30,000 People Line Up for the First McDonald’s in Moscow, While Grocery Store Shelves Run Empty (1990)

in Food & Drink, History | April 23rd, 2021

Every­one has wait­ed in a long line — for burg­ers, Broad­way tick­ets, Black Fri­day sales… But few us have the noto­ri­ous queu­ing resilience of the Sovi­ets. “When the first McDonald’s arrived in Moscow in 1990, the city went mad,” Boris Egorov writes at Rus­sia Beyond. “Thou­sands of Mus­covites flocked to the new burg­er joint, form­ing lines sev­er­al kilo­me­ters long in the cen­ter of Moscow on Pushkin­skaya Square.” On its first day, the restau­rant oblit­er­at­ed the pre­vi­ous record for most McDonald’s cus­tomers (9,100 in Budapest), serv­ing over 30,000 peo­ple, a tes­ta­ment to the for­ti­tude of the employ­ees. The CBC news seg­ment on the open­ing above quotes a line from Pushkin to set the scene: “a feast in a time of plague.”

Stereo­types of fast food work­ers as lack­ing in skill and ambi­tion did not find pur­chase here. “The first work­ers,” Egorov notes, “were the crème de la crème of Sovi­et youth: stu­dents from pres­ti­gious uni­ver­si­ties who could speak for­eign lan­guages with bril­liant cus­tomer ser­vice skills.” Their cheer­ful­ness so unnerved some cus­tomers that they were asked to tone it down for Rus­sians “accus­tomed to rude, boor­ish ser­vice.”

Cus­tomers seemed less awed by the iconog­ra­phy than the “sim­ple sight of polite shop work­ers,” wrote an Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist. The restau­rant, once a tourist attrac­tion, notes trav­el site Bridge to Moscow, had “more than 700 seats inside and 200 out­side,” and was once the largest McDonald’s in the world.

The Moscow McDonald’s rep­re­sent­ed more for Rus­sians than an Amer­i­can nov­el­ty. Orig­i­nal cus­tomer Kse­nia Oski­na had nev­er heard of McDonald’s before she vis­it­ed. She lat­er saved her Big Mac box. “I used that Big Mac box for a long time and put my sand­wich in there instead of a lunch­box,” she tells The Wash­ing­ton Post. “I’d clean it, dry it on the heater and then use it again.” It was­n’t about brand recog­ni­tion for many who duti­ful­ly lined up to pay half a day’s wages for a cou­ple “thin slabs of meat and sliced veg­eta­bles between buns of bread.” (Sor­ry… “two all-beef pat­ties, spe­cial sauce, let­tuce, cheese, and a sesame seed bun…..”)

What did Sovi­et Rus­sians, who had not been raised to sing fast food adver­tis­ing jin­gles, see in the new restau­rant? Capitalism’s promis­es of abun­dance. One Sovi­et jour­nal­ist wrote of McDonald’s as “the expres­sion of America’s ratio­nal­ism and prag­ma­tism toward food.” Just months after­ward, the first Piz­za Hut arrived. As the Sovi­et Union dis­solved less than two years lat­er, the coun­try saw the cre­ation of more desire for high-calo­rie, ultra-processed foods with West­ern-style TV ads: most famous­ly a Piz­za Hut spot from 1997 fea­tur­ing the U.S.S.R.’s last pre­mier, Mikhail Gor­bachev. (“Because of him, we have Piz­za Hut!”)

The pol­i­tics may have mat­tered lit­tle to the aver­age Mus­covite McDonald’s cus­tomer in 1990. “Vis­it­ing the restau­rant was less a polit­i­cal state­ment than an oppor­tu­ni­ty to enjoy a small plea­sure in a coun­try still reel­ing from dis­as­trous eco­nom­ic prob­lems and inter­nal polit­i­cal tur­moil,” notes History.com. Large, seem­ing­ly abstract prob­lems had tan­gi­ble effects: the emp­ty gro­cery stores for which the fail­ing empire became famous.

