:30 pm at Le Cordon Bleu and Deb herself is the speaker. Her topic is "Chocolate in the Wake of Christopher Columbus," with a chocolate tasting to follow the presentation. There will be a small charge, ca. $5, to cover the cost of the chocolate. January 6, 2010 In this issue: Eating History'sGood stuff . Schnitzels in Washington. Syllabub for New Year's. a 1940's kitchen up for grabs. Lyceum Symposium on food history. Peacock-Harper Culinary History Friends celebrate 10 years. Baguette History. Rare breeds conservation. Eating History, Andy Smith's new book has some fine chapters that I think are dead-on right. I admire his first one on the Oliver Evans Mill and its influence on subsequent milling techniques. Chapter Two in the Eire Canal seems right on, too, and I love Chapter 5 on Cyrus McCormick. Chapter 8 on Gail Borden and canned milk is very convincing, well documented. Just so you know that I don't have problems with the whole book…I'll keep reporting as I read along. Schnitzels are the topic this week for the Culinary Historians of Washington, DC (January 10, 2010, 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.) with speaker Tom Weiland. "The Search for the Elusive Schnitzel" is open to the public and is a free event, no reservations necessary. ChoW meets at the Bethesda/Chevy Chase Regional Services Center, Meeting Room A, 4805 Edgemoor Lane, Bethesda, MD. Information on the meeting reports that "the word "Schnitzel" has been around for about 150 years, but the concept of flattened meat goes back much further. But how much further is the question. Weiland will explore its Mediterranean and Middle Eastern roots, and the definite, the probable, and the possible of Schnitzels. A military operations research analyst and a food hobbyist, Weiland has collected over 1,500 Schnitzel recipes and is finishing the draft of what he hopes will be the definitive Schnitzel book." A schnitzels biography gives us something to look forward to. FMI www.chowdc.org. Syllabub was on Martha Katz-Hyman's menu last weekend. She wrote in the ALHFAM list serve, "Just to let everyone know that I did make syllabub for New Year's, and it was good! I think if I were to make it again, I would use a sweeter wine. I had some gewurtztraminer in the refrigerator and used that, and it's a bit dry for a dessert. But the proportions worked fine, it separated into the foam and the wine, and it was delicious!" I personally love syllabub and make it about once a year because it takes me a month to work off all that cream. It's nice to see a Golden Oldie like this getting aired. Martha wrote for Food History News and is a consultant for museums collections management and furnishing plans and such like. A 1940s kitchen on Long Island needs a home. "I am posting this request for a homeowner in Huntington, NY (Long Island) who has a 1940 kitchen including original metal cabinets, stainless steel countertops, & original stove for donation. If interested email me with your contact info ASAP. The house is due to go to closing this week." From Karen Martin, Huntington Historical Society. martin @ verizon.net The Lyceum, Alexandria's History Museum, is hosting "Food For Thought: A Food History Symposium", a daylong event will take place from 9 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. on Saturday, January 23, at The Lyceum, 201 South Washington Street. The registration fee is $50. Advance registration is encouraged and can be done online at www.alexandriahistory.org or by calling 703.838.4994. Those wishing to register the same day should arrive no later than 8:45 a.m. Participants will have a break for lunch on their own. FMI and to register: www.alexandriahistory.org or call 703.838.4994. Speaker line-up: Helen Tangires, Administrator of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art in Washington on "Public Markets and Civic Culture in Nineteenth-Century America". Tangires is the author of Public Markets and Civic Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003) and Public Markets (W.W. Norton, 2008). Marcy Norton on "Chocolate - The Indian Drink, 1500-1700." An associate professor of history at The George Washington University, Norton, is the author of Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World (Cornell University Press, 2008. Barbara Magid, Assistant City Archaeologist for the City of Alexandria, on "Pottery for Alexandria Kitchens". Magid, the top authority on Alexandria pottery is the author of several studies of Alexandria pottery, including five articles in Ceramics in America (Chipstone). Michael Twitty on "African-Virginian Foodways in Alexandria and the Potomac Region" Twitty, a culinary historian who is completing his undergraduate degree in African-American studies and anthropology at Howard University, is the proprietor of Afrofoodways.com and the author of Fighting Old Nep: The Foodways of Enslaved Afro-Marylanders 1634-1864 (Michael Twitty, 2006). Elaine Hawes, an independent researcher with an M.A. in American studies from the University of Delaware on "Everyone Can Afford a Cracker: The Rise and Fall of George Hill's Alexandria Bakery" Hawes has worked for a variety of art and historical agencies and lectures widely on American material culture, with a concentration on the material culture and related commercial development of Alexandria Peacock-Harper Culinary History Friends based at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA, will be celebrating 10 years of existence this year. Our own Nancy Carter Crump will be the main speaker at a program on March 12, 2010. Cindy Bertelson says, "Details later." The baguette and the croissant have both been "prime targets for colorful invention," according to Jim Chevallier, of North Hollywood, CA, who wrote back in July: "It was fun reading your site's remarks on fake food history, some of which is similar to my own remarks on baguette history." His interest led him to write a book about the croissants and then, in a follow-up, an on-line article about baguettes. "Either, I imagine, may interest you: www.chezjim.com/books/zang.html and www.chezjim.com/books/baguette. He remarked, "By the way, I try to correct some of this when I see it around the Web, but the effort is not always appreciated. One major food company responded to my list of corrections this morning with "What a geek!". Well, let's hear for food history geeks. Culinary historian Barbara Wheaton once told me that it was worth getting stories clear because it is better the view the world through clean eyeglasses than ones besmirched. A rare breeds conservation program in Rhode Island made it into the New York Times this week. A cryopreservation project, the SVF Foundation, a heritage livestock preservation project in Newport, RI, underwritten by a Campbell Soup heiress, breeds various rare animals--sheep, goats, cattle--captures the embryos, freezes them and when called for thaws them for implantation in host mothers. Because so many modern animals are bred for consistency and because there are so few different sorts compared to past times, animal husbandry, like plant husbandry, is vulnerable to a disastrous disease breakout or some other stressor that an early breed could survive or resist. The foundation's work keeps those strains of animals viable so if we need to rebuild stocks we have the genetic material to do it. The American Rare Breeds Conservancy working with Slow Food, has also conducted animal preservation. The food connection here is that if there any commercial value to the animals at all, that is, if we eat them, then there is reason to keep them going. This has worked spectacularly well with heritage turkeys, by the way. December 31, 2009 In this issue: Happy New Year. CHAA sets winter schedule. My Eating History Problem. In the pipeline: Dessert History. Deborah's Pantry Symposium. Happy New Year to all of you. May the field of food history make great strides this year, achieve greater clarity, and increase in camaraderie. CHAA, the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor, have set up their winter schedule. On Sunday, January 17, 2010, Jules Van Dyck-Dobos Chef-owner of Le Dog in Ann Arbor will be the speaker. On February 21, author Cynthia Furlong Reynolds will speak onher book "Jiffy": A Family Tradition, Mixing Business and Old-Fashioned Values. CHAA will meet Sunday, March 21, at Zingerman's Roadhouse (2501 Jackson Avenue, Ann Arbor) to hear Managing Partner Ari Weinzweig talk about his new book, Zingerman's Guide to Better Bacon. My Eating History Problem: Let's talk about chapter nine, entitled, "The Homengenizing War." Andy Smith asserts several things here that I don't think pan out. One is, page76, "Prior to the Civil War, by far the most interesting regional cuisine had flourished in the South." First of all, I don't think that there was a Southern regional cuisine prior to the Civil War - I don't think there was any regional cuisines anywhere prior to the Civil War, please see Rethinking Regionalism in Food History News # 72 It was gentry cuisine and it was widely shared in the North and Mid Atlantic, anywhere there was wealthy enough elites to provide it. It certainly flourisihed before the Civil War and it faded away among and along with the gentry in the South after the War. On page 78, "When the Northern armies occupied the South during and after the Civil War, Union soldiers got their first taste of southern foods which many missed aftern their return home." Andy cites peanuts, which I will grant him, and he also cites fried chicken, gumbo, jambalaya, rice, sweet potatoes, and barbecue. He writes, "The distinct local foodways in the North and the South began to mingle and meld." During the Civil War food in the South was terrible. There was less and less and it was of terrible quality for soldiers and civilians alike. During Reconstruction the great poverty that spread across the South tended I think to underline local foods and isolate the South. In the post war years, the South became more Southern because of the poverty and isolation and it did not become more homogenized until the twentieth century when it became more prosperous. I have yet to read a letter or journal of a Northern soldier who fondly recalled and longed for Southern food once he was back in the North. I just haven't seen that. So it is OK by me if Andy wants to assert this but I want to see the evidence-I want to read the quote from Johnny Yank that says, "I haven't had good fried chicken and sweet potatoes since the War." If you have seen such a thing, let me know. But besides that, sweet potatoes and rice were no strangers to Northerners and barbecue, gumbo, and jambalaya remained strangers until the twentieth century. The Civil War did not initiate the mingled and melding that occurred later. Now in this same chapter he offers up some other homogenizing factors: legislation namely the Homestead Act, and the creation of the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture and Pacific Railway act. These seem to be genuine homogenizing factors - in a more significant way than the Civil War. I wish he had left the war out of this and just concentrated on the legislation. A history of dessert in America is in the pipeline - Stephen Schmidt who wrote for Food History News several times and conversed with me many more has been laboring away at this book for nearly as long as I have known him. I am so happy to hear that he is addressing the copy edited pages of it now. Hallelujah! this book is going to straighten out lots of things, and reveal the wonderful deep stories of many more. Stay tuned. December 15, 2009 In this issue: FHN80 written. Leni's blog. Walter Staib cooking at Monticello. Persephone Books and Mrs. Rundell. What CHoW has planned. Eating History keeps me awake. Ten more baking and singing days till Christmas FHN80, the last print version of Food History News is off being copy edited by our own Mona Dunn. I finished the writing on Sunday December 13 and also wished that I had gobs more room to discuss this everlastingly interesting and difficult samp/hominy/posole business. There are dots to connect on this topic and it is going to take a bunch more people and a willingness to work cross-disciplinarily (fat chance) to get a comprehensive picture. I suggest how. The nub of the problem is the many early colonial references to corn preparation that do not mention the use of ash lye. These are side-by-side with scattered references to the use of ash lye. My question has always been what was going on? Who learned what from whom, and when and where? Clearly someone learned something because in the 19th century, seemingly all of a sudden, the process is very common. I had help on this from Leni Sorensen at Monticello in Virginia and Cheryl Foote in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Leni looked at hominy and Cheryl at posole. I looked at a computer screen until tears ran for references from the Jesuit Relations (what a nightmare those are), at Indian captive stories, and turn of the 19th to 20th century ethnological reports. I think there is a good deal more out there to examine. Leni Sorensen has a blog that you might be interested in: The View from Indigo House" . Leni travels and speaks to school kids and others about the intersection of culinary history and modern life, about Thomas Jefferson's kitchens, gardens and slaves. Walter Staib, chef of City Tavern, in Philadelphia, recently published a book, The City Tavern Cookbook: Recipes from the Birthplace of American Cuisine and went to cook in the recently restored kitchen at Jefferson's Monticello's for a PBS television called "A Taste of History." Apparently there will be/have been four episodes of cooking as Staib prepares dishes served in the 18th and early 19th centuries to people such as Jefferson, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin. You can read more about this at this site. Needless to say, I feel a bit apprehensive. Modern commercial promotion requires such erroneous titles as "Birthplace of American Cuisine" - envision me grimacing - and the sight of a white chef in chef whites in kitchens occupied formerly by hard working black people. Yuk. I haven't seen this series - it hasn't aired in Maine. Mrs. Rundells New System of Domestic Cookery, 1816, has been reprinted by English publisher Persephone Books. This cookbook was also printed in the U.S. The website also has comments on this page about Hannah Glasse and others. CHoW, the Culinary Historians of Washington D.C., have set up their spring schedule of meetings. On January 10, Tom Weiland will speak on "The Search for the Elusive Schnitzel". Our own Nancy Baggett speaks on February 14, about the "Emergence of the Romantic Shape and Flavors