Recipes from the Kitchen of Georgia O’Keeffe

in Art, Food & Drink, Libraries | October 23rd, 2020

What shall we read before bed?

Geor­gia O’Keeffe was a fan of cook­books, telling her young assis­tant Mar­garet Wood that they were “enjoy­able night­time com­pa­ny, pro­vid­ing brief and pleas­ant read­ing.”

Among the culi­nary vol­umes in her Abiquiu, New Mex­i­co ranch home were The Fan­ny Farmer Boston Cook­ing School Cook­book, The Joy of Cook­ing, Let’s Eat Right to Keep Fit and Cook Right, Live Longer.

Also Pick­ups and Cheerups from the War­ing Blender, a 21-page pam­phlet fea­tur­ing blend­ed cock­tails, that now rests in Yale University’s Bei­necke Library, along with the rest of the con­tents of O’Keeffe’s recipe box, acquired the night before it was due to be auc­tioned at Sotheby’s. (Some of the images on this page come cour­tesy of Sothe­by’s.)

In addi­tion to recipes—inscribed by the artist’s own hand in ink from a foun­tain pen, typed by assis­tants, clipped from mag­a­zines and news­pa­pers, or in pro­mo­tion­al book­lets such as the one pub­lished by the War­ing Prod­ucts Company—the box housed man­u­als for O’Keeffe’s kitchen appli­ances.

The book­let that came with her pres­sure cook­er includes a spat­tered page devot­ed to cook­ing fresh veg­gies, a tes­ta­ment to her abid­ing inter­est in eat­ing health­ful­ly.

O’Keeffe had a high regard for sal­ads, gar­den fresh herbs, and sim­ple, local­ly sourced food.

Today’s bud­dha bowl craze is, how­ev­er, “the oppo­site of what she would enjoy” accord­ing to Wood, author of the books Remem­ber­ing Miss O’Ke­effe: Sto­ries from Abiquiu and A Painter’s Kitchen: Recipes from the Kitchen of Geor­gia O’Keeffe.

Wood, who was some 66 years younger than her employ­er, recent­ly vis­it­ed The Spork­ful pod­cast to recall her first days on the job :

…she said, “Do you like to cook?” 

And I said, “Yes, I cer­tain­ly do.” 

So she said, “Well, let’s give it a try.” 

And after two days of my hip­pie health food, she said, “My dear, let me show you how I like my food.” My first way of try­ing to cook for us was a lot of brown rice and chopped veg­eta­bles with chick­en added. And that was not what she liked. 

An exam­ple of what she did like: Roast­ed lemon chick­en with fried pota­toes, a green sal­ad fea­tur­ing let­tuce and herbs from her gar­den, and steamed broc­coli.

Also yogurt made with the milk of local goats, whole wheat flour ground on the premis­es, water­cress plucked from local streams, and home can­ning.

Most of these labor-inten­sive tasks fell to her staff, but she main­tained a keen inter­est in the pro­ceed­ings.

Not for noth­ing did the friend who referred Wood for the job warn her it would “require a lot of patience because Miss O’Ke­effe was extreme­ly par­tic­u­lar.”

The jot­tings from the recipe box don’t real­ly con­vey this exact­ing nature.

Those accus­tomed to the extreme­ly spe­cif­ic instruc­tions accom­pa­ny­ing even the sim­plest recipes to be found on the Inter­net may be shocked by O’Ke­ef­fe’s brevi­ty.

 

Per­haps we should assume that she sta­tioned her­self close by the first time any new hire pre­pared a recipe from one of her cards, know­ing she would have to ver­bal­ly cor­rect and redi­rect.

(O’Keeffe insist­ed that Wood stir accord­ing to her method—don’t scrape the sides, dig down and lift up.)

The box also con­tained recipes that were like­ly rar­i­ties on O’Keeffe’s table, giv­en her dietary pref­er­ences, though they are cer­tain­ly evoca­tive of the peri­od: toma­to aspic, Mary­land fried chick­en, Float­ing Islands, and a cock­tail she may have first sipped in a San­ta Fe hotel bar.

The Bei­necke plans to dig­i­tize its new­ly acquired col­lec­tion. This gives us hope that one day, the Geor­gia O’Keeffe Muse­um may fol­low suit with the red recipe binder Wood men­tions in A Painter’s Kitchen:

This was affec­tion­ate­ly referred to as “Mary’s Book,” named after a pre­vi­ous staff mem­ber who had com­piled it. That note­book was con­tin­u­al­ly con­sult­ed, and revised to include new recipes or to improve on old­er ones…. As she had col­lect­ed a num­ber of healthy and fla­vor­ful recipes, she would occa­sion­al­ly laugh and com­ment, “We should write a cook­book.”