The Moscow McDonald’s was a col­or­ful oasis for its first cus­tomers, who had no sen­ti­men­tal asso­ci­a­tions with burg­ers and fries. Now, those tastes are nos­tal­gic. “I love it,” said Oski­na thir­ty years lat­er. “For some rea­son in Amer­i­ca, it’s not as tasty as it is here.” Insert your own dat­ed Yakov Smirnoff ref­er­ence.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Watch Metal­li­ca Play “Enter Sand­man” Before a Crowd of 1.6 Mil­lion in Moscow, Dur­ing the Final Days of the Sovi­et Union (1991)

Watch Andy Warhol Eat an Entire Burg­er King Whopper–While Wish­ing the Burg­er Came from McDonald’s (1981)

The Beau­ti­ful, Inno­v­a­tive & Some­times Dark World of Ani­mat­ed Sovi­et Pro­pa­gan­da (1925–1984)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch Orson Welles’ Intoxicating Wine Commercials That Became an 80s Cultural Phenomenon

in Food & Drink, Television | February 24th, 2021

“We will sell no wine before its time”: some Amer­i­cans respond to this phrase with a chuck­le of recog­ni­tion, oth­ers by ask­ing who’ll sell what wine before when. The dif­fer­ence must be gen­er­a­tional, since those alive to watch tele­vi­sion in the late 1970s and ear­ly 80s can’t have avoid­ed hear­ing those words intoned on a reg­u­lar basis — and in no less pow­er­ful a voice than Orson Welles’. Com­ing up on forty years after Cit­i­zen Kane, the for­mer boy-won­der auteur had fall­en on hard times. Strug­gling to com­plete his fea­ture The Oth­er Side of the Wind (lit­tle know­ing that Net­flix would even­tu­al­ly do it for him), he relied on act­ing work to raise pro­fes­sion­al and per­son­al funds. He’d done it before, but now the pro­duc­tions offer­ing him the most lucra­tive roles hap­pened to be com­mer­cials for cheap wine.

Despite hav­ing been cast into the wilder­ness by Hol­ly­wood, if to some degree will­ing­ly, Welles still had cul­tur­al cachet — exact­ly what the high­er-ups at the mass-mar­ket Cal­i­for­nia wine pro­duc­er Paul Mas­son thought their brand need­ed. Mak­ing use of Welles’ late-peri­od pub­lic image as a Fal­staffi­an gour­mand, Paul Mas­son com­mis­sioned a series of tele­vi­sion com­mer­cials and print adver­tise­ments in which he per­son­al­ly endors­es a range of their vari­etals.

In com­par­ing Paul Mas­son’s “Emer­ald Dry” to Beethoven’s Fifth Sym­pho­ny and Gone With the Wind, two works of art known for their pro­longed ges­ta­tion peri­ods, Welles also implic­it­ly acknowl­edged his own artis­tic rep­u­ta­tion for mak­ing films of genius, if films of genius few and far between.

Though Welles balked at the effron­tery of a script com­par­ing Paul Mas­son wine to a Stradi­var­ius vio­lin, he was­n’t with­out gen­uine appre­ci­a­tion for the prod­uct. “Orson liked Paul Masson’s caber­net,” said John Annar­i­no, the adman at DDB Need­ham who han­dled the Paul Mas­son account. “He often called the ad agency and instruct­ed, ‘Send more red.’ ” He also hap­pened to be a high­ly expe­ri­enced booze sales­man: “As ear­ly as 1945 he had done a radio spot for Cres­ta Blan­ca Wines,” writes Inside Hook’s Aaron Gold­farb. “By 1972 he was doing print work with Jim Beam bour­bon. By 1975 he was hawk­ing Carls­berg Lager. That same year, he pitched Domecq Sher­ry, Sande­man port (in which he por­trayed their ‘Sande­man Don’ char­ac­ter) and Nikka Japan­ese Whiskey, which were a huge hit over­seas.”

The cam­paign got Paul Mas­son a sub­stan­tial bump in sales, but it stuck DDB Need­ham with a some­what dif­fi­cult star. This is evi­denced not just by anec­dotes from the set but sur­viv­ing footage that shows Welles, far from dis­dain­ful of the wine at hand, seem­ing­ly too sat­is­fied by it to deliv­er his lines prop­er­ly. Much like the string of increas­ing­ly bit­ter com­plaints cap­tured dur­ing the voiceover record­ing of a Find­us frozen peas com­mer­cial, Welles’ seem­ing­ly drunk­en takes for Paul Mas­son — and even the fin­ished spots — have gone viral in the inter­net age. Rack­ing up mil­lions upon mil­lions of views on Youtube, these videos have begun to bring “We will sell no wine before its time,” a catch­phrase much-ref­er­enced in the 80s, back into the zeit­geist. But then, don’t some things only improve with age?