of Valentine Confections." Then on March 4, a very special treat: a tour of the Library of Congress's rare book holdings on gastronomy led by Mark Dimunation, Chief Curator. Fred Czarra will speak March 14 on "Spices of Life: The Savory Story of the First Global Marketplace." The groups annual Cooperative Supper, usually a meal with an historic theme, is set for April 11 from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. Then on May 2, Barbara G. Carson's talk "Ambitious Appetites" will address the political aspects on dining in D.C. during the Federal period. Carson's book by the same name is a wonderful piece of work, by the way. For more about CHoW, please visit this site. Eating History, Thirty Turning Points, by Andy Smith, was going to be my bedtime reading. I figured I'd read one turning point a night for a month. I can't do it. I get too agitated to read it before sleeping. Sometimes I find that Andy's work is right on the money, and other times I get so exasperated that I lay awake for a half hour writing a refutation. Maybe after the holidays I can try to explain what I think works and doesn't. Ten more baking and singing days till Christmas. I know we are supposed to be out boosting the economy with our gift buying. One blessing of living on a Maine island is the remarkable lack of malls. Our Sewing Circle has lovely things to buy (place mats, teddy bears, kiddie caps, baby sweaters (some manufactured by me), and quilts. The Pre-school has a fair where crafts are available along with wreaths, centerpieces, and stuff like that. The two grocery stores have Useful Things in the food and house ware lines and you can always give your friends and family a gift certificate for lunches at the Island Market. We have a book store here, too, where you can buy the things I write. So if you are a die hard shopper you can work off the urge on island. Otherwise you sit in your car in the ferry line (no damn fun when the wind is north-northwest and the temperature is 6 above) and trudge through stores in America, all the while watching your watch or cell phone to make sure you get back in ferry line in time to sleep in your own bed. I'd rather stay home and bake and sing, thank you. This is the time of the year when we pizza and hamburger eating Americans perform our ethnic identities, whatever they are, by baking goodies from the Old Country. And our Community Chorus will have its concert on Thursday night, when we will sing everything from "Break Forth O Beauteous Light" to a jazz version of "Joy to the World." We shamelessly dredge up an audience by inviting lots of little kids to join in on two songs so that their parents, grandparents, and various aunties and uncles have to come, too. Nonetheless, I will leave on Friday morning to go to Connecticut for the holidays with our beloved friend Anna, now 101 ywars old, and put up a tree for her, and make merry with old friends from twenty years ago. While I am gone, I will continue to update the Museum Directory on this site and expect to mail out FHN when I get back to Maine after Chrismtas. Happy Holidays to all of you. November 12, 2009 In this issue: The Culinary Curator's blog. Searching for samp and Lettice. Pasta encyclopedia and wine history. Whatever happened to FHN80? Weather report. The new culinary curator at the Clements Library is J. J. Jacobson who has taken the job held honorably and voluntarily by Janice B. Longone whose personal collection is the heart of the Culinary Archive named for her. Jacobson holds an actual paid position. She attended the University of California in philosophy and stopped midway to pursue a 20 year career in restaurants before returning to finish in order to prepare for graduate work at the University of Michigan. This time she looked for a degree in Information Science and volunteered in the culinary collection at Clements. "I was bitten by the metadata bug," she says, and served an internship there. Now she is back, and one of her tasks is to maintain a blog about the collection and her work. Through it she describes her work, shares information, and reveals glimpses into the collection. Here is a link, to check out from time to time along with all the others we try to make time for. Meanwhile, J.J. can give you a helping hand with your culinary searches. If you go to Clements to use the library bear in mind that you can look at the holdings on-line and prepare your call list in advance (as you can for many, many libraries and collections-oh, what a blessing that is…). In another year or so, the Clements will move its holdings to another part of Ann Arbor in order to undertake a major renovation and (the Director has his fingers crossed) an expansion. For now the entry to the reading room is at the back of the building, go down the steps through the door, bring two picture IDs, sign in, and steep yourself in the atmosphere of the reading room where they take a break at 10ish for tea and everyone, staff and readers alike, troop off to the lunch room and talk about what the heck they are doing anyway. Charming. Samp is more elusive than one might think. It is dried corn, soaked in alkaline water (ashes or lime added) to loosen the hulls, swelled and rubbed before cooking or grinding. It is called posole in the Southwest, hominy in the South, and samp in the Northeast. The burning question is, did the soaking technique travel with the corn and was it used consistently or not by Native Americans whose cookery was observed by European settlers who seldom note whether the corn was treated with lye water. Lots of references to the ash soaking technique appear in the nineteenth century but earlier descriptions are often (usually) bereft of the details. If you know of some good pre-1750 refs to this in the Northeast I would love to hear about it. Let us hear about Lettice Bryan, the author of The Kentucky Housewife as well. Sheryl Vanderstel, a Virginia native living in Indiana, long-time historic cook and Food History News reader, is trying to track her down for a Kentucky magazine she writes for. She said, "To my horror I have discovered that no one in KY knows anything about the book or its author. The KY Historical Society doesn't even own a copy and no one on staff has the vaguest idea who Lettice is or what the book is! I've bled for every little fact I have uncovered about her. She is truly an enigma. Born in the wilds of KY in 1805, married at 18, the mother of 15 children and yet by the age of 34 she wrote and published an incredibly articulate volume that was not only a cookbook but also a study of the culture that surrounded her. I am going on a 'field trip' into KY to visit the grave of her husband, in hopes of possibly finding her grave too." Meanwhile if anyone has any leads or ideas, please contact me so I can pass it on to Sheryl. Pasta has its own encyclopedia now available in translation from the University of California Press. The author, Oretta Zanini De Vita, catalogs 310 pasta forms, gives ingredients, descriptions of how it is made, alterative names, how it is sauced and served, where it is found, and miscellaneous other comments about it including associations with festivals, frequency of use, and variations. Truly amazing piece of work. The U.C. edition is translated by Maureen Fant and Carol Field wrote a foreword. And I thought I was so sophisticated because can tell the difference between tagliatelle and orichette. Huh. The details: Encyclopedia of Pasta, Oretta Zanini De Vita, trans. by Maureen B. Fant, California Studies in Food and Culture, 26, University of California Press, 2009. 400 pages, a nice compact 6x9, 102 line illustrations, a map of Italy with its regions,. Cloth 978-0-520-25522-7, @29.95 whattadeal. http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/11106.php Wine and other fermented beverages popped up on U.C. Press website while I was looking at the pasta book. Patrick E. McGovern, a professor of archaeology has written Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages. He has been at this a long time, and has done some of the most fascinating work. This is what the book description says: "Following a tantalizing trail of archaeological, chemical, artistic, and textual clues," McGovern "brings us up to date on what we now know about how humans created and enjoyed fermented beverages across cultures. … We discover, for example, that the cereal staples of the modern world were probably domesticated for their potential in making quantities of alcoholic beverages." Among them were rice in China and Japan, corn in the Americas, and millet and sorghum of Africa. Fermenting, it says, "may be fundamental to the human condition itself." Well, I always said that fermented beverages were a universal food along with soup, flatbreads, etc. I find myself absolutely gripped by what archaeology can dig up for us. McGovern used chemical analysis, artistic renditions of wine making and trade, and ancient texts to draw this picture. The details: Uncorking the Past: The Quest for Wine, Beer, and Other Alcoholic Beverages, by Patrick E. McGovern. University of California Press. 2009, ISBN 9780520253797. $29.95, hardcover, 348 pages, 6 x 9 inches, 10 color illustrations, 24 b/w photographs, 4 maps. http://ucpress.edu/books/pages/10996.php Yes, Virginia there will be an FHN80. I suppose the delayed publication is a sign of my reluctance to bring it all to a close. It is also a sign of how much other things have already roared in to take its place. Perhaps if I hadn't broken my wrist back in June and lost a month of my life to painkillers and one handed typing, I could have gotten out the issue, and still have accomplished all the things I scheduled for the late summer and fall. Meanwhile, I am being driven slowly mad by the faltering 10 year old computer I am working with, and face having to acquire a new one. Yuk. Weather report: After the worst gardening year in recent memory, we have gathered up what roots, squashes, brassicas, and apples we could, made cider, canned peaches and pickles, frozen green beans, and look forward to continued harvest of Brussels sprouts, kale, spinach, leeks that are still in the garden until snow flies. I have also been working with a 4-H club - we made pickled beets, made cider, and some of the members helped with gardens this summer, and one family raised turkeys. We are aiming for a Thanksgiving dinner at school. And yes, I sneak a little food history into them whenever I can. We have the storm windows up, and the porch rockers went into the barn loft this morning. We took a break from pigs this year, so I don't have that facing me. I will try to get to the newsletter very soon. October 21, 2009 In this issue: Andy Smith's Thirty Turning Points. Culinary Excavations in Houston. Remembering Pat Gibbs. Andy Smith's latest book, Eating History: Thirty Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine, is a dandy work. Andy's editing on the big Oxford Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink and the indispensable Oxford Companion to American Food, plus all the digging over the years into tomatoes, turkeys, snack foods, hamburgers, etc., clearly helped him define these turning points. I have to say that I agree with him on quite a few of his choices-steps that Americans have taken that definitely changed how we eat and think about food. One noteworthy tendency is that for every trend there is a vigorous and influential, even when not large, counter-trend. This one was published by Columbia University Press. ISBN 978-0-231-14092-8 - cloth $29.95, 392 pages, illustrated. See it here. Culinary Excavations: Food Throughout History is a fabulous series of programs set for the next few months in Houston, Texas. The organizers, The Houston Society of the Archaeological Institute of America, point out, "Throughout history, great powers have fought wars over food, the elite have issued decrees about food, people have been enslaved by food, and explorers have journeyed around the world for food. Indeed, our stomachs rule our societies." To prove their point, they have set up lectures on chocolate, conquest, sugar, wine, power, spices, slavery and material culture of food, ancient (Greece, Rome, and Mesopotamia) and more recent (the Caribbean, Texas). Alexander the Great and sugar and slaves get the treatment in what certainly appears to be a robust set of presentations. To learn more about all the programs, visit the website www.AIA-Houston.com, or call 281.497.7382. The Department of Anthropology, Rice University, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston & The Hellenic Cultural Center of the Southwest, India House and the Department of International Studies, The University of St. Thomas, The Arab-American Educational Foundation, Christ Church Cathedral, and The Honors College at Houston Baptist University are collaborators and the speakers come from the U.S. and abroad. The events are ticketed. Tickets may be purchased either through the mail by check, cash, or credit card, or on-line at the website, AIA-Houston.com. Check with them about becoming an AIA member or donor to receive discounted admission and reserved seating at events in addition to invitations to other events they are planning this year. Pat Gibbs of Williamsburg, Virginia, died this week. For many years, Pat was a senior researcher at Colonial Williamsburg where among her great interests was food history and slave gardens. She did some of the earliest work on hominy and presented it to the Oxford Symposium many years ago. She was a charter subscriber to Food History News, and a faithful correspondent, patiently answered my questions on colonial Virginia, and a lovely hostess when I visited. She would make sure I got a taste of local and culturally significant fare. Mainly it is her generosity that I appreciated most. So many researchers/writers hold their information closely, but Pat seemed not to do that, providing me with copies of papers, taking me personally to the research library to show me around, sharing her notes. She was kind, smart, and an early worker in our field. I am so sad that she is gone. October 7, 2009 In this issue: What some culinary historians are up to. Pudding Contest, Pudding Club. Pork Rind "History." Culinary historians across the country often knock off for the summer. Not everyone, of course, but most, then come back in fall with full calendars set for the coming year. Here is a very quick run down of what a couple of them are doing. Culinary Historians of Northern California (CHoNC) will have two presentations in October, as scholars from around the world arrive in the Bay Area for the IACP's upcoming conference on food in 1849, organized by Ken Albala. First up is Andrew Coe, author