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Explore 1,100 Works of Art by Geor­gia O’Keeffe: They’re Now Dig­i­tized and Free to View Online

Geor­gia O’Keeffe: A Life in Art, a Short Doc­u­men­tary on the Painter Nar­rat­ed by Gene Hack­man

The Art & Cook­ing of Fri­da Kahlo, Sal­vador Dali, Geor­gia O’Keeffe, Vin­cent Van Gogh & More

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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How Some of the World’s Most Famous Cheeses Are Made: Camembert, Brie, Gorgonzola & More

in Food & Drink, Travel | October 19th, 2020

Atten­tion cheese lovers!

Do you sali­vate at the thought of a Cheese Chan­nel?

Care­ful what you wish for.

Food pho­tog­ra­phers employ all man­ner of dis­gust­ing tricks to make junky pan­cakes and fast food burg­ers look irre­sistibly mouth­wa­ter­ing.

Food Insid­ers’ Region­al Eats tour of the Ital­ian Gor­gonzo­la-mak­ing process inside a ven­er­a­ble, fam­i­ly-owned Ital­ian cream­ery is the inverse of that.

The fin­ished prod­uct is wor­thy of a still life, but look out!

Despite the delib­er­ate­ly gen­tle motion of the cus­tom-made machin­ery into which the milk is poured, get­ting there is a stom­ach churn­ing prospect.

Per­son­al­ly, we don’t find the smell of that ven­er­a­ble, veined cheese offen­sive. The pun­gent aro­ma is prac­ti­cal­ly music to our nose, stim­u­lat­ing the cil­ia at the tips of our sen­so­ry cells, alert­ing our tongue that a rare and favorite fla­vor is in range.

Nor is it a mold issue.

Mar­co Inv­ernizzi, man­ag­ing direc­tor of Trecate’s hun­dred-year-old Caseifi­cio Si Inv­ernizzi, exudes such deep respect for Peni­cil­li­um roque­for­ti and the oth­er par­tic­u­lars of Gorgonzola’s pedi­gree, it would sure­ly be our hon­or to sam­ple one of the 400 wheels his cream­ery pro­duces every day.

Just give us a sec for the visu­als of that griz­zly birth video to fade from our mem­o­ry.

With the excep­tion of a close up on a faucet gush­ing milk into a buck­et, the peek inside the Camem­bert-mak­ing process is a bit eas­i­er to stom­ach.

There are curds, but they’re con­tained.

The cheese at Le 5 Frères, a fam­i­ly farm in the vil­lage of Bermonville, is made by old fash­ioned means, ladling micro-organ­ism-rich milk to which ren­net has been added into per­fo­rat­ed forms, that are topped off a total of five times in an hour.

The steamy tem­per­a­tures inside the arti­sanal brie mold­ing room at Seine-et-Marne’s 30 Arpents caus­es Food Insid­ers’ cam­era lens to fog, mak­ing for an impres­sion­is­tic view, swagged in white.

Near­ly 20 years ago, Mad Cow dis­ease came close to wip­ing this oper­a­tion out.

The cur­rent herd of friend­ly Hol­steins were all born on 30 Arpents’ land. Each pro­duces about 30 liters of milk (or slight­ly more than one dai­ly wheel of brie de Meaux) per day.

Get the scoop on Swiss Emmen­taler, Italy’s largest buf­fa­lo moz­zarel­la balls, and oth­er world cheese MVPs on Food Insider’s 87-video Cheese Insid­er playlist.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Ani­mat­ed His­to­ry of Cheese: 10,000 Years in Under Six Min­utes

How to Break Open a Big Wheel of Parme­san Cheese: A Delight­ful, 15-Minute Primer

Does Play­ing Music for Cheese Dur­ing the Aging Process Change Its Fla­vor? Researchers Find That Hip Hop Makes It Smelli­er, and Zeppelin’s “Stair­way to Heav­en” Makes It Milder

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Explore the Roman Cookbook, De Re Coquinaria, the Oldest Known Cookbook in Existence

in Food & Drink, History | October 14th, 2020

West­ern schol­ar­ship has had “a bias against study­ing sen­su­al expe­ri­ence,” writes Reina Gat­tuso at Atlas Obscu­ra, “the rel­ic of an Enlight­en­ment-era hier­ar­chy that con­sid­ered taste, touch, and fla­vor taboo top­ics for sober aca­d­e­m­ic inquiry.” This does not mean, how­ev­er, that cook­ing has been ignored by his­to­ri­ans. Many a schol­ar has tak­en Euro­pean cook­ing seri­ous­ly, before recent food schol­ar­ship expand­ed the canon. For exam­ple, in a 1926 Eng­lish trans­la­tion of an ancient Roman cook­book, Joseph Dom­mers Vehling makes a strong case for the cen­tral­i­ty of food schol­ar­ship.