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­ma­tion of Orson Welles’ Famous Frozen Peas Rant

Orson Welles Teach­es Bac­carat, Craps, Black­jack, Roulette, and Keno at Cae­sars Palace (1978)

The Improb­a­ble Time When Orson Welles Inter­viewed Andy Kauf­man (1982)

Sal­vador Dali’s 1978 Wine Guide, The Wines of Gala, Gets Reis­sued: Sen­su­al Viti­cul­ture Meets Sur­re­al Art

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Anthony Bourdain Talks About the Big Break That Changed His Life–at Age 44

in Books, Food & Drink, Television | February 23rd, 2021

In 1999, Antho­ny Bourdain’s career seemed to have stalled. While his “prin­ci­pal voca­tion remained his posi­tion as exec­u­tive chef” at New York’s Les Halles, rest­less intel­li­gence and wan­der­lust kept him look­ing for oth­er oppor­tu­ni­ties. “He was 43 years old, rode hard and put up wet,” writes Eliz­a­beth Nel­son at The Ringer, “a recov­er­ing addict with a num­ber of debts and a pen­chant for find­ing trou­ble in fail­ing restau­rants across the city.” He had fought for and won an unde­ni­able mea­sure of suc­cess, but he hard­ly seemed on the thresh­old of the major celebri­ty chef­dom he would main­tain until his death twen­ty years lat­er in 2018.

Then, “in the spring of 2000, his sub­li­mat­ed lit­er­ary ambi­tions sud­den­ly caught up with and then quick­ly sur­passed his cook­ing.” Bourdain’s mem­oir Kitchen Con­fi­den­tial “became an imme­di­ate sen­sa­tion,” intro­duc­ing his icon­o­clasm, acer­bic wit, and out­ra­geous con­fes­sion­al style to mil­lions of read­ers, who would soon become view­ers of his try-any­thing trav­el­ogue series, A Cook’s Tour, No Reser­va­tions, The Lay­over, and Parts Unknown, as well as loy­al read­ers of his sub­se­quent books, and even fic­tion like as Gone Bam­boo, a crime nov­el soon to become a TV series.

How did Bour­dain first get his win­ning per­son­al­i­ty before the mass­es? It all start­ed with a 1999 New York­er arti­cle called “Don’t Eat Before Read­ing This,” the pre­de­ces­sor to Kitchen Con­fi­den­tial and an essay that begins with what we might now rec­og­nize as a pro­to­typ­i­cal­ly Bour­dain­ian sen­tence: “Good food, good eat­ing, is all about blood and organs, cru­el­ty and decay.” In the inter­view clip above, from Bourdain’s final, 2017 inter­view with Fast Com­pa­ny, he talks about how the sto­ry led to his “huge break” just a cou­ple days after it ran, when a Blooms­bury edi­tor called with an offer of “the stag­ger­ing­ly high price of fifty thou­sand dol­lars to write a book.”

Every­one who loves Bourdain’s writing—and who loved his gen­er­ous, ecu­meni­cal culi­nary spirit—knows why Kitchen Con­fi­den­tial changed his life overnight, as he says. Yes, “food is pain,” as he writes in the book’s “First Course,” but also, “food is sex”—”the delights of Por­tuguese squid stew, of Well­fleet oys­ters on the half­shell, New Eng­land clam chow­der, of greasy, won­der­ful, fire-red chori­zo sausages, kale soup, and a night when the striped bass jumped right out of the water and onto Cape Cod’s din­ner tables.” Bourdain’s prose lingers over every delight, prepar­ing us for the escapades to come.

In Kitchen Con­fi­den­tial, the exhaus­tion, “sheer weird­ness,” and con­stant “threat of dis­as­ter,” that attend New York kitchen life (and life “inside the CIA”—the Culi­nary Insti­tute of Amer­i­ca, that is), becomes fleshed out with scenes of culi­nary deca­dence the likes of which most read­ers had nev­er seen, smelled, or tast­ed. Fans craved more and more from the chef who wrote, in 1999, just before he would become a best­selling house­hold name, “my career has tak­en an eeri­ly appro­pri­ate turn: these days, I’m the chef de cui­sine of a much loved, old-school French brasserie/bistro where… every part of the animal—hooves, snout, cheeks, skin, and organs—is avid­ly and appre­cia­tive­ly pre­pared and con­sumed.”

Read Bourdain’s New York­er essay here and see his full 2017 inter­view with Fast Com­pa­ny just above.

via @Yoh31

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Life Lessons from Antho­ny Bour­dain: How He Devel­oped His Iron Pro­fes­sion­al­ism, Achieved Cre­ative Free­dom & Learned from Fail­ure

Watch Antho­ny Bourdain’s Free Show, Raw Craft Where He Vis­its Crafts­men Mak­ing Gui­tars, Tat­toos, Motor­cy­cles & More (RIP)

Michael Pol­lan Explains How Cook­ing Can Change Your Life; Rec­om­mends Cook­ing Books, Videos & Recipes

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Life & Death of an Espresso Shot in Super Slow Motion

in Food & Drink | February 22nd, 2021

Some YouTu­ber post­ed online a pret­ty nice clip of an espres­so shot being pulled from a La Mar­zoc­co FB80 espres­so machine at 120 frames per sec­ond. They rec­om­mend mut­ing the sound, then putting on your own music. I gave it a quick shot with the famous sound­track for Kubrick­’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. And I’ll be damned, it syncs up pret­ty well. Have a bet­ter sound­track to rec­om­mend? Feel free to let us know in the com­ments sec­tion below.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Espres­so Mak­er Made in Le Corbusier’s Bru­tal­ist Archi­tec­tur­al Style: Raw Con­crete on the Out­side, High-End Parts on the Inside

Cof­fee Entre­pre­neur Rena­to Bialet­ti Gets Buried in the Espres­so Mak­er He Made Famous

How William S. Bur­roughs Used the Cut-Up Tech­nique to Shut Down London’s First Espres­so Bar (1972)

The Hertel­la Cof­fee Machine Mount­ed on a Volk­swa­gen Dash­board (1959): The Most Euro­pean Car Acces­so­ry Ever Made

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

“The Vertue of the COFFEE Drink”: An Ad for London’s First Cafe Print­ed Cir­ca 1652

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Watch a Korean Master Craftsman Make a Kimchi Pot by Hand, All According to Ancient Tradition

in Art, Food & Drink, History | February 8th, 2021

The South Kore­an cap­i­tal of Seoul, where I live, has in the 21st cen­tu­ry aston­ished vis­it­ing West­ern­ers with its tech­nol­o­gy, its infra­struc­ture, and its sheer urban vital­i­ty. It strikes many of those West­ern­ers (and I include myself among them) as con­sid­er­ably more devel­oped than any­where in the coun­tries they came from. But how­ev­er much Seoul may feel like the future, nowhere in Korea has the past whol­ly van­ished. Take the bul­bous earth­en­ware jars still vis­i­ble on more than a few of the coun­try’s ter­races and rooftops, meant to hold condi­ments like soy­bean and red pep­per paste as well as that world-famous sym­bol of not just Kore­an cui­sine but Kore­an cul­ture itself, the fer­ment­ed cab­bage known as kim­chi.

Com­mon­ly called hangari, or more tra­di­tion­al­ly ong­gi, these jars essen­tial to the fer­men­ta­tion of kim­chi and oth­er Kore­an foods are today pro­duced in large num­bers with indus­tri­al meth­ods. But there are also Kore­an pot­ters who’ve stuck to the old ways — and in a select few cas­es, the very old ways indeed. Take Jin-Gyu, the sub­ject of the video above, a short doc­u­men­tary from Eater’s “Hand­made” series.

“I’m the youngest of the intan­gi­ble cul­tur­al assets in Korea,” he says, refer­ring to the offi­cial list of Impor­tant Intan­gi­ble Cul­tur­al Prop­er­ties intro­duced to pro­tect long-stand­ing tra­di­tions in music, dance, and craft just as the coun­try began its unprece­dent­ed surge into moder­ni­ty. The mak­ing of ong­gi itself, a process Jin-Gyu demon­strates from start to fin­ish in the video, is Impor­tant Intan­gi­ble Cul­tur­al Prop­er­ty No. 96.

After pound­ing his clay into shape while describ­ing how its soil first flows down from the moun­tains, Jin-gyu places it onto his wheel and gives it the dis­tinc­tive shape rec­og­niz­able from all those ter­races and rooftops. This requires con­stant use of his hands, occa­sion­al use of his feet, and even the appli­ca­tion of tra­di­tion­al tools that he also made him­self. The con­trast with tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese pot­tery, its empha­sis on small-scale ele­gance and near-exis­ten­tial­ist atti­tude toward the final prod­uct, is instruc­tive: the Kore­an vari­ety, as Jin-gyu prac­tices it, has a dif­fer­ent ener­gy, more of an emo­tion­al and phys­i­cal rus­tic­i­ty. “This makes me so hap­py,” he says after remov­ing fin­ished jar from the kiln orig­i­nal­ly built by his ong­gi-pot­ter father. “After 300 years, it’ll return to the soil.” But there are plen­ty of hearty meals to be had in the mean­time, none of them with­out kim­chi.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How a Kore­an Pot­ter Found a “Beau­ti­ful Life” Through His Art: A Short, Life-Affirm­ing Doc­u­men­tary

The Art of the Japan­ese Teapot: Watch a Mas­ter Crafts­man at Work, from the Begin­ning Until the Star­tling End

How Soy Sauce Has Been Made in Japan for Over 220 Years: An Inside View

Mod­ern Artists Show How the Ancient Greeks & Romans Made Coins, Vas­es & Arti­sanal Glass

“Prim­i­tive Pot­ter” Trav­els into the Back­coun­try for 10 Days with Only a Knife & Buck­skin and Makes Anasazi Pot­tery

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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The First American Cookbook: Sample Recipes from American Cookery (1796)

in Food & Drink, History | January 29th, 2021

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

On the off chance Lin-Manuel Miran­da is cast­ing around for source mate­r­i­al for his next Amer­i­can his­to­ry-based block­buster musi­cal, may we sug­gest Amer­i­can Cook­ery by “poor soli­tary orphan” Amelia Sim­mons?

First pub­lished in 1796, at 47 pages (near­ly three of them are ded­i­cat­ed to dress­ing a tur­tle), it’s a far quick­er read than the fate­ful Ron Cher­now Hamil­ton biog­ra­phy Miran­da impul­sive­ly select­ed for a vaca­tion beach read.

Slen­der as it is, there’s no short­age of meaty mate­r­i­al:

Calves Head dressed Tur­tle Fash­ion

Soup of Lamb’s Head and Pluck

Fowl Smoth­ered in Oys­ters

Tongue Pie

Foot Pie

Mod­ern chefs may find some of the first Amer­i­can cook­book’s meth­ods and mea­sure­ments take some get­ting used to.

We like to cook, but we’re not sure we pos­sess the where­with­al to tack­le a Crook­neck or Win­ter Squash Pud­ding.

We’ve nev­er been called upon to “per­fume” our “whipt cream” with “musk or amber gum tied in a rag.”

And we wouldn’t know a whortle­ber­ry if it bit us in the whit­pot.

The book’s full title is an indi­ca­tion of its mys­te­ri­ous author’s ambi­tions for the new country’s culi­nary future:

Amer­i­can Cook­ery, or the art of dress­ing viands, fish, poul­try, and veg­eta­bles, and the best modes of mak­ing pastes, puffs, pies, tarts, pud­dings, cus­tards, and pre­serves, and all kinds of cakes, from the impe­r­i­al plum to plain cake: Adapt­ed to this coun­try, and all grades of life.

As Kei­th Stave­ly and Kath­leen Fitzger­ald write in an essay for What It Means to Be an Amer­i­can, a “nation­al con­ver­sa­tion host­ed by the Smith­son­ian and Ari­zona State Uni­ver­si­ty,” Amer­i­can Cook­ery man­aged to strad­dle the refined tastes of Fed­er­al­ist elites and the Jef­fer­so­ni­ans who believed “rus­tic sim­plic­i­ty would inoc­u­late their fledg­ling coun­try against the cor­rupt­ing influ­ence of the lux­u­ry to which Britain had suc­cumbed”:

The recipe for “Queen’s Cake” was pure social aspi­ra­tion, in the British mode, with its but­ter whipped to a cream, pound of sug­ar, pound and a quar­ter of flour, 10 eggs, glass of wine, half-teacup of del­i­cate-fla­vored rose­wa­ter, and spices. And “Plumb Cake” offered the striv­ing house­wife a huge 21-egg show­stop­per, full of expen­sive dried and can­died fruit, nuts, spices, wine, and cream.

Then—mere pages away—sat john­ny­cake, fed­er­al pan cake, buck­wheat cake, and Indi­an slap­jack, made of famil­iar ingre­di­ents like corn­meal, flour, milk, water, and a bit of fat, and pre­pared “before the fire” or on a hot grid­dle. They sym­bol­ized the plain, but well-run and boun­ti­ful, Amer­i­can home. A dia­logue on how to bal­ance the sump­tu­ous with the sim­ple in Amer­i­can life had begun.

(Hamil­ton fans will please note that the cake for the 1780 Schuyler-Hamil­ton wed­ding leaned more toward the for­mer than any­thing in the john­ny­cake / slap­jack vein…)

Amer­i­can Cook­ery is one of nine 18th-cen­tu­ry titles to make the Library of Con­gress’ list of 100 Books That Shaped Amer­i­ca:

This cor­ner­stone in Amer­i­can cook­ery is the first cook­book of Amer­i­can author­ship to be print­ed in the Unit­ed States. Numer­ous recipes adapt­ing tra­di­tion­al dish­es by sub­sti­tut­ing native Amer­i­can ingre­di­ents, such as corn, squash and pump­kin, are print­ed here for the first time. Sim­mons’ “Pomp­kin Pud­ding,” baked in a crust, is the basis for the clas­sic Amer­i­can pump­kin pie. Recipes for cake-like gin­ger­bread are the first known to rec­om­mend the use of pearl ash, the fore­run­ner of bak­ing pow­der.

Stu­dents of Women’s His­to­ry will find much to chew on in the sec­ond edi­tion of Amer­i­can Cook­ery as well, though they may find a few spoon­fuls of pearl ash dis­solved in water nec­es­sary to set­tle upset stom­achs after read­ing Sim­mons’ intro­duc­tion.

Stave­ly and Fitzger­ald observe how “she thanks the fash­ion­able ladies,” or “respectable char­ac­ters,” as she calls them, who have patron­ized her work, before return­ing to her main theme: the “egre­gious blun­ders” of the first edi­tion, “which were occa­sioned either by the igno­rance, or evil inten­tion of the tran­scriber for the press.”

Ulti­mate­ly, all of her prob­lems stem from her unfor­tu­nate con­di­tion; she is with­out “an edu­ca­tion suf­fi­cient to pre­pare the work for the press.” In an attempt to side­step any crit­i­cism that the sec­ond edi­tion might come in for, she writes: “remem­ber, that it is the per­for­mance of, and effect­ed under all those dis­ad­van­tages, which usu­al­ly attend, an Orphan.”

Read the sec­ond edi­tion of Amer­i­can Cook­ery here. (If the archa­ic font trou­bles your eyes, a plain­er ver­sion is here.) A fac­sim­i­le edi­tion of Amer­i­can Cook­ery can be pur­chased online.

Lis­ten to a Lib­riVox audio record­ing of Amer­i­can Cook­ery here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

An Archive of 3,000 Vin­tage Cook­books Lets You Trav­el Back Through Culi­nary Time

His­toric Mex­i­can Recipes Are Now Avail­able as Free Dig­i­tal Cook­books: Get Start­ed With Dessert

Recipes from the Kitchen of Geor­gia O’Keeffe

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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The Life Cycle of a Cup of Coffee: The Journey from Coffee Bean, to Coffee Cup

in Food & Drink | January 28th, 2021

Do you think you would rec­og­nize a cof­fee plant if you came across one in the wild? Not that it’s like­ly out­side the so-called “cof­fee belt,” the region of the world most rich in soil, shade, mild tem­per­a­tures, and copi­ous rain­fall. Farmed cof­fee plants “are pruned short to con­serve their ener­gy,” the Nation­al Cof­fee Asso­ci­a­tion notes, but they “can grow to more than 30 feet (9 meters) high. Each tree is cov­ered with green, waxy leaves grow­ing oppo­site each oth­er in pairs. Cof­fee cher­ries grow along the branch­es. Because it grows in a con­tin­u­ous cycle, it’s not unusu­al to see [white] flow­ers, green fruit and ripe [red] fruit simul­ta­ne­ous­ly on a sin­gle tree.”

That’s a fes­tive image to call to mind when you brew—or a barista brews—your cof­fee bev­er­age of choice. After watch­ing the TED-Ed video above, you’ll also have a sense of the “globe-span­ning process” between the cof­fee plant and that first cup of the morn­ing. “How many peo­ple does it take to make a cup of cof­fee?” the les­son asks. Far more than the one it takes to push the brew but­ton…. The jour­ney begins in Colom­bia: forests are clear-cut for neat rows of shrub-like cof­fee trees. These were first domes­ti­cat­ed in Ethiopia and are still grown across sub-Saha­ran Africa as well as South Amer­i­ca and South­east Asia, where low-wage work­ers har­vest the cof­fee cher­ries by hand.

The cher­ries are then processed by machine, sort­ed, and fer­ment­ed. The result­ing cof­fee beans require more human labor, at least in the exam­ple above, to ful­ly dry them over a peri­od of three weeks. Fur­ther machine sort­ing and pro­cess­ing takes place before the beans reach a pan­el of experts who deter­mine their qual­i­ty and give them a grade. More hands load the cof­fee beans onto con­tain­er ships, unload them, trans­port them around the coun­try (the U.S. imports more cof­fee than any oth­er nation in the world), and so on and so forth. “All in all, it takes hun­dreds of peo­ple to get cof­fee to its intend­ed des­ti­na­tion, and that’s not count­ing the peo­ple main­tain­ing the infra­struc­ture that makes the jour­ney pos­si­ble.”

Many of the peo­ple in that vast sup­ply chain are paid very lit­tle, the video points out. Some are paid noth­ing at all. The his­to­ry of cof­fee, like the his­to­ries of oth­er addic­tive com­modi­ties like sug­ar and tobac­co, is filled with sto­ries of exploita­tion and social and polit­i­cal upheaval. And like the sup­ply chains of every oth­er con­tem­po­rary sta­ple, the sto­ry of how cof­fee gets to us, from plant to cup, involves the sto­ries of hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple con­nect­ed by a glob­al chain of com­merce, and by our con­stant need for more caf­feine.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Black Cof­fee: Doc­u­men­tary Cov­ers the His­to­ry, Pol­i­tics & Eco­nom­ics of the “Most Wide­ly Tak­en Legal Drug”

How to Make the World’s Small­est Cup of Cof­fee, from Just One Cof­fee Bean

Philoso­phers Drink­ing Cof­fee: The Exces­sive Habits of Kant, Voltaire & Kierkegaard

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Cocktails with a Curator: The Frick Pairs Weekly Art History Lectures with Cocktail Recipes

in Art, Food & Drink, Museums | January 25th, 2021

Once upon a time, not so long ago, First Fri­days at the Frick were a gra­cious way for New York­ers to kick off the week­end. Admis­sion was waived, par­tic­i­pants could take part in open sketch­ing ses­sions or enjoy live per­for­mance, and cura­tors were on hand to give mini lec­tures on the sig­nif­i­cance and his­tor­i­cal con­text of cer­tain prized paint­ings in the col­lec­tion.

Rather than pull the plug entire­ly when the muse­um closed due to the pan­dem­ic, the Frick sought to pre­serve the spir­it of this long­stand­ing tra­di­tion with week­ly episodes of Cock­tails with a Cura­tor, match­ing each selec­tion with recipes for make-at-home themed drinks, with or with­out alco­hol.

Much as we miss these com­mu­nal live events, there’s some­thing to be said for enjoy­ing these wild­ly enter­tain­ing, edu­ca­tion­al mini-lec­tures from the com­fort of one’s own couch, drink in hand, no need to crane past oth­er vis­i­tors for a view, or wor­ry that one might keel over from lock­ing one’s knees too long.

Deputy Direc­tor and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Cura­tor Xavier F. Salomon makes for an espe­cial­ly engag­ing host. His cov­er­age of James McNeill Whistler’s Sym­pho­ny in Flesh Col­or and Pink: Por­trait of Mrs. Frances Ley­land, above, touch­es on the artist’s affin­i­ty for but­ter­flies, music, Japan­ese themes and build­ing his own frames.

But the great­est delight is Salomon’s tal­ent for imbu­ing 19th-cen­tu­ry art world gos­sip with a sense of imme­di­a­cy.

Sip a sake high­ball (or a vir­gin san­gria-style refresh­er of plum juice and mint) and chew on the true nature of the artist’s rela­tion­ship with his ship­ping mag­nate patron’s wife.

Sake High­ball
sake (of your choice)
club soda (as much/little as need­ed)
lots of ice

Alter­na­tive Mock­tail
plum juice
ice
cut orange, lemon and apple (san­gria style)
mint leaves
sug­ar (as need­ed)

Salomon returns to con­sid­er one of the Frick’s most icon­ic hold­ings, François Bouch­er’s roco­co Four Sea­sons.

Com­mis­sioned in 1755 to serve as over-door dec­o­ra­tions for King Louis XV’s mis­tress Madame de Pom­padour, they now reside in the Frick’s ornate Bouch­er Room.

Salomon draws com­par­isons to anoth­er swoon­ing Frick favorite, Jean-Hon­oré Frag­o­nard’s series Progress of Love. While the roman­tic nature of these works is hard­ly a secret, Salomon is able to speak to the erot­ic sig­nif­i­cance of dol­phins, grapes, and tiny 18th-cen­tu­ry shep­herdess bon­nets.

Those who are respect­ing COVID pro­to­cols by court­ing out­doors this win­ter will wel­come Salomon’s thoughts on Winter’s cen­tral fig­ure, a coquette rid­ing in a sleigh dri­ven by a well-bun­dled man in Tar­tar dress:

Her hands may be warmed by a muff, but her upper body is com­plete­ly exposed. It’s a com­bi­na­tion of lux­u­ry and seduc­tion typ­i­cal of Bouch­er, all treat­ed in a fan­ci­ful, even humor­ous man­ner.

Also, is it just us, or is Cura­tor Salomon tak­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to enjoy his Proust-inspired Time Regained cock­tail in a kimono? (A perk of the vir­tu­al office…)

Time Regained
2 oz. Scotch whisky
0.75 oz. Dry ver­mouth
0.5 oz. Pis­co
0.25 oz. Jas­mine tea syrup (equal parts of jas­mine tea and sug­ar)

Alter­na­tive Mock­tail
Cold jas­mine tea
One spoon­ful of gold­en syrup
Top with ton­ic water

Salomon hands host­ing duties to col­league Aimee Ng for Ver­meer’s Mis­tress and Maid, one of three works by the Dutch Mas­ter in the Frick­’s col­lec­tion.

Here the dra­ma is less explic­it­ly informed by the boudoir, though there’s a big reveal around the 10 minute mark, thanks to recent advances in infrared reflec­tog­ra­phy and some well-coor­di­nat­ed art sleuthing.

As to the con­tents of the mes­sage the maid prof­fers her ermine trimmed mis­tress, we’ll nev­er know, although those of us with ready access to the Dutch spir­it gen­ev­er can have fun spec­u­lat­ing over a glass of Gen­ev­er Brûlée.

Gen­ev­er Brûlée
2 oz gen­ev­er
1 tea­spoon brown sug­ar
A few dash­es of clas­sic bit­ters
A dash of orange bit­ters
A splash of sparkling water
Gar­nished with a caramelized orange slice

Alter­na­tive Mock­tail

Juice of half an orange
2 dash­es orange blos­som water
A splash of sparkling water
Gar­nished with a caramelized orange slice

To explore a playlist of every Cock­tails with a Cura­tor episode, cov­er­ing such notable works as Velázquez’s King Philip IV of Spain, Claude Monet’s Vétheuil in Win­ter, and Hans Holbein’s Sir Thomas More, click here.

To read more in-depth cov­er­age of each episode’s fea­tured art­work, along with its cock­tail and mock­tail recipes, click here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vis­it 2+ Mil­lion Free Works of Art from 20 World-Class Muse­ums Free Online

14 Paris Muse­ums Put 300,000 Works of Art Online: Down­load Clas­sics by Mon­et, Cézanne & More

Where to Find Free Art Images & Books from Great Muse­ums, and Free Books from Uni­ver­si­ty Press­es

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. She most recent­ly appeared as a French Cana­di­an bear who trav­els to New York City in search of food and mean­ing in Greg Kotis’ short film, L’Ourse.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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