of the new Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States (Oxford, 2009), and co-author of Foie Gras: A Passion. He will be speaking tomorrow October 8, about the early history of Chinese food in California. Then Darra Goldstein, Professor of Russian at Williams College; Editor-in-Chief of Gastronomica; author and editor of many books including The Georgian Feast and Culinary Cultures of Europe: Identity, Diversity and Dialogue. Darra will be speaking about Food Studies and Gastronomica. Her talk is set for Oct. 13th, 2009 at 5:30-7:30 pm. Both events will be held at Omnivore Books in Noe Valley, 3885 Cesar Chavez St, San Francisco, CA 94131-2013. FMI (415) 282-4712. CHoNC events are free and open to the public. Culinary Historians of Washington, DC, (ChoW) meet on Sunday, October 11 at 2:30 pm. The speaker is Patrick Evans-Hylton presenting "Wine in Virginia." Evans-Hylton is a chef, food journalist, and attended Johnson & Wales University. Since 1995, he has been writing and teaching about food, including the very Virginia products-peanuts and Smithfield ham. He is senior editor for food and wine at Hampton Roads Magazine and the executive editor at Virginia Wine Lover magazine. ChoW meets at the Bethesda/Chevy Chase Regional Services Center, Meeting Room A, 4805 Edgemoor Lane, Bethesda, MD. FMI, contact Claudia Kousoulas, 301-320-6979, appetite@kousoulas.com or go to www.chowdc.org. This is a free event, no reservations necessary. CHoW also plans a Field Trip to the Alexandria Archaeology Center on October 17 at 2 p.m. Later this year they will explore Thai cuisine, schnitzel, Valentine confections, spices, and the Library of Congress's rare gastronomy books. Pudding Contest time again. This now annual pudding contest in Charlemont, Massachusetts that commemorates an 18th century pudding contest is organized by Tinky Weisblat for the benefit of the Sons and Daughters of Hawley building fund. Don't expect a lot historical pudding recipes, though. The emphasis here is on the yummiest one that shows up whether modern or antique. October 31, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. In England, there is a Pudding Club. Janet Clarkson, The Old Foodie, visited it on her visit in England to attend the Oxford Symposium. The club's emphasis is traditional puddings, and the site has pictures of spotted dick and others plus a "recipe of the month" page which has a toffee apple pudding on it. Pork rinds have a history, too, if you want to call it that. Rudolph Foods of Lima, OH, declared by Ohio's governor as the Official Pork Rind Capital, recently began promoting a new line of pork rind snacks. They even called me up to tell me about 50 new flavors and something called dippers. I asked the young lady if she was located in Porkopolis, which was what Cincinnati was nicknamed back the early 19th century when it because a pig slaughtering center. She said she had never heard of it, no surprise there, I suppose. She assured me that there was history to be found on the company website under "about" and there is, after a fashion. Now, I own up to being a bit skeptical about calling historic anything that happened in my lifetime, though I suppose the Vietnam War or Kennedy assassinations are not exactly current events. And I am horrified at finding my childhood cereal bowl in an antique store. However, some of the pork rind story turns on a few interesting and semi-historic trends and events. One is that Mrs. Rudolph, trained in home economics, came to the rescue of the company product. She recalls, "In 1957, we almost lost everything we had worked so hard to build. The meat industry quit smoking the rind on the bacon, causing the flavor of our pork rinds to become less than desirable. Johnny [her husband and company owner] was worried, but with my home economics degree and keen food sense, I worked until I came up with my secret recipe." Two interesting things there - one is that the bacon processing was so much changed. Is this the beginning of injected smoke flavoring instead? The other is that Mrs. R.'s "secret recipe" is another fine example of the nexus of home economics training and the corporate test kitchen where chemistry more than cookery saves the day. Another couple of interesting things point to the power of celebrity to change tastes. The Adkins diet and low carb fad really promoted pork rinds which are even now marketed as high in protein and low in carbohydrates - the fat goes unmentioned. The other was the switch from Ronald Reagan's choice of jelly beans as a notable snack, to George Bush's favorite which was pork rinds. As you read "Mary's scrapbook" you will notice that they are now opening plants in South America. Globalization is certainly another trend approaching the historical. Is this off-shoring? is there something about South American pigs we ought to know about? Interesting …. August 8, 2009 In this issue: Haggis flap. Beef with GMFA. Heritage Wheat Conservancy. Eastfield Village Symposium. Andy Smith's Thirty Turning Points. Haggis made it into the Guardian, (prominent English paper) and then into the New York Times this week with Alexander McCall Smith pontificating on it. Apprently this all erupted when some British food historian named Catherine Brown pointed out that the first printed recipe for haggis appeared in an English cookbook, Gervase Markham's The English Hus-Wife, from 1615, "well before the first Scottish mention, in 1747, and 171 years ahead of Robert Burns's paean to "the great chieftain o' the puddin' race". Brown said the book, by Gervase Markham, indicated haggis was first eaten in England before being popularised in Scotland." Groan. Of course, you might expect that saying something like this is like chucking a grenade into a hen house. According to the Guardian, "Brown is standing firm, however. "It was originally an English dish. In 1615, Gervase Markham says it is very popular among all people in England. By the middle of the 18th century another English cookery writer, Hannah Glasse, has a recipe that she calls Scotch haggis, the haggis that we know today." (You would have thought that Brown might have recognized that Glasse thought it a Scottish dish by labeling it so.) And then McCall Smith gums it up further, after saying, correctly, that there was no need to write down a recipe for something everyone knew perfectly well how to make, then, "But if further proof is required, then it is there in abundance. English cuisine has always been very open to foreign influences, and still is. If one looks at contemporary English cookbook writers, what do they write about? French food, Indian food, Chinese food - anything but English food. And it was ever thus. So it is no surprise that early 17th-century English food writers should have written about exotic Scottish dishes rather than English ones. This is what these people have always done." Whut? In fact, the Scottish have French influenced recipes.It wasn't/isn't all neeps and tatties. In fact, haggis is an example of a universal dish. There are examples all over the place in lots of cultures of people taking a hollow organ, often the stomach, and stuffing with a grain, offal, fat, and seasonings mixture then boiling it. Further, there are examples all over the place in lots of cultures of people taking a dish like this and making it a signature dish of their culture in order to distinguish themselves from everyone else. This, my friends, is the kind of jam we get ourselves into by only looking at cookbooks. Cookbooks are so often conservative, so incomplete. That is, the early ones especially reflect a well-established practice and if one is looking for origins (a foolhardy venture) one needs to look into etymology and examine similar dishes cross-culturally. If you don't, you deserve the flak you will get. P.S. I have personally made a Scottish style haggis with oats, onions and offal in a sheeps stomach which I scraped all the furries off of. I have also made a German style stomach pudding from a pig stomach, similarly scraped clean and stuffed with cornmeal and onions and chopped offal. Both were very good. "Beef: From Plains to Plate" is the Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance topic for their Third Annual Symposium. Save the date Saturday, October 24, 2009, from 9 a.m. until 4 p.m. The gathering will be at Kendall College - 900 North Branch, Chicago, Illinois. According to info that Catherine Lambrecht has sent out the symposium will be about: "Midwest beef foodways, from the desolate plains to meat processors who packed, wrapped and shipped their meat provisioning the global market. Innovations in refrigerated railroad cars, processing plants and portion control influenced many industrial efficiencies including Henry Ford's automobile assembly line." Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance, 280 Laurel Avenue, Highland Park, IL 60035-2620 Tel: 847/432-8255. www.GreaterMidwestFoodways.com The Heritage Wheat Conservancy floated into view this week and I thought some of you might be interested. Eastfield Village, in Nassau, NY, will sponsor a three day symposium from August 24-26, 2009, entitled "Modern America: A Decade of Remarkable Change 1840-1850," at which yours truly will make a presentation. My talk is "The Beginning of Now: Food in the Mid-Nineteenth Century." What is it about? Advances in technology had an enormous impact on the American food culture - in not only the way it was prepared, but also the way that plants and animals were developed, harvested, stored, transported, & packaged. We will learn who was eating what & where it came from. This decade saw an unprecedented increase in printed recipe books & self-help manuals that encouraged even the lower classes to strive for the niceties of a good meal & well laid out dining table. There is lots more. To see the program check this out: http://www.greatamericancraftsmen.org/workshops/classes.htm. Then if you feel inspired to register you will want to go to this page. http://www.greatamericancraftsmen.org/workshops/ordform1.htm. I guess you could also write to them at Eastfield Village, Box 465, Nassau, NY, 12123, or call (518) 766-2422 Fee: $425.00 registration. Andy Smith has identified thirty turning points in Ameriican food history and will reveal them this fall in what he describes as a "midi-opus" entitled Eating History: Thirty Turning Points on the Making of American Cuisine to be published by Columbia University Press. A press release says this: "With a cast of characters including bold inventors, savvy restaurateurs, ruthless advertisers, mad scientists, adventurous entrepreneurs, celebrity chefs, and relentless health nuts, Smith pins down the truly crackerjack history behind the way America eats." Watch for this on October 1, 2009. it will have 392 pages and an ISBN number of 978-0-231-14092-8, and a price in cloth $29.95. For your interactive pleasure, take a quiz and test your knowledge of American food history at this link. I scored "wed-fed Pilgrim" but you know that if I hadn't I would never have let on! Obviously after we read Andy's book everyone will score perfectly. July 16, 2009 In this issue: Thinking about Chocolate in the Southwest leads to beverage containers by Goosebay. Menu collection at NYPL. Peter Rose writes books. Chocolate makers Kakawa Chocolates located in Santa Fe, New Mexico, make Colonial Mexican style and Early American artisanal chocolate for beverages. Their link is here and you can check it out to find a chocolate that appeals to you or is appropriate for some era you are interested in. Containers for serving chocolate, coffee or tea are produced by Goosebay Workshops. This link will direct you to a page in their online catalog for copper and crass coffee pots, tea pots, tea caddies, ale shoes, syllabub mixers, coffee and chocolate roasters, etc. Peter Goebel does exquisite work and is careful in researching for his historic reproductions. Even if you don't buy, the examples shown are an education. Menu collecting can be a blessing or curse. Ephemera can be tough to conserve. But when Miss Frank E. Buttolph approached the New York Public Library in 1899, the director Dr. John Shaw Billings said they would accept her collection. Today the Buttolph American Menu Collection, 1851-1930, is stored and available to researchers. According to the website, the collection contains thousands of menus. The oldest items date to 1851 and is most comprehensive for the period between 1890 and 1910. Here is a link to the digital gallery. Peter G. Rose published her book Food, Drink and Celebrations of the Hudson Valley Dutch (The History Press) in March and her Summer Pleasures, Winter Pleasures, a Hudson Valley Cookbook (SUNY Press) will appear in September. In case you hadn't noticed, it is the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's voyage on behalf of the Dutch up the river eventually named for him, so Peter will be out and about speaking, including at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, MA in August and at the Brooklyn Museum on September 26 and lots more places this fall. She will speak to the NY Culinary Historians in November on her new research on "Saint Nicholas: the Saint who became Santa." To learn more about the books check out this link. July 9, 2009 In this issue: Chop Suey is out. What culinary historians do in summer. America's Kitchens begins tour. More on mac & cheese and mock apple pie. Andy Coe is the author of a book called Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in America. It is now out, published by Oxford University Press. You know, one of the first questions shot over FHN's bows many years ago was "what is the origin of chop suey in America." I don't remember now who asked, but at the time I didn't know anyone working on it or Chinese food in the States, period. And now, here comes Andy tracing American exposure to Chinese food from the ship Empress of China's 1784 visit in China to the Chinese cooks in the Gold Rush, to city restaurants and food court take-out. Andy writes for Saveur, Gastronomica, the NY Times, and co-authored Foie Gras: A Passion. He has contributed to the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink and even F.H.N. The details: Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States, by Andrew Coe; Oxford University Press, $24.95; 320 pages; ISBN13: 9780195331073. Website. What do culinary historians do in summer? The Culinary Historians of Northern California are going to meet about garlic at Omnivore Books in San Francisco (3885a Cesar Chavez St. (Noe Valley, SF). Erica Peters sent out an email reporting that Polly Adema, author of Garlic Capital of the World: Gilroy, Garlic, and the Making of a Festive Foodscape (University Press of Mississippi, 2009), will be coming to speak to us about the garlic festival, the day before it opens. That will happen on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009, at 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm. Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor will have a picnic in August. It is not unusual for CH groups to have a bibliography for theme meals, and CHAA picked "A Cruise on the Rhine" to honor the tremendous German heritage reflected by foods in the upper Midwest, and in America generally. Here is their recommended list of cookbooks: The Cooking of Germany, by Nika S. Hazelton (Time-Life Books, 1969) The Culinary Historians of Atlanta's next event will be July 23 at the home of Beatriz Golden-Hayes. "Beatriz is an expert on the history of Afro-Brazilian foods. She will discuss collards and peanuts -- with tastings of both," said Deb Duchon. Several groups like Boston, New York, and Washington knock off for the summer and re-gather at the start of the academic year. America's Kitchens, an exhibit organized by Historic New England, has begun its trip around the region by opening in Concord, NH, at the N.H. Historical Society where it will stay until January 2010. The exhibit spans Colonial to present times, and contains material from across the country to compare and contrast the New England regional material from HNE's own collection. H.N.E. says, "The America's Kitchens exhibition is part of Historic New England's Year of the Kitchen, a celebration of the role of the kitchen in times past and present. Through special programs, house tours, exhibitions, and more, discover the technological and social changes that have taken place in the kitchen and why, for so many of us, this room still symbolizes warmth and comfort." Visit the website which includes a recipes of the month section. Also there are pictures of various historical kitchens and other resources. I had the fun of being a Year of the Kitchen speaker in Wiscassett Maine, home of H.N.E.'s Castle Tucker. It poured buckets but a roomful of people showed up, loaded to the gunwales with great questions. I talked about the development of New England's regional cuisine. Mac & cheese and mocks: Kathleen Wall at Plimoth Plantation sent a follow-up email that I want to share with you. She wrote "Pleyn Delite has a 12th or 13th century mac and cheese. It has a nice pasta with no egg. I had someone [on the museum staff] make it once on our last day of the season...She left it on the table and left the house. The one visitor in town ducked in and when he came out, complimented us on the great macaroni and cheese. I've made the mock apple pie...and as some friends were eating it, they said, good apple pie - where's the one made from crackers? My friends have very low apple pie standards - it didn't fool my family." June 25, 2009 In this issue: Ritz Crackers and Mock Apple Pie. Macaroni and cheese. Ritz crackers are celebrating their 75th anniversary this year. No doubt they have been reformulated several times over the years, so the recipes devised in the test kitchens in the early days will have been revised, too. Ritz is only one of several crackers around which mock apple pie recipes were built over the years and you can find non-Ritz mock pies in mid-19th century cookbooks. With lemon and cinnamon you can evoke apple ie-ness. In the past a mock apple pie was more of a coping mechanism to deal with a lack of apples than the sport that new mock recipes developed to celebrate the 75th anniversary seem to be. Ritz has came up with Upside Down Mock Apple Pie and Chocolate Walnut Mock Apple Pie. All crackers. Mary-Liz Shaw wrote a nice historical review of mocks and other fooded-ya dishes in the Milwaukie Journal Sentinel that you can read here. In one elegant summer household on our island, the exceedingly wealthy head of the family likes as hors d'ouvres peanut butter and chutney on Ritz crackers and also Ritz crackers wrapped in bacon and broiled until the bacon is crisp. I kid you not. Macaroni and cheese turned up on the ALHFAM list-serve recently. This dish has been around quite some time and several folks sent along quotes and observations. Kimberley Costa, who portrays mid-18th century life, commented that she, "usually make[s] a flat noodle such as fetucinni. The pasta that was being imported out of Italy in mid century are long like spaghetti but have a hollow center. You can find them in the bigger grocery stores. Elbow will work as well." Barbara Archer at Lincoln's New Salem, Illinois, sent along some material from the Cook's Own Book 1833 edition. Recipes in the cookbook include Macaroni gratin; macaroni napolitaine; macarnoi stewed; macaroni timbale all calling for cheese. She said, "I like the comment: 'The usual mode of dressing it in England is by adding a white sauce and parmesan or cheshire cheese, and burning it; but this makes a dish which is proverbially unwholesome; its bad qualities arise from the oiled and burnt cheese and the half dressed flour and butter put in the white sauce.'" From the Cook's Own Book: To Make Macaroni Beat four eggs for eight to ten minutes, strain them and stir in flour till stiff enough to work into a paste upon a marble or stone slab. Add four till it be a stiff paste and work it well; cut off a small bit at a time; roll it out as thin as paper and cut it with a paste cutter or knife into very narrow strips; twist and lay them upon a clean cloth, in a dry warm place; in a few hours it will be perfectly hard; put into a box with white paper under and cover it. It may be cut into small stars or circles to be used for soup and does not require so much boiling as the Italian Macaroni. From Monticello we had this link to a macaroni machine and a recipe in Thomas Jefferson's hand. Then Martha Katz-Hyman offered up an ethnic twist with noodles and kugel. She wrote: The Jewish Manual, the first Jewish cookbook published in English, in 1846 in London, has the following recipe for "Macaroni and Cheese:" "Boil some maccaroni in milk or water until tender, then drain them and place on a dish with bits of butter and grated Parmesan cheese; when the dish is filled grate more cheese over it and brown before the fire." Lovely material from the good folks in the living history corner. June 18, 2009 In this issue: Clements Library News. 1849 Symposium. My wrist. Clements Library, at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, the site of the Longone Culinary Collection and home to two fine symposia - 2005 and 2007 - is gearing up for some major renovations plus finding a new curator of the culinary collection to replace Jan Longone when she retires at the end of the year. Interviews are being conducted at the moment for her replacement. I hear that there are no plans at the moment for a third symposium. A combination of the poor economy that made raising money to underwrite the symposium, plus all the much needed work at have put the symposium not only on the back burner, but maybe off the stove for the foreseeable future. The Library will close completely and all staff and materials will be moved to an off-campus facility and a temporary reading room will be set up in the main grad library. If you go to do research there, you will have to call-up your material in advance so it can be transported to he temporary reading room. All this, of course will require scholars to be very organized people. 1849 is the theme for the IACP symposium this October in California. Ken Albala and colleagues have pulled together an intriguing program centered on what was happening with around the globe in 1849 (this year being the 150th anniversary of the California Gold Rush.) (The optional activities list includes a visit to Sutter's Mill.) The conference will be in Lodi, October 8-10, at the Wine and Roses Inn, and according to the website "Scheduled at the end of the California grape harvest, the entire area will be redolent of fermentation, promising an intimate and wine-soaked weekend." Registration is open and I suspect you better get signed up quickly because there are limited slots. Speakers include Andy Smith, Kyri Claflin, Dan Strehl (because it is California…in fact a whole dinner is based on is Encarnacion's Kitchen. Darra Goldstein, Jeff Pilcher will be there, Mark McWilliams, Andy Coe, and Roger Haden, Colleen Sen, Carol Helstosky. Each will tackle a difference part of he nation or the world from a food view point. This link tells all. My wrist is broken. Jamie and I were dancing at a graduation party, doing swing dancing, and I tripped on his foot, landed on my left wrist, resulting in a fairly classic Colles fracture. It has only been a week since I had surgery to fix it and from all accounts, this is a slow heal. Needless to say I am doing all typing at present with my right hand (thank goodness I am a right hander-tho oddly enough I have always used a mouse with the left.) I will, I suspect, manage to do only the basics until I can speed up a bit, get off the mind blurring pain meds, and I hope you will adjust your expectations accordingly. June 3, 2009 In this issue: Kurlansky and America Eats. Contributors & what else they do: Virginia Mescher. Karl Koster. Mary Margaret Pack. Martha Katz-Hyman. Mark Kurlansky, in case you were wondering, did not discover the Works Progress Administration's America Eats! project, as some starry-eyed individual reported to me a week or so ago. He is doing a bang-up job of promoting it because, of course, he has emitted another book, Food of a Younger Land, and is out doing the necessary to get it off the shelves. Laura Shapiro has reviewed it for Slate, the online magazine. She notes the relentlessly upbeat prose of the original works, argues convincingly that the WPA writers engaged in this project were inventing a food writing genre of sorts, and notes, "Though many of these reports appear to capture long-lost foodways, there's no telling how accurate they are, especially because the editors encouraged writers to liven up their work by using the techniques of fiction." These days don't we call that "creative non-fiction"? Meanwhile, for the record, let it be said that lots of writers have used America Eats! material in their work for all to see including Charles Camp, Anne Mendelson, William Woys Weaver, and recently Pat Willard in her America Eats: On the Road with the WPA. Contributors and what else they do. Over the years Food History News has been fortunate to corner some wonderful contributors and pry fine work out of them. The next issue has a representative array. Here are some together with links to their work. Virginia Mescher has written a lot of stuff for FHN over the years. She likes digging out piles of facts on such stuff as sugar and salt, and for this coming issue she has done tea. She plows through newspapers and cookbooks and similar kinds of sources and extracts descriptive details to create a portrait of a food stuff over time. She and her husband Michael do a lot of Civil War reenactment, and researching that era is her primary interest, though she delves into earlier and later stuff. Their website, the Ragged Soldier Sutlery and Vintage Volumes reflects their interests. On the website is a book some of you might be interested in, Did They Eat That?, described as "a listing of items in chronological order with a second listing by category and item cross-referenced to the first. … It starts with Kikkoman soy sauce more than three centuries ago and concludes with products first marketed in the mid-1990's. It is invaluable in guiding historical interpretation of kitchens and foods." She reports that the age of some products will startle baby boomers because the stuff has been around so long, and so have we baby boomers. Karl Koster wrote about pemmican for FHN a couple years ago and is discussing wild rice this time. Karl also does reenactment of the mid 1700s to early 1800s Great Lakes Fur Trade and works for the National Park Service as an interpreter. You can see pictures of him together with historic fur trade food here. Check out the roasted moose snout. Karl has an incredible nose for finding valuable details in all the records and narratives, and the moxie to recreate the food. Mary Margaret Pack writes regularly for the Austin Chronicle. She'd rather do food history, but wisely, from an economic point of view, sticks to food writing and being a private chef, commuting as needed to San Francisco. Her food news writing is inflected with history as this piece indicates. Martha Katz-Hyman worked as an associate curator at Colonial Williamsburg, and was responsible for preparing furnishing plans for several houses there, which put her in the historic kitchen fairly often. She also became expert on material culture of slaves. She is now an independent consultant, and is working on furnishing plans for various East Coast historic houses, including the Trent House in New Jersey where the issue of larding pans came up. Her piece in FHN79 shows her thought process on the pans. Book Notices & Comment An Edible History of Humanity by Tom Standage Tom Standage has another book in the works. He is the author of The History of the World in Six Glasses, and his next will be An Edible History of Humanity, to be published by Walker and Company, New York, in which he traces the history of humankind via the production of food, with a particular eye towards various elements of food and technology. In promotional material sent out the publicist quotes Standage, "That food has been such an important ingredient in human affairs might seem strange, but it would be far ore surprising if it had not: after all, everything that every person has ever done, throughout history has literally been fueled by food." No! Feature that! He goes over ground, for instance, covered more thoroughly but less readably by John Keay in Spice Routes and the like, but I see that he doesn't include Martin Jones' Feast in his chapters on social structure and food, and I think of Jones being one of the most fascinating and clear writers on the topic I have seen. Standage makes a lot of this stuff very accessible and we all have known for a long time what he is presenting here. I am not sorry that he is drawing attention to it. Advance reading copies are out and the book is due in May. Stay tuned. Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue by John Shelton Reed and Dale Volberg Reed John Shelton Reed and Dale Volberg Reed authored Holy Smoke: The Big Book of North Carolina Barbecue. The whole first section of the book is dedicated to barbecue history, even pre-history, but then focuses down on North Carolina style 'cue even though John Shelton comes from Tennessee and I always thought Tennesseans didn't think that North Carolina BBQ counted as the real thing. The Reeds who believe that barbecue is a good deal like jazz, include how to do it, and offer portraits of current practitioners. They do a good job of staying away from fakelore or if they include they engage in truth in labeling. This is a University of North Carolina Press book, $30.00 cloth bound, ISBN: 978-0-8078-3243-1, Savage Barbecue: Race, Culture, and the Invention of America's First Food by Andrew Warnes.As an Englishman, Warnes brings a different perspective to BBQ, reporting on the Europeans' view of it as a primitive and even barbaric practice. He also sees the invention of BBQ tradition, something I see in the clam bake tradition of the northeastern U.S. I have not finished reading this book, but what I have so far strikes me as very thought provoking. So far nothing seems joltingly out of kilter though there are times when I think too much is made of something that might be less significant than it seems. Andrew Warnes is Lecturer in American Literature and Culture at Leeds University. Savage Barbecue came out in August 2008. ISBN 0820331090 paper, $19.95, ISBN 0820328960 cloth $59.95. 6 x 9 in. 14 b&w photos. University of Georgia Press. Raising Steaks: The Life and Times of American Beef by Betty Fussell.I spotted this at Kitchen Arts and Letters in New York City, and bought it on the spot. I haven't read it yet but I think it promises to give me another perspective on the American beef industry that has gotten us and itself into so much trouble the past decade or so. The end of the book is clogged with endnotes, and that always warms my heart. The details: ISBN-13/EAN: 9780151012022 ; Price: $26.00, ISBN-10: 0151012024, Hardcover; 416 pages, Trim Size: 6 x 9. Harcourt, Inc. Hearthside Cooking by Nancy Carter Crump Nancy Carter Crump has revised Hearthside Cooking: Early American Southern Cuisine Updated for Today's Hearth and Cookstove, published by the University of North Carolina Press. I wrote the foreword to this edition, and happily. Since the first edition came out, Nancy has dug in on some interesting stuff about slave cooks and a lot other things that had no place in this book but which we, with crossed fingers, hope she will publish elsewhere (like in Food History News!) You can read an interview with Nancy Carter at this website. It is informative but doesn't quite capture Nancy's personal style which is a good deal more humorous and irreverent. Here are all the details: ISBN 978-0-8078-3246-2, $30.00 hardcover Approx. 352 pp., 68 illus., notes, bibl., index. The University of North Carolina Press, 116 South Boundary Street, Chapel Hill, NC, 27514-3808 1-800-848-6224 (orders), 919-966-3829 (fax). Mrs. Darwin's Recipe Book. Revived and Illustrated, by Dusha Bateson and Weslie Janeway Charles Darwin is in the news lately because of the 200th anniversary of his birth. Last fall Mrs. Darwin's Recipe Book was published "Revived and Illustrated, by Dusha Bateson and Weslie Janeway" published by Glitterati Inc. Emma Darwin's recipes will not astonish anyone familiar with 19th century English gentry cookery, but this is a pleasant little volume. Food and Think, a blog on the Smithsonian site discusses it. For reviews you can check out this one at the Smithsonian website. Also you can read our own Cynthia Bertleson's take on the book at her food history blog Gherkins & Tomatoes. To see more about the book go to Glitterati -- and page down. The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi, translated by Terence Scully The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi (1570): The Art and Craft of a Master Cook has been translated with commentary by Terence Scully. Scappi was the cook for cardinals and popes, wrote one of the most extensive cook books of his era which gives us a valuable perspective on Italian Renaissance food history. This is the first England translation of the work and Scully provides valuable context and comments. University of Toronto Press. ISBN: 0802096247 Hardcover, 787pp, $95.00. The book is described at this website page down a ways, and if you are interested in medieval cookery you will appreciate reading about the other books listed. Gastropolis, Food and New York City, edited by Annie Hauck Lawson and Jonathan Deutsch Gastropolis, Food and New York City, edited by our own Annie Hauck Lawson and Jonathan Deutsch has been published by Columbia University Press. The publisher describes it as an "irresistible sampling of the city's rich food heritage" that "explores the personal and historical relationship between New Yorkers and food." Chapters include: "The Food and Drink of New York from 1624 to 1898" For more information you can also read the chapter "Fusion City: From Mt. Olympus to Puerto Rican Bagels and Beyond" an essay by our own Cara De Silva. Here are the details: publsihed November, 2008 Cloth, 368 pages, ISBN: 978-0-231-13653-2, $29.95 Columbia University Press, 61 W. 62nd Street, New York, NY 10023, 212.459.0600 ext. 7159. America's Kitchens by Nancy Carlisle and Melinda Talbot Nasardinov America's Kitchens by Nancy Carlisle and Melinda Talbot Nasardinov has been published, hooray. It is a luscious book, full of wonderful historic and current images of several centuries worth of kitchens from New England to the South to the Southwest. It's full of good solid, well-researched information. Oh, joy, oh joy. After an introductory chapter, the book moves largely chronologically, beginning with the New England Hearth, 1720 to 1840, then the Southern Plantation, 1830 to 1860, followed by a chapter on cook stoves and servants, 1850 to 1890, then covers "Kitchens Along the Rio Grande, 1821 it 1912. The next chapter is the kitchen 1890 to 1945, then 1945 to the present comes last, tugging at the heart strings of those of us old enough to remember the 50s and 60s. No matter what era you are interested in, it is covered here and then you get the historical context to boot. The book is the product of the research done to support what was to be a traveling exhibit created by Historic New England (formerly the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities). Sadly the exhibit was not funded to completion. Enroute to the exhibit and book, lots of our friends and colleagues helped out. Leni Sorensen advised on the plantation kitchens section. Cheryl Foote pitched in on the Southwest section. Donna Braden, Barbara Haber, Marcie Ferris, Laura Shapiro and many others contributed advice. Tilbury House in Gardiner, Maine, is the publisher, 8700-582-1899, and here are the details: Publication date December 1; ISBN 978-0-88448-308-3, $34.95 in what is termed a deluxe paperback (very solid), 200 plus black and white and color illustrations. Put it on your Christmas wish list. Milk by Anne Mendelson Anne Mendelson's much anticipated (by me, at least) book on milk is out! I have a copy though I haven't read it all yet. I am so happy to know that finally a serious, careful researcher has tackled the topic, and that all those pesky questions about what is buttermilk anyway, and what is the deal on cheese, and all that are answered. I'll keep you posted as I read and let you know what I learn. Meanwhile, you can read food historian Rachel Lauden's take on the book here. Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages-Anne Mendelson. Hardcover. Knopf. 978-1-4000-4410-8 (1-4000-4410-3) | $29.95. America Eats! On the Road with the WPA : The Fish Fries, Box Supper Socials, and Chitlin Feasts that Define Real American Food by Pat Willard Pat Willard's America Eats! On the Road with the WPA : The Fish Fries, Box Supper Socials, and Chitlin Feasts that Define Real American Food is out. This is the food writing from the WPA (Works Progress Administration) Writers Project abandoned on the eve of World War II. Some of the material was stashed in the Library of Congress, and in various locations around the country. Pat went over a lot of it, then tracked down many of the events that are still being held in many places. This book is about what she found. Bloomsbury USA, $25.99. Visit Pat's website. Feast,by Martin Jones Feast, you will be pleased to know, by Martin Jones is available in paperback. This is a very fine piece of work on what archaeologists learned about people eating in groups, and is a fascinating read. Oxford University Press at $24.95 instead of the $49 needed for the hardcover. See the website. The Spice Route by John Keay.The Spice Route is one of several books on spices and their lore that have appeared in recent years. Written by John Keay, this is one from the University of California Press's California Studies in Food and Culture. I'll tell you, the guy has done his homework, and this book is a wickedly detailed piece of work on a mind-boggling topic. It is a rugged read, chock-full of unpronounceable nouns, and for those of us crippled by the American education system's weak preparation in world geography, a sentence like the following can reduce one to tears: "To Barygaza comes cotton-cloth from Minnagara (Mandasor in Saurashtra) plus, courtesy of the trade-minded Shatavahanas, great wagon-trains of onyx and muslins from 'two important marts' in Dakshinabades (the Deccan), name Paithana (Paithan) and Tafgara (Ter.). More Himalaya spices are brought down from as far as Poklaius (Charsudda, near Peshawar) by way of Ozene (Ujjain), 'which was previously a seat of government.' In fact it was the capital of western India under the emperor Chandragupta and his Mauryan successors." (pg. 65.) Right. Keay has clearly tackled some very difficult sources, dealt with names that change over time, in ancient, obscure documents written in ancient languages. There are maps though not every place name appears on them. I have worked myself, slowly through 113 pages of 256 of text. I have absolutely thrilled to relations of some early spice-trade-driven maritime history. I hope as I work my way through I will derive more from the later chapters where I already have a working matrix that I can fit some of this material into. It hasn't been easy so far. This book is not for sissies or the impatient. What I have learned so far is that the spice trade is much, much more ancient than we have previously imagined. That lots of things qualified in the trade besides pepper, ginger, and cloves, including incense, certain minerals, and cloth. That if you turn to even Roman and Greek sources for information about early spice trade, you can get in trouble because their information was pretty fuzzy; you have to look at much earlier stuff. Or at this book which does it for us. John Keay The Spice Route A History, California Studies in Food and Culture, 17, $40.00, hardcover 978-0-520-24896-0, available now. $16.95, paperback 978-0-520-25416-9, available now. http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10668.php - 19.7kb Human Cuisinem edited by Gary Allen and Ken Albala Cannibalism is for many an unsavory topic. As co-editors Gary Allen and Ken Albala note in the introduction to a Human Cuisine, discussion of eating our fellow human beings is likely to prompt nervous laughter: "Jokes are, in part, a way of hiding real anxiety about touchy subjects," they write. Ken and Gary have managed to assemble an anthology that no publisher was brave enough to take on, so they plan to self-publish. Gary wrote: "Human Cuisine is an anthology of (mostly) new literary pieces about cannibalism. Short stories, essays, a poem, and part of a play explore different aspects of the subject treating it thoughtfully, playfully, frighteningly and sensitively. Approaches range from historical/mock historical, to Sci-Fi, and from memoir/confessional to sheer speculation. We were amazed by the quality and variety of works submitted. We've just seen the proofs, and were happy as those clams cited in the familiar proverb. You can find out more about the book at this website. Spices and Comfits: Collected Papers on Medieval Food, Johanna Maria van WinterSpices and Comfits: Collected Papers on Medieval Food has been released by Prospect Books, that venerable and dedicated publisher in England, headed by Tom Jaine. Johanna Maria van Winter is the author of the essays which address such topics as fasting and asceticism in the Middle Ages, fifteenth century invalid food, green salads in the Renaissance. Essentially the subjects are grouped into Medieval Food Habits, the Netherlands and their Neighbors; Fasting and Feasting, and Food and Health. There are twenty-eight essays in all, three indices (food and ingredients, persons, and places). Endnotes with bibliography appear at the end of chapters. Some essays, not many, are in French or German. Ms. van Winter is a retired professor of Medieval History at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. She received her doctorate with work on the Knights Hospitallers if St. John of Jerusalem in the Netherlands, but she was always interested in food. I can't help wondering if she had been born thirty years later if she would not have merely addressed food history. She has been retired since 1989 and has continued research and writing. Details: Prospect Books, hardback, ISBN 1-903018-45-5; 978-1-903018-45-5; 440 pages, 9 black and white illustrations, 2007. $80 US. You can order it from Oxbow Books or from Amazon, if you must. Mouth Wide Open: A Cook and His Appetite, by John Thorne.Mouth Wide Open: A Cook and His Appetite is another collection of our own John Thorne's lucid writing. He starts with marrow and ends with Fried Kielbasa-Casing Po'Boy (don't ask, you have to read it to get it) plus another chapter of book reviews. In between there are, of course, recipes, but with John Thorne, a food book isn't about the recipes but John's relationship to food, recipes, other cooks, the store, the time of day, professional chefs, and so on. One of the things I have always admired about John is what is simple about cooking and his newsletter Simple Cooking. John has favorite ways to fix many of the dishes he really enjoys, but he not doctrinaire about his approach to cooking and has a healthy skepticism about the various swings in food phobias and foibles. It is officially published today, by North Point Press, a division of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, ISBN-13: 978-0-86547-628- and ISBN-10: 0-86547-628-4, and in hardcover at $26.00. Start here and do a search on the author name. Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar by David Wondrich Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar by David Wondrich is now available. This is both a recipe book for some classic American cocktails and a history of Jerry Thomas. Dave told me that he had a section on punches which were left out ultimately, though he hopes he can work them into some other work. We talked about how wonderful some of the old punches, (shrubs, Negus, Bishop, etc.) were and what an important part they played in American drink history, what with their rich material culture associations--all those punch bowls! This is bound to be a good piece of work. Lots of places have it, but here is the connection to dear old Powell's in Portland. ISBN13: 9780399532870 and ISBN10: 0399532870, Perigee Books, 317 pages, hardcover, $23.95. Kitchen Literacy, How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes From and Why We Need to Get it Back by Ann Vileisis. Kitchen Literacy, How We Lost Knowledge of Where Food Comes From and Why We Need to Get it Back by Ann Vileisis appeared on my desk as so many new books do, but this one is different. Ann, who lives in Port Orford, OR, is new to food history, and proves to have a real instinct for it. She studied history and environment and her first book was a history of wetlands which introduced her to the history of agriculture, hence food. That, plus her mentor, William Cronin (Changes in the Land), who interested her in milling and meat packing, moved her towards examining the history of food from a consumers point of view, abut how food is the central aspect of our relationship with the world. The first few chapters are a history of how "foodsheds" (think watersheds) changed over time. She begins by examining Maine midwife Martha Ballard's late 18th and early 19th century diary, observing where Martha reported her food came from and how she handled, stored, cooked it. She moves on into the 19th century and describes how commerce and industry changed our relationship to food, sometimes against consumers' instincts and better judgment, why and how the Pure Food and Drug laws were developed, and so on into the present where so much of our food comes from extraordinarily long distances. In particular she addresses the very tricky question of food for cities from the 19th century into the 20th. The outstanding thing about this book is that Ann who has not immersed herself in food history until now, treads sure-footedly through the material and interprets it accurately. Not everyone who comes fresh to this field manages that. For example, she uses the Dreaded Beechers as a source but instead of accepting their advice as a description of what happened, she perceives the anxiety of the housewife in the kitchen trying to control the activity, and the ominous hovering that resulted. She reads the advertisements for canned foods and understands the odd combination of fear and reassurance that they conveyed: "be afraid of other people's products but trust ours." I really like the way she brings food history to bear on the present. I have always felt that the past wasn't behind me as much as it swirls around me, that using good ideas from the past isn't regression but having a deeper menu of choices. Ann sees this, too, describing how ideas circle around again. She said in a conversation, "We may have thrown the baby out with the bathwater back there but we don't have to do that again." If we don't see what happened once we might not recognize when it happens again. Go buy this book. Here is her website and book information. $26.95 ISBN 1-59726-373-7. It has an index, great pictures, and all that good stuff. Food and the City in Europe since 1800 edited by Peter J. Atkins, Peter Lummel and Derek J. Oddy has been published by Ashgate. It contains several essays by European scholars, organized in four sections--Feeding the Multitude: Urbanization and nutrition; Food Regulation: Food fraud and the big city; Food Innovation; Eating Fashions: the consumer perspective. London, Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, Corinna, Brussels, Prague, Amsterdam, Oslo, Bordeaux and others are represented, and canned milk, water porridge, turtle soup, festive meals, adulteration, immigrants and scientists are discussed. ISBN 978 0 7546 7989 2. Pages number 276. Price (sit down for this one…) $99.95. Send to Ashgatge, 101 Cherry St., Ste. 420, Burlington, VT, 05401; phone (802) 865-7641, (802) 865-7847; email is info@ashgate.com. The United States of Arugula by David Kamp The United States of Arugula: the Sun Dried, Cold Pressed, Dark Roasted, Extra Virgin Story of the American Food Revolution by David Kamp, comes recommended highly by our own Nancy Carter Crump. It is a solid little history of more recent American food habits. One thing Nancy said about it is that it really puts our current cookery into perspective. If you are a young food historian, say 35 or younger, it might be a really good thing to take a look at this book, in order to understand the great changes that have occurred over just your lifetime. Oddly enough, Arugula is categorized among Current Affairs books! In his website, Kamp writes: "One of my stock lines in describing The United States of Arugula is that it's the story of "how we went from Velveeta and Wonder Bread to chevre and artisanal loaves." US of Arugula is available in paperback now, from Broadway Books, at $26.00 ISBN 0-7679-1579-3. Trade Paperback, 416 pages. Three Meals a Day, A Collection of Valuable and Reliable Recipes in All Classes of Cookery by Maud C. Cooke. Three Meals a Day, A Collection of Valuable and Reliable Recipes in All Classes of Cookery, by Maud C. Cooke, originally published in 1890, Chicago by the Acme Publishing House, has been reprinted in facsimile by St. Johann Press in Haworth, New Jersey. The cookery section is full of familiarly user-friendly late 19th century recipes, there is a section of laying the table, and instructions for how to order serving the meal. A section devoted to hygiene and health may prove useful for living history museums recreating the time period. I asked the publisher, David Biesel, why they chose this book. The story of its publication, is, I think interesting: This is what he wrote: "The book has an interesting history. It was given to me (David) by a friend of the family at a family get together in 1976 or 1977. He knew I was in publishing (Macmillian at the time) and he asked why couldn't publishers publish good books like Three Meals a Day. It had been in his family for a long time, shortly after publication. I looked at it, liked it, but realized that to reset, etc. would be expensive (remember this is 1970s) and probably not profitable. He gave me the copy (he was late 70s) and said maybe someday I could get it republished." "Fast forward through my publishing career, …. In 1991, I decided to go out on my own as a 'book packager', Diane gave us the name St. Johann Press which is named for the old town section of Saarbrucken from where the Biesels came from in 1848 as saddlers to New York City. About 1998, John Spong (the now retired bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Newark) asked if we would be interested in reprinting his earlier works … and we said yes. Then if John Spong why not Maud Cooke? Thus started St. Johann Press as a book publisher." "But without an author to call up and ask how are things going (I sent my pages back yesterday -- where is the book) the book took a slow road. It was in terrible shape, but our friends (35 years) at G&H Soho took it as a challenge to show what they could do with such a problem. (Including recreating words that were illegible by electronically "moving" other words or letters.) People ask what type of books do you publish (including our own family!) and Diane's response is "Books we like." (She is a retired school librarian.) Diane is a great cook and I love the "home economics" (look for the ringworm cure). We try to publish books that we call 'evergreen or archival.'" It is available for $24.95 in paperback from St. Johann Press, 315 Schraalenburgh Rd., P. O. Box 241, Haworth, NJ, 07641. You can call them at 201-387-1529, or fax them at 201-501-0698. If you wish to reach the publishers by email, this is the address: d.biesel@att.net. ISBN #1-878282-02-6 Feast: Why Humans Share Food by Martin JonesFeast: Why Humans Share Food by Martin Jones, professor of Archaeological Science at the University of Cambridge, England, points out that humans and their nearest relatives in the animal kingdom, share food socially instead of snapping and growling and stealing one another's food - well, at least after it is on the table. He brings the archaeologist's science to the topic, turning to ancient evidence of hearths and cooking, the behavior of chimpanzees, the development of tools for handling food, and the development of social customs. He believes that our habits of cooking and eating together advanced human capacity to evolve cultures. Feast has proved to be a gripping read. Published by Oxford Univ. Press, it takes a very long view of humans eating together. It is a habit we have in common with certain of our wild relatives, and have engaged in at least half a million years, even before we learned to cook. He reports on the archaeological evidence, including the new and fascinating evidence that comes from sophisticated chemical analysis of residues in human bone and hair, in coprolites (fossilized feces), and in the traces of food oils, seeds, wine, found in pottery and around food storage places, early kitchens, milling equipment, and so on. Jones brings us up through time, interpreting scenarios imagined and recorded ones, derived from the artifacts uncovered with specific sites. The final chapter is about TV dinners. Of course, I don't know enough about the subject matter to be a very effective critical thinker but the book turned my mind around about a few things, always a useful experience. Food and the City in Europe since 1800. Edited by Peter Atkins, Peter Lummel, and Derek J. Oddy. Food and the City in Europe since 1800 is the proceedings of the 19th symposium of The International Commission for Research on European Food History, held in Berlin in 2005. Editors are Peter Atkins, Peter Lummel and Derek J. Oddy, to be published 5th July 2007 in Aldershot by Ashgate. International Standard Book Number: 0 7546 4989 X, price Price: 55. To place an order, please contact Bookpoint Ltd, Ashgate Publishing Direct Sales, 130 Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4SB, United Kingdom, Tel:+44 (0) 1235 827730, Fax:+44 (0) 1235 400454. The Herbalist in the Kitchen by Gary Allen. Hebalist Gary Allen said, "it only took a dozen years or so to make it from initial research into print." It is The Herbalist in the Kitchen, 576 pages, 6 x 9 inches. 56 line drawings. Cloth, ISBN 0-252-03162-8. $65.00. You can purchase it here http://www.press.uillinois.edu/s07/allen.html. More information about it and even some samples are at this website. Check it out. To read a British review of this book you can click here. Click here to order the book from Oxford Univ. Press of America. Here are the details: ISBN13: 9780199209019ISBN10: 0199209014 hardback, 368 pages, $35.00 (01) 368 pages; 40 halftones; 6-1/4 x 9-3/8; ISBN13: 978-0-19-920901-9ISBN10: 0-19-920901-4Curry: a Tale of Cooks & Conquerors by Lizzie Collingham Curry: a Tale of Cooks & Conquerors, by Lizzie Collingham (Oxford University Press, 2006, ISBN-978-0-19-532001-5) is now available in paperback for $15.95. Our friend and subscriber Marian Walke commented on this book for us a while ago: "Collingham includes a wonderful collection of well-documented tidbits, including Eliza Acton's recipe for curry powder -- a decade after Mrs. Randolph (and MUCH milder!); the introduction of chillies and tomatoes into southern India by Portuguese traders before 1600; the difference between Indian, English, and Anglo-Indian "curry"; a brief exploration of ketchup; and the amazing (to me, at least) news that while coffee conquered Europe in the 17th century and tea in the 18th, the Indian subcontinent did not develop a taste for tea until the 20th century, and then only after a concerted marketing campaign by the British. Oh, yes, and the difficulties young Gandhi experienced as a law student trying to maintain a vegetarian diet in Victorian London. I highly recommend this book." The Oxford Companion to American Food And Drink The Oxford Companion to American Food And Drink has appeared in print. Remember the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink that came out a couple of years ago? Well, this is a concise form of that, with errors of the last one corrected and more entries. [One of the good things about publishing is that the author/editor gets corrections sent to them because people love to find mistakes and straighten out the author.] I expect that this will be useful to some of you, particularly those with a casual interest or a beginner's curiosity about things, but who cannot afford the big two volume set, since this one will see for an affordable $49. something, and even cheaper at Amazon. It may settle an argument, or provide a sentence of background for the food writer. People with a serious interest in a topic really must look beyond either of these two works, using the bibliographies suggested, to more specific and in-depth material. How do I know? Because I wrote some of the entries, and so I have a close up and personal familiarity with the project . I keep saying this but no one pays attention. IF YOU ARE A FOOD WRITER, and want to say something about the history of a dish, do us a favor: buy this book -- it is not that expensive, and before you call, write, or email me or my food history colleagues with a question, look it up in this book. Because guess where I will look first if you ask me? Just think how quickly you can get an answer this way....deadline looming and all that. The Companion has 608 pages, lots of gorgeous illustrations, and will cost $49.95, (ISBN 1-978-0195307962 and ISBN 019-5307968 - obviously one a hardcover the other soft, but the promo material doesn't say which is which. The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe by Ken Albala. The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe by our own Ken Albala comes from the University of Illinois Press. Ken is another of those very industrious sorts, and with the work he has done on other aspects of Medieval and Renaissance food history, this is a natural product. The book covers Western Europe 1520 through 1660 and Ken describes the transition from the heavily spiced and ornamented dish of the Medieval to the lighter fare of the Renaissance. This is a nice companion, in its way, to Nichola Fletcher's Charlemagne's Tablecloth. Ken describes the story of the ingredients of the dishes served at banquets with their specific meanings in the period, the staging of the banquet, national habits, and addresses such fascinating details as the carver's responsibility to match the