“Any­one who would know some­thing worth while about the pri­vate and pub­lic lives of the ancients,” writes Vehling, “should be well acquaint­ed with their table.” Pub­lished as Cook­ery and Din­ing in Impe­r­i­al Rome (and avail­able here at Project Guten­berg), it is, he says, the old­est known cook­book in exis­tence.

The book, orig­i­nal­ly titled De Re Coquinar­ia, is attrib­uted to Api­cius and may date to the 1st cen­tu­ry A.C.E., though the old­est sur­viv­ing copy comes from the end of the Empire, some­time in the 5th cen­tu­ry. As with most ancient texts, copied over cen­turies, redact­ed, amend­ed, and edit­ed, the orig­i­nal cook­book is shroud­ed in mys­tery.

The cook­book’s author, Api­cius, could have been one of sev­er­al “renowned gas­tronomers of old Rome” who bore the sur­name. But whichev­er “famous eater” was respon­si­ble, over 2000 years lat­er the book has quite a lot to tell us about the Roman diet. (All of the illus­tra­tions here are by Vehling, who includes over two dozen exam­ples of ancient prac­tices and arti­facts.)

Meat played an impor­tant role, and “cru­el meth­ods of slaugh­ter were com­mon.” But the kind of meat avail­able seems to have changed dur­ing Apicius’s time:

With the increas­ing short­age of beef, with the increas­ing facil­i­ties for rais­ing chick­en and pork, a rever­sion to Api­cian meth­ods of cook­ery and diet is not only prob­a­bly but actu­al­ly seems inevitable. The ancient bill of fare and the ancient meth­ods of cook­ery were entire­ly guid­ed by the sup­ply of raw materials—precisely like ours. They had no great food stores nor very effi­cient mar­ket­ing and trans­porta­tion sys­tems, food cold stor­age. They knew, how­ev­er, to take care of what there was. They were good man­agers.

But veg­e­tar­i­ans were also well-served. “Api­cius cer­tain­ly excels in the prepa­ra­tion of veg­etable dish­es (cf. his cab­bage and aspara­gus) and in the uti­liza­tion of parts of food mate­ri­als that are today con­sid­ered infe­ri­or.” This appar­ent need to use every­thing, and to some­times heav­i­ly spice food to cov­er spoilage, may have led to an unusu­al Roman cus­tom. As How Stuff Works puts it, “cooks then were revered if they could dis­guise a com­mon food item so that din­ers had no idea what they were eat­ing.”

As for the recipes them­selves, well, any attempt to dupli­cate them will be at best a broad interpretation—a trans­la­tion from ancient meth­ods of cook­ing by smell, feel, and cus­tom to the mod­ern way of weights and mea­sures. Con­sid­er the fol­low­ing recipe:

WINE SAUCE FOR TRUFFLES

PEPPER, LOVAGE, CORIANDER, RUE, BROTH, HONEY AND A LITTLE OIL.

ANOTHER WAY: THYME, SATURY, PEPPER, LOVAGE, HONEY, BROTH AND OIL.

I fore­see much frus­trat­ing tri­al and error (and many hope­ful sub­sti­tu­tions for things like lovage or rue or “sat­u­ry”) for the cook who attempts this. Some foods that were plen­ti­ful­ly avail­able could cost hun­dreds now to pre­pare for a din­ner par­ty.

SEAFOOD MINCES ARE MADE OF SEA-ONION, OR SEA CRAB, FISH, LOBSTER, CUTTLE-FISH, INK FISH, SPINY LOBSTER, SCALLOPS AND OYSTERS. THE FORCEMEAT IS SEASONED WITH LOVAGE, PEPPER, CUMIN AND LASER ROOT.

Vehling’s foot­notes most­ly deal with ety­mol­o­gy and define unfa­mil­iar terms (“laser root” is wild fen­nel), but they pro­vide lit­tle prac­ti­cal insight for the cook. “Most of the Api­cian direc­tions are vague, hasti­ly jot­ted down, care­less­ly edit­ed,” much of the ter­mi­nol­o­gy is obscure: “with the advent of the dark ages, it ceased to be a prac­ti­cal cook­ery book.” We learn, instead, about Roman ingre­di­ents and home eco­nom­ic prac­tices, insep­a­ra­ble from Roman eco­nom­ics more gen­er­al­ly, accord­ing to Vehling.

He makes a judg­ment of his own time even more rel­e­vant to ours: “Such atroc­i­ties as the will­ful destruc­tion of huge quan­ti­ties of food of every descrip­tion on the one side and the starv­ing mul­ti­tudes on the oth­er as seen today nev­er occurred in antiq­ui­ty.” Per­haps more cur­rent his­to­ri­ans of antiq­ui­ty would beg to dif­fer, I wouldn’t know.

But if you’re just look­ing for a Roman recipe that you can make at home, might I sug­gest the Rose Wine?

ROSE WINE

MAKE ROSE WINE IN THIS MANNER: ROSE PETALS, THE LOