Chowda!: Three Centuries of Recipes Reveal the Rise of New England’s Finest Culinary Export

in History, Life, Random | December 14th, 2012

Say chow­der out loud: chow­der. The word sounds like food. Not an appe­tiz­er either. An entree in a small crock topped with bro­ken crack­ers.

As with so many things relat­ed to food, chow­der is a sto­ried dish. It hails from New Eng­land and north­east­ern Cana­da, its first writ­ten ref­er­ence dat­ing back to 1732 when a jour­nal­ist recalls din­ing on a “fine chow­dered cod.”

There are as many types of chow­der as there are soup, though a true chow­der is more like a stew than a soup. Some purists would rather eat slugs than a chow­der with toma­toes in it or whose name ref­er­ences New York. But all chow­ders must fea­ture the fol­low­ing: broth, salt pork, bis­cuit and seafood.

Aside from that, all bets are off. Chow down.

Of course a region­al dish with this long a his­to­ry and which leaves this much room for inter­pre­ta­tion deserves a his­to­ry of its own, and so the good peo­ple at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mass­a­chu­setts, Amherst cre­at­ed the New Eng­land Chow­der Com­pendi­um, a col­lec­tion of recipes and ephemera explor­ing how chow­der rose to become a sta­ple of New Eng­land cook­ery.

Culled from cook­books held by the university’s Beat­rice McIn­tosh Cook­ery Col­lec­tion, the com­pendi­um chron­i­cles chow­der recipes from the 1700s to the 1970s, through lean times and fat, through recipes heavy with cream and with­out.

And so, as read­ers click through fea­tured chow­der recipes from the 1920s on through to the 1940s, they’re sure to notice the ways ingre­di­ents vary. Use evap­o­rat­ed milk and a lit­tle water, if cream is not avail­able. House­wives were wise in the 1940s to be thrifty while mak­ing fresh stock from knuck­les: Save that fat that rose to the top and sell it to your meat deal­er.

Chow­der may be one of the poster food for peo­ple who are mak­ing do. Don’t have fresh seafood? Canned tuna will do. Lima beans soaked overnight can sub­sti­tute for clams.

As with most hand­writ­ten recipes, the hand­writ­ing and illus­tra­tions are part of the fun. One rad­i­cal sug­gests adding a dash of papri­ka. This recipe, for the Kingston Yacht Club, may have fed the entire mem­ber­ship (three gal­lons of clams?!)

The archivists include a nice primer, trac­ing the devel­op­ment of chow­der (the word comes from French for “caul­dron”).

One recipe that doesn’t sound so good: diet chow­der from the 1970s.

Kate Rix writes about dig­i­tal media and edu­ca­tion. Read more of her work at and at thenifty.blogspot.com.

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Annie Leibovitz, Photographer of Icons and Iconic Photographer, Profiled on American Masters

in Photography, Television | December 14th, 2012

One must take care, when writ­ing about well-con­nect­ed cul­tur­al fig­ures, not to abuse the word icon­ic. But when one writes about the pho­tog­ra­ph­er Annie Lei­bovitz, one almost has to abuse it. Here we have a woman who took two of the most mem­o­rable pho­tos of John Lennon, col­lab­o­rat­ed (to the extent pos­si­ble) with Hunter S. Thomp­son, went on tour with the Rolling Stones, fol­lowed Richard Nixon out of the White House the last time he left it, con­vinced Whoopi Gold­berg to get into a bath­tub of milk, and loved Susan Son­tag. This whole post could­n’t pos­si­bly con­tain a com­plete list of her pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al involve­ment with the, yes, icons of twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry pop­u­lar cul­ture. Her por­traits of them became icons them­selves, which, in turn, made Lei­bovitz her­self icon­ic. For a visu­al­ly rich sense of the scope of her life and career, look no fur­ther than the doc­u­men­tary above, Life Through a Lens.

This 2008 pro­duc­tion comes from the PBS-dis­trib­uted Amer­i­can Mas­ters tele­vi­sion series, which we fea­tured on Tues­day. Direct­ed by Lei­bovitz’s own sis­ter and there­fore pos­sessed of the unusu­al famil­ial insight you’d expect, Life Through a Lens also includes a great many of the hard-to-inter­view lumi­nar­ies with­out which no pro­file of this pho­tog­ra­ph­er could be com­plete. We hear from Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger, Jann Wen­ner, Hillary Clin­ton, Glo­ria Steinem, Pat­ti Smith, Mick Jag­ger, Kei­th Richards, Bette Midler, Yoko Ono, and George Clooney, to name but a few of her admir­ers who’ve held their own at the busi­ness end of her cam­era. In the four years since this doc­u­men­tary, Lei­bovitz’s pho­tographs — now of 21st-cen­tu­ry celebri­ties like Miley Cyrus, Sasha Baron Cohen, Lady Gaga, Rihan­na, and LeBron James —  have con­tin­ued to impress in the pages of Vogue and Van­i­ty Fair. When­ev­er some­one ris­es toward icon­ic sta­tus, Annie Lei­bovitz’s visu­al imag­i­na­tion can’t be far behind.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Watch PBS’ Amer­i­can Mas­ters Doc­u­men­taries (Includ­ing Scorsese’s Homage to Kazan) Free Online

Alfred Stieglitz: The Elo­quent Eye, a Reveal­ing Look at “The Father of Mod­ern Pho­tog­ra­phy”

1972 Diane Arbus Doc­u­men­tary Inter­views Those Who Knew the Amer­i­can Pho­tog­ra­ph­er Best

Hen­ri Carti­er-Bres­son and the Deci­sive Moment

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

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Writers’ Houses Gives You a Virtual Tour of Famous Authors’ Homes

in Life, Literature, Writing | December 14th, 2012

 

I’ve always been some­what amused by the accounts of Paul Ver­laine and Arthur Rimbaud’s brief bohemi­an affair. The old­er, mar­ried, and inter­nal­ly tor­tured Catholic Verlaine’s pin­ing for the self-destruc­tive and pre­co­cious young Rim­baud always presents a ridicu­lous pic­ture in prose. But it’s a pic­ture that takes on much clear­er con­tours when, for the first time, I get to see the house they occu­pied on 8 Roy­al Col­lege Street (above). The image of the house, with its for­bid­ding brick façade, gives their real­ly pret­ty unpleas­ant sto­ry a grav­i­tas that lit­er­ary his­to­ry can’t approach. Whether seen in per­son or in a pho­to­graph, the effect of view­ing any revered author’s home is sim­i­lar: his­to­ries once sub­ject to biog­ra­phers’ caprice take on the irrefutable weight of phys­i­cal real­i­ty. And while I’d love to have the lux­u­ry of a pil­grim­age to all my lit­er­ary heroes’ homes, I’m con­tent with the next best thing: an inter­net tour in pic­tures. That’s exact­ly what one gets at the Writ­ers’ Hous­es site, which has col­lect­ed dozens of images of famous writ­ers’ homes, sourced main­ly from user pho­tos.

And so home­bod­ies like myself can read their favorite Edna St. Vin­cent Mil­lay son­nets while gaz­ing at her Auster­litz, NY home “Steeple­top” (below, a bit more mod­est than I’d imag­ined):

Like­wise, I can read Flan­nery O’Connor’s grotesque lit­tle sto­ries and be con­tin­u­al­ly amazed that she did not emerge from some Medieval clois­ter in a fiery South­ern wild but from the bright, ram­bling farm­house called “Andalu­sia” (below).

And while I can only con­nect Thomas Hardy’s coun­try goth­ic nov­els and bleak poet­ry with the ter­mi­nal despair of a man who nev­er leaves his fire­lit study in some stur­dy, for­mal estate, his lit­tle cot­tage (below) is real­ly kind of cheery and resem­bles some­thing out of Peter Jackson’s Shire (though Hardy’s “Max Gate” home in Dorch­ester is exact­ly what I pic­ture him in).