humors of the food and his master's flesh. This is available in cloth, 248 pages, for $40, ISBN 978-0-252-03133-5. University of Illinois Press has been publishing their Food Series for a few years now. Apparently no ladies have submitted manuscripts to them for their consideration. Military High Life: Elegant Food Histories and Recipes. Agostino von Hassell, Herm Dillon. Military High Life: Elegant Food Histories and Recipes showed up at my house, a big gorgeous book with lots of stunning illustrations, written by Agostino von Hassell and Herm Dillon and published by University Press of the South, New Orleans. Right away I thought this is one for John Rees, FHN's official military food columnist, and so shipped it off to him for his comments. I didn't know that Darra Goldstein of Gastronomica, had in her wisdom also asked him to review it. So now John has two copies of a book he doesn't admire very much. Why not? Basically, John found it wasn't carefully researched, is thin, unbalanced in content, and riddled with misinformation. A few examples of factual mistakes John gave include that it was not the Emperor Napoleon who offered a prize for the development of a way to preserve food that lead to Nicholas Appert inventing a canning method but the French Directorate in 1795. (And if truth be known, Appert based his invention on even earlier preserving techniques.) Or that awful old saw about pepperpot soup and the troops at Valley Forge. And long time readers of FHN will recognize the story behind the other old saw about "the army marches on its belly" being attributed to Napoleon but, as John wrote years ago for us, the actual source was probably Frederick the Great, who wrote, "Understand that the foundation of an army is the belly." And one of these days we will run a piece on that venerable item, portable soup, which John points out the authors of Military High Life claimed to have been "likely concocted under the command of Admiral Nelson." And there were other problems. Alas, we have here another example of a publisher, the University Press of the South, who ought to know better, jumping on the food history bandwagon, but not taking food history seriously enough to help the authors do a really good job. This book could have been vetted (by our own John Rees) and come out minus at least some glaring errors and perhaps with some ideas how to cover the topic more adequately. Just because a university press publishes something doesn't mean it is necessarily reliable; we don't expect better from commercial houses. Ah, well. Buy the book because "part of the proceeds are being donated to the Samaritan Village Veterans Program, New York City to help feed some of the more than 240,000 U.S. homeless veterans" which (since the gummint clearly isn't up to the task) is a very good reason to pay $35. Give the book to someone with a vast interest in the military who might also like to cook, but make sure they have a short memory, Military High Life: Elegant Food Histories and Recipes. Agostino von Hassell, Herm Dillon. New Orleans: University Press of the South, 2006. 162 pp. Illustrations. $34.95 (cloth). ISBN 1931948607. 1931948607 Fighting Old Nep: The Foodways of Enslaved Afro-Marylanders, 1634-1864, by Michael Twitty Fighting Old Nep: The Foodways of Enslaved Afro-Marylanders, 1634-1864, by Michael Twitty, Director of Interpretation of the Menare Foundation Inc.'s living history project. From the information Michael sent comes this: "Fighting Old Nep is the only recent, comprehensive and full-length text to examine in depth the rise and development of African American cuisine in Maryland during slavery. An invaluable resource for culinary historians studying the foodways of Maryland, the Chesapeake, Upper South and Mid-Atlantic, and enthusiastic eaters interested in the legacy of African American foodways in American culture!" There are thirty-one recipes, mainly of lost dishes, plus those using heirloom crops, wild foods, that come from historic antebellum African American community traditions, for example Red Straw Persimmon Beer, Ashcakes in Poplar Leaves, Cow Horn Okra Soup, Fish Pepper Sauce, and Guinea Keat in Cabbage Leaves. The book has 80 pages, traces specific ethnic links to West and Central Africa, the relationship between African foodways and those of Native America and Europe, the adjustment of African foodways in early Maryland and the development of Afro-Marylander cooking during The Peculiar Institution. The quotes, statistics, and n narratives drawn from over 50 primary and secondary sources. Michael says he includes sidebars about rice growing in Maryland, the real story behind yams vs. sweet potatoes, African contributions to Maryland agriculture and animal husbandry, plus the identity of Old Nep and how he inadvertently helped spark a national hero to fight to end slavery. Ordering Information: Currently available for $7.00 (plus 2.50 shipping and handling) Living history museums can order books in blocks of 5, 40% discount per copy for gift shop sales. Mail order with check to Michael Twitty, 913 Maple Avenue, Rockville, Maryland 20851. For all inquiries including speaking engagements and larger orders, contact Michael at Proff97@aol.com. Preview copies for museums or cultural centers considering selling the book, are available in excerpt form in protected PDF format or may be purchased as directed above. Turkey: An American Story by Andy Smith The Turkey: An American Story by Andrew Smith has just been released in time for Thanksgiving. You'll note that Kathleen Curtin and I both blurbed the book for Andy, who, now that he is retired, is churning books out faster than ever before. This is one of three more or less just out. Now the good thing about Andy is that he is not stuck in the perfectionist's trap of never saying anything until he is dead certain of it. He figures that if he is wrong someone will let him know, and they do, and he always footnotes things so that if your find your eyebrows rising you can always go look for yourself. Turkey is another in his series of single topic books that comprise a group portrait he is working towards, he says. It is good topic and this book certainly straightens out some common misconceptions. Published by University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 2006. The Encyclopedia of Junk Food and Fast Food, by Andy Smith Andy also has out The Encyclopedia of Junk Food and Fast Food. This is another Greenwood Book, Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2006, and I hope every foodwriter and newspaper food reporter all across the country will buy this so that they will have at their fingertips the scoop on everything from chips to Twinkies. Those "who invented the Devil Dog" questions drive me up the wall even as I am aware that these are the foods that we all have in common no matter where in the country we live, or what our ethnic background is, or what social class we belong to. I just don't warm up to the topic and now I have a place to send them, hurrah. Andy also has out Real American Food: Restaurants, Markets, and Shops Plus Favorite Hometown Recipes with Burt Wolf. New York: Rizzoli, 2006. You can visit Andy's website here. The Encyclopedia of Cajun and Creole Cuisine by John Folse John Folse published one heck of a tome back a while, entitled The Encyclopedia of Cajun and Creole Cuisine. I suppose folks in Louisiana have heard of it, but somehow I missed out on it, possibly because it was published by Folse's own publishing company, and because it is a huge, picture filled thing, unlikely to be bought casually by bookstore to have on hand in case someone might want it. It appears to me to be a thorough going examination of Louisiana's distinctive cookery. It was my pleasure to learn about this book from an interesting Louisiana native I met on Nantucket last week, Donna Leigh Emden, with whom I cooked for an event I spoke at. Donna Leigh and I had a grand time whipping up a few historic fish dishes including a couple out of Hannah Glasse, a lobster sauced baked codfish, and broiled oysters on the half shell, plus good old Yankee salt cod fish cakes made in appetizer size. Folse's book was published by Chef John Folse and Company Publishing, 2517 South Phillippe Ave., Gonzales, LA, 70737, www.jfolse.com. Phone 225-644-6000. A Handbook of Food Processing in Classical Rome by David L. Thurmond. A Handbook of Food Processing in Classical Rome by David L. Thurmond is available or will be soon from Brill. If you have money to spend, I bet this one is going to be a tad more useful than Cooking with the Bible. The description says that it is "a careful analysis of Roman food processes, including those for cereals, olive oil, wine, other plant products, animal products, and condiments. The work combines analysis of literary and archaeological evidence with that of traditional comparative practices and modern food science." The emphasis is on grains, olive oil, and wines. Here is the content of Chapter One, Cereals: "Roman Cereal Grains, Parching, Threshing, Winnowing, Ensilage, Braying of Porridge Grains, Milling of Bread Grains, Bolting, Breadmaking, Leavening, Kneading." I hope the author got around to baking, too, but you can see the drift. David L. Thurmond received the Ph.D. in Classical Philology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1992. Research interests include archaic Roman religion, Roman social history, and Greek and Roman technology. He currently resides in Durham, NC. ISBN: 90 04 15236 9. See the website. Cooking with the Bible: Biblical Food, Feasts, and Lore by Anthony Chiffolo and The Rev. Dr. Rayner W. Hesse, Jr. is a new product from Greenwood Press. Pardon my cynicism, but to me it looks aimed at religious home schoolers. The description of the book says, "Since biblical times, the Judeo-Christian lifestyle has centered on meals. Extending hospitality to both friends and strangers was a divine command, and an invitation to dine was sacred." Eighteen meals are featured and then a brief essay describing the theological, historical, and cultural significance of the feast follows. Next come separate recipes for the dishes served in the meal, followed by more commentary on the dish itself, preparation methods used in biblical times, how the dish was served, and the lore surrounding individual ingredients and dishes. The recipes are modified for modern people, with use of modern appliances, ingredients, etc. Chapters include the following: Entertaining Angels Unaware, Esther Saves Her People, Jesus Dines with the Pharisee, and Joseph Dines with His Brothers, The authors are Anthony Chiffolo and The Rev. Dr. Rayner W. Hesse, Jr. who have both published on religious topics, but not food history. As usual, Greenwood wants a lot for this book: $75 to be precise. ISBN: 0-313-33410-2. 416 pages, photos, maps. Greenwood Press, Publication Date: 10/30/2006. I realize this is excessively grumpy of me, but I would like to point out that it was not just the Judeo-Christian "life-style"---man, I hate that word---that centered on meals, but rather it has been the human condition, all cultures, for most of recorded and unrecorded time, that centered on meals. Curry: a Tale of Cooks & Conquerors, by Lizzie Collingham There are curry recipes in the current FHN, in the piece on Northern/Southern seasonings. Longtime subscriber Marian Walke wrote to say she enjoyed the article and further said, "I have since been reading Curry: a Tale of Cooks & Conquerors, by Lizzie Collingham (Oxford University Press, 2006, ISBN-13: 9780195172416 and ISBN-10: 0195172418)." For a Times review of the book check this out. Marian goes on: "Collingham includes a wonderful collection of well-documented tidbits, including Eliza Acton's recipe for curry powder -- a decade after Mrs Randolph (and MUCH milder!); the introduction of chillies and tomatoes into southern India by Portuguese traders before 1600; the difference between Indian, English, and Anglo-Indian "curry"; a brief exploration of ketchup; and the amazing (to me, at least) news that while coffee conquered Europe in the 17th century and tea in the 18th, the Indian subcontinent did not develop a taste for tea until the 20th century, and then only after a concerted marketing campaign by the British. Oh, yes, and the difficulties young Gandhi experienced as a law student trying to maintain a vegetarian diet in Victorian London. I highly recommend this book." Hearth and Home: Women and the Art of Open Hearth Cooking by Fiona Lucas. Fiona Lucas, long time friend of and subscriber to FHN, plus a co-founder of the Culinary Historians of Ontario, accomplished hearth cook, and all-round good egg, has a book. This may very well be the just the ticket to keep new or would be food historians with no hearth cooking experience out of as much trouble as they would get into without it. Entitled Hearth and Home: Women and the Art of Open Hearth Cooking was published in June by Lorimer. You can see it here. The description says, "Today the fireplace with its crackling logs is a romantic icon representing the heart of the home, but not so long ago its role was much more than symbolic. A hearth or fireplace was an essential first fixture in Canadian homes and its warmth sustained the family in many ways. Whether in a longhouse, a fishing shack, a log cabin, a manor home, or on a thriving farm, the kitchen was the main workplace of Canadian women within family centred households for generations. Its central feature is the focal point of Hearth and Home, a social history that evokes the sights, smells, and tastes of historic kitchens. This book tells the story of the women who worked back-breaking hours tending the fire and using its energy with skill and resourceful creativity to nourish their families or feed a hungry fort. Fiona Lucas, culinary historian and practiced hearth cook, synthesizes the shared experience of the family cook across decades and cultures, along the way introducing readers to fascinating dishes such as the hedgehog pudding and tools such as the salamander and the spider. The text is illustrated with photographs from historic sites including Black Creek Pioneer Village, Louisbourg, Kings Landing, Upper Canada Village, and many others. This is a book that will appeal to readers of Canadian history, and to anyone who has puzzled over the now unusual kitchen tools once common in 19th-century homes." There is a nice interview with Fiona here at Spadina House one of several historic sites in Toronto where Fiona works as a historian and does much staff training in historic cookery. Here are the details: paperback, 72 pages, Lorimer, 2006, ISBN: 1550289217, $19.95. The Blue Grass Cook Book, by Minnie C. Fox's 1904, with a introduction by Toni Tipton-Martin. The Blue Grass Cook Book, a reprint of Minnie C. Fox's 1904 compilation, has just been published by The University Press of Kentucky, with a fine new introduction by Toni Tipton-Martin. University Press information reports, "In Fox's time, the culinary history of black women in the South was usually characterized by demoralizing portraits of servants toiling in "big house" kitchens. In contrast, The Blue Grass Cook Book, with its photographs of African American cooks at work and a passionate introduction by Fox's brother, respected Kentucky novelist John Fox Jr., reveals the vital role of black cooks in the preparation and service required to establish the well-known tradition of Southern hospitality." Ms. Martin provides biographical information about the Fox family, and puts the book into well-balanced social and historical persepctive. The cookbook is a good description of Kentucky (and generally Southern) cookery of the last third or so of the 19th century. Illustrated with wonderfully dignified, black and white photographs of black cooks as they go about their work, it was orginally introduced by Minnie's brother John Fox, Jr., the novelist, whose essay is also included. ISBN 0-8131-2381-X, in cloth, $29.95, 448 pages. Univ. Press of Kentucky, 663 South Limestone St., Lexington, KY 40508-4008, and here on the web. Putting Meat on the American Table by Roger Horowitz Putting Meat on the American Table by Roger Horowitz landed here this week. The subtitle is "Taste, Technology, Transformation," and there are chapters on beef, pork, hot dogs, chicken, and convenience meat. Lots of footnotes, suggested further reading and an index. I haven't read it yet, but it has a reliable look to it, and was blurbed by people who know what they are talking about. The book has been published by Johns Hopkins University Press. Details: $35.00 hardcover, ISBN 0-8018-8240-0, 2005, 192 pp. 29 halftones, 8 line drawings. $19.00 for the paperback, ISBN 0-8018-8241-9. Bones:Recipes, History, and Lore by Jennifer McLagan Bones are not sufficiently valued--certainly not as they were in the past. A couple years ago or so, Jennifer McLagan emailed and asked me if I knew anything aobut the wishbone ceremony. I didn't. Still don't, though if I buy and read her new book, Bones: Recipes, History, and Lore, I might find out. You can see it here. I recall seeing marrow spoons in a silver display at Colonail Willaimsburg a number of yers ago, and thought then what a difference in attitudes now towards bones and marrow. The idea of eating marrow today makes some moderns retch, but people in the past appreciated the unctousness so much. All good cooks know that bone carries flavor. The Pineapple: King of Fruits by Francesca Beauman Pineapples was Francesca Beauman's passion, and the cause of an email inquiry here a couple years ago, too. Her book is now out, and she emailed to tell me about it: "Just to let you know that my book about the history of the pineapple, entitled The Pineapple: King of Fruits, was published last week by Chatto & Windus, priced £16.99. It's available in most U.K. bookshops. Alternatively, for those outside the U.K., it's at this website." This is sure to be a good addition to the food biography literature. La Bonne Cuisine de Madame E. St. Ange: The Original Companion for French Home Cooking, translated by Paul Aratow. La Bonne Cuisine de Madame E. St. Ange: The Original Companion for French Home Cooking, translated by Paul Aratow and published by Ten Speed Press. Written by housewife and professional chef Evelyn St. Ange in 1927, it guided cooks like Julia Child and Madeleine Kammen through classic French cookery. It contains 1300 recipes for all the basics, like Coq au Vin, Quiche Lorraine, and Cassoulet, has the original instructional illustrations. ISBN 1-58008-605-5, $40 I hardcover, 800 !! pages. It will be released in December. Check it out here at Ten Speed. Cornbread Nation's #3: Foods of the Mountain South. Ronni Lundy, editor. Foods of the Mountain Southis Cornbread Nation's #3 offering. Ronni Lundy is the editor of this collection of 40 pieces, including poems, stories and essays on food of the Appalachians, Ozarks, and "hillbilly diaspora." I always look forward to Cornbread Nation, published by the Southern Foodways Alliance which is doing so much to gather and preserve information about traditional Southern cookery. University of North Carolina Press publishes it for SFA. Look for ISBN 0-8078-5656-8, at a reasonable $17.95 in paperback. Cornucopia, Being a Kitchen Entertainment and Cookbook, appears to be a kind of salad of recipes, food lore, and facts drawn from the Huntington Library's rare book collections by Judith Herman and Marguerite Shalett Herman. The press information sent out included a few pages, appropriately enough for this time of year, about pumpkins. Included were the rhyme "Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater," and descriptions from the 1896 Smiley's Cook Book, and William Rhind's 1842 History of the Vegetable Kingdom, plus Josselyn's recipes for "New England's Ancient Standing Dish," that is, stewed pumpkin, plus a pumpkin butter recipe from the 1890s Maude Cooke, Three Meals a Day. Then we have Mrs. Rorer's directions for drying pumpkins, plus Charles Ranshoffer's directions for pumpkin fried in small sticks from 1894, and lastly three pie recipes from Hannah Wooley's 1673, to the Guide to Service, 1842, and finally The New Hydropathic Cook-Book, 1869. If I had to guess, this book is going to be most useful as a omnium gatherum for food writers and publicists who always need fun facts, and a great fun read for anyone interested in food. Because there are no page numbers, publishers or any of the rest of that citation stuff a lot of us need, it might be useful to the more serious food historian as a key to sources or an introduction to a topic. University of California Press, ISBN 087328-213-2, hardback at $29.95, for 318 pages prettily illustrated and designed. Appalachian Home Cooking: History, Culture and Recipes by Mark F. Sohn Appalachian Home Cooking: History, Culture and Recipes by Mark F. SohnAppalachian Home Cooking: History, Culture and Recipes written by Mark F. Sohn, and published by the University Press of Kentucky, it is another book dedicated to a regional foodway. I am going to read it eagerly in order to see what is distinctive about Appalachia because, listen to this, this is how the press release begins: "Biscuits and gravy, chicken and dumplings, cornbread, green beans, fried chicken, apple pie....These foods and many others are at the heart of _______________" --- well, in this case, Appalachian home cooking. My challenge to you is, how else might you have ended that sentence??? My friend Sharon from Missouri would have said, "Missouri home cooking!" I hope we get lots of books like this so we can do an honest to goodness cheek by jowl comparison of all our various "regional" cookeries to see what we have in common and what is truly different among us. Meanwhile, you will like this book, too, full of lore, history, and recipes. ISBN 0-8131-9153-X, paper, $26.00. The University Press of Kentucky is here. Libro de arte coquinaria by Maestro Martino, translated by Gillian Riley Maestro Martino's Libro de arte coquinaria is available on CD ROM. This is interesting, probably ideal for people with small apartments or few bookcases. Octavo produces this, and it and reports that it is "undoubtedly one of the most important surviving cookery books of the Renaissance. His recipes presage modern practices in many respects, and his cuisine had an enduring influence on European cooking. The Octavo Edition of this manuscript from the Library of Congress includes a commentary and English translation by Gillian Riley, a foreword by Alice Waters of Chez Panisse, and essays by Bruno Laurioux and Paul Shaw. Available on CD-ROM (ISBN 1-891788-83-3). US$40." Check it out here. Mistresses of the Transient Hearth by Robin Campbell Robin Campbell, a very long time subscriber, has just seen her book into print. Entitled Mistresses of the Transient Hearth, it is the story of early American military wives who lugged their crockery and cookery all over the country following their husbands from one post to another. Robin earned her PhD with this work, and there are chapters about all aspects of domestic life, including clothing and furnishing. The chapters on food and cooking, dining and entertaining, are, of course, the ones we are most enthusiastic about and Robin has done a great job with them. We see in these accounts that army wives being transferred around the country, often to difficult posts, stayed in touch with people at home, kept up on the latest fashions, and did all they could to maintain an accustomed style. Their choices tell us what the mainstream valued, and are very informative. This book is in the Studies in American Popular History and Culture Series published by Routledge, an imprint of Taylor & Francis. ISBN 0-415-97360-0; 192 pages, illustrations. List Price: $70.00. You can order it here. Or call 1-800-634-7064. Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South, by Marcie Cohen Ferris Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South, by our own Marcie Cohen Ferris, has just come out, the culmination of Marcie's dissertation work plus. Marcie, who grew up in Arkansas, began this study with an interest in her grandmother's recipes boxes where she noticed connections between Jewishness and Southerness, besides many family and friendship connections. The great strength of this book is that Marcie looked long and hard at the evidence of Jewish acculturation to living in the South, and observed the patterns that emerged. The book will have lasting value because of its authentic point of view. There is no forced grand theory of Jewish Southern cooking here, but rather a graceful description of what truly happened. Great illustrations, some recipes, oral history, and revealing annecdotes enrich the book. Good old University of North Carolina Press came through with this one, ISBN 0-8078-2978-1, cloth, 344 pages, $29.95, available afer October 10. FMI check here. And Marcie has a blog you can check out as well. Culinary Cultures of Europe: Identity, Diversity and Dialogue Culinary Cultures of Europe: Identity, Diversity and Dialogue The book Culinary Cultures of Europe: Identity, Diversity and Dialogue is just out, edited by Darra Goldstein and Kathrin Merkle. The announcement says: "There is nothing trivial about food: the study of culinary culture and its history provides an insight into broad social, political and economic changes in society. The present collection of essays reflects many of the important transitions through which 40 European countries have passed, and in this sense, it is a history book. It is also a colourful celebration of an enormously rich part of our cultural heritage. The tastes and smells of a country¹s traditional table are a meaningful route to an important part of its collective memory, accessible to everyone. Food is also one of the simplest and most direct ways to promote multicultural understanding. This book offers an excellent insight into the meaning of food culture and will be of interest to anyone who wishes to explore the diversity of our European cultural heritage." Then they quote Tom Jaine, publisher, Petits Propos Culinaires and Prospect Books, whose judgement we trust: "We have ever identified our neighbours and friends by their culinary customs: here, in one book, is a ground breaking study, bringing to one table the infinity of dishes that make Europe today," he says. Hardcover, 500 pages! ISBN : 92-871-5744-8. Price 49 €/ 75 $ + 10% postage. (Gulp). Order here published by Council of Europe Publishing, Palais de l'Europe, 67075 Strasbourg Cedex, France. Food Culture in Sub-Saharan Africa The food of Sub-Saharan Africa is Fran Osseo-Asare's topic in the Greenwood Press's Food Culture Around the World series edited by our Ken Abala. I met Fran a few years ago at an IACP conference, and she told me of her interest in the topic, which thank goodness, she has been able to engage for all our benefits. Food Culture in Sub-Saharan Africa was released in June, and Fran's task was to cover 47 countries!! --- she took the regional approach, and like all the books in the series she covers historical and geographical features, major foods and ingredients, cooking techniques and equipment, social relations and food, typical and special occasion meals, and diet and health concerns. Now, I am going to cross my fingers that Fran will have the energy and live long enough to do a more exhaustive work on that territory than the Greenwood book can encompass. She is at work now on The Good Soup Comes from the Good Earth, a book about the regional cooking of Ghana. Please also visit her website, www.betumi.com. Food Culture in Sub-Saharan Africa, by Fran Osseo-Assare, Hardback, 224 pages, list price $49.95, ISBN 0-313-32488-3. (Hardback doesn't begin to describe it: these books can be dropped from a ten story window in front of a speeding semi and come out of it unscathed: they have a special library binding; that's why they cost so much.) Now, to buy the book you will have to go to the Greenwood website or call 1-800-225-5800. Greenwood thinks its market is libraries, schools, etc., and hasn't tumbled to the fact that there are tons of us out there passionately interested in this stuff, who would like to go to our friendly local independent bookstore and buy these books. Food Culture in Russia and Central Asia Glenn Mack and Asele Surina's Food Culture in Russia and Central Asia. Our own Glenn is a food historian who trained in the culinary arts in Uzbekistan, Russia, Italy, and the United States. He is the Director of Education for the Culinary Academy of Austin and founded the Historic Foodways Group of Austin. He co-authored this book with his wife Asele, a Russian native and former journalist who now works as a translator and interpreter, and as the family archaeologist has worked at the Institute of Classical Archaeology at the University of Texas on joint projects with an archaeological museum in Crimea, Ukraine. This is another in the Greenwood series, which you can see at this link. BTW Jackie Newman did the series book on China and Laura Mason did England. The other authors names in the group do not sound familiar to me, but I trust Ken's judgement. There are now 12 in all, and they all cost $50. So you could drop $600 and have a complete beginner's guide to the food cultures of the world, but there are more to come, I am sure. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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