The Writ­ers’ Hous­es site allows you to browse by author, state, and city, with a sep­a­rate cat­e­go­ry for “inter­na­tion­al hous­es.” Its main page is a reg­u­lar blog with a wealth of cur­rent infor­ma­tion on writ­ers’ homes, replete with links to oth­er sites and sources. For lovers of trav­el and archi­tec­tur­al and lit­er­ary his­to­ry, this is not to be missed.

via Kot­tke

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Beatboxing Bach’s Goldberg Variations

in Music | December 13th, 2012

It might not sur­pass Glenn Gould’s record­ing of Bach’s Gold­berg Vari­a­tions from 1981. (Watch him per­form it here). But this clip, fea­tur­ing teenage pianist Kadar Qian and beat­box extra­or­di­naire Kevin Olu­so­la of Pen­ta­tonix, has a charm of its own. The clip comes from From the Top, a non-prof­it whose YouTube chan­nel presents out­stand­ing per­for­mances from the coun­try’s best young clas­si­cal musi­cians.

If you want your own copy of the Gold­berg Vari­a­tions, you can instant­ly down­load The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions, the first Kick­starter-fund­ed, open source record­ing of Bach’s mas­ter­piece. It’s avail­able entire­ly for free. Also don’t miss the Com­plete Organ Works of J.S. Bach. They’re free too!

via Boing­Bo­ing

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Enthusiastic Futurist Jason Silva Waxes Theoretical About the Immersive Power of Cinema

in Art, Film | December 13th, 2012

No one will ever accuse Jason Sil­va of lack­ing in enthu­si­asm. The self-pro­fessed “film­mak­er, futur­ist, epiphany addict” is in love, head over heels, with tech­nol­o­gy, and it’s a love infec­tious, as he shows us above in his short mono­logue, Atten­tion: The Immer­sive Pow­er of Cin­e­ma. Inspired by Diana Slattery’s essay “Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty and Hal­lu­ci­na­tion,” Sil­va extracts a the­o­ry of cin­e­ma as a “rhetor­i­cal tech­nol­o­gy, a shrine to immer­sion.” His ideas are also built around a nar­ra­tive and lin­guis­tic con­cept known as “deic­tic shift the­o­ry,” from deix­is or “self-ori­en­ta­tion.” For Sil­va, the deic­tic shift occurs when the “view­er assumes a view­point in the sto­ry,” and, in total immer­sion, “enters the dream as dream.” He spec­u­lates that at this point, the “pre-frontal lobe dims, and there’s a loss of ego,” such that “cin­e­ma is akin to god­li­ness.” Hog­wash, you say? Per­haps, but it’s enter­tain­ing hog­wash, and if one takes the time to process the ideas embed­ded in Silva’s man­ic, form-is-con­tent pre­sen­ta­tion, it’s even per­sua­sive. But poor Beethoven. Fur Elise doesn’t deserve anoth­er beat­ing.

Josh Jones is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Kickstart the Restoration of the Very First William S. Burroughs Documentary

in Film, Literature | December 13th, 2012

If you’re into William S. Bur­roughs, maybe you’ve watched all the Bur­roughs-relat­ed mate­r­i­al we’ve fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture, like his 1981 Sat­ur­day Night Live appear­ance or the 1991 doc­u­men­tary Com­mis­sion­er of Sew­ers. But anoth­er doc­u­men­tary on Bur­roughs exists — the ear­li­est one of all — and we can’t show it to you. Nobody can show Bur­roughs: The Movie to you, or at least they can’t show it to you in any crisp, clear, acces­si­ble form. Sure you could pay between 25 and 90 dol­lars for a VHS copy on Ama­zon, but that mon­ey might be more pro­duc­tive­ly put toward restor­ing the orig­i­nal film. As you can see in the video above, such a restora­tion is in the works, pro­vid­ed the restor­ers can raise the $20,000 they need to do it on Kick­starter by the end of this month.

Aaron Brookn­er, nephew of Bur­roughs: The Movie’s direc­tor Howard Brookn­er, found a print of the film in good con­di­tion, but now needs the fund­ing to remas­ter it clean­ly into a mod­ern dig­i­tal form. Begun in 1979 and debuted on the BBC in 1983, the doc­u­men­tary includes inter­views not just with Bur­roughs but with Allen Gins­berg, Brion Gysin, Fran­cis Bacon, Her­bert Hun­ke, Pat­ti Smith, Ter­ry South­ern, and Lau­ren Hut­ton. Howard Brookn­er, who died in 1989, made it as his New York Uni­ver­si­ty film school the­sis, and to oper­ate the cam­era and record the sound he enlist­ed two soon-to-be famous class­mates, Tom DiCil­lo and Jim Jar­musch. As of this writ­ing, Aaron Brookn­er has received $9,425 in pledges, near­ly half of his goal. Bur­roughs enthu­si­asts inter­est­ed in chip­ping in — back­ing pre­mi­ums include lim­it­ed-edi­tion DVDs, nev­er-before-heard audio record­ings, and Bur­roughs: The Movie pho­to­books — should vis­it the pro­jec­t’s Kick­starter page.

Relat­ed con­tent:

William S. Bur­roughs Reads His First Nov­el, Junky

William S. Bur­roughs on the Art of Cut-up Writ­ing

Beat Writer William S. Bur­roughs on Sat­ur­day Night Live, 1981

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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The Complete Sherlock Holmes Now Free on the Kindle

in Books, e-books, Literature | December 13th, 2012

It’s sure­ly worth giv­ing you the quick heads up that, start­ing today, “the com­plete col­lec­tion of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sher­lock Holmes tales, both long and short, have been com­piled togeth­er for the first time.” The Com­plete Sher­lock Holmes (down­load it here) is free on the Kin­dle thanks to Simon & Schus­ter. Unlike many free texts, the for­mat­ting looks quite nice on my Kin­dle Paper­white as well as on the iPad using the Free Kin­dle app. So, we’re glad­ly adding this one to our col­lec­tion of 375 Free eBooks, which gives you imme­di­ate access to many more clas­sics.

NOTE: We have unfor­tu­nate­ly dis­cov­ered that this par­tic­u­lar text is not avail­able in some coun­tries. Sor­ry, there was no way for us to know that in advance. But, fear not, you can find oth­er ver­sions of Sher­lock Holmes on the web. Give these links a try:

Doyle, Arthur Conan - The Adven­tures of Sher­lock Holmes

via @kirstinbutler/The Verge

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The Physics of Guinness Beer Demystified

in Physics | December 13th, 2012

Over the years the physi­cists behind the YouTube chan­nel Six­ty Sym­bols have answered some big ques­tions — like what hap­pens if you stick your hand inside the Large Hadron Col­lid­er? Or do physi­cists believe in God? But now these fine sci­en­tists from The Uni­ver­si­ty of Not­ting­ham have brought physics to a lev­el that I can per­son­al­ly appre­ci­ate. They’ve hit the streets of Dublin to demys­ti­fy what goes into the finest of Irish liba­tions, the per­fect glass of Guin­ness Beer. Their inquiry starts with the most obvi­ous ques­tion: What cre­ates that thick beige froth that sits ele­gant­ly atop the dark brown stout? It sounds like a mun­dane ques­tion. Until you real­ize it’s not. The dynam­ics of Guin­ness foam can be explained part­ly by work done by the Irish physi­cist Lord Kelvin (1824–1907) long ago. But oth­er aspects of Guin­ness foam are still being hot­ly con­test­ed by physi­cists today. Take for exam­ple this paper, Waves in Guin­ness, pub­lished in 2008 in the jour­nal Physics of Flu­ids. Now we’ll let Six­ty Sym­bols explain the rest.…

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Physics of Cof­fee Rings Final­ly Explained

Free Online Cours­es Online about Physics from Great Uni­ver­si­ties

Physics from Hell: How Dante’s Infer­no Inspired Galileo’s Physics

Ein­stein for the Mass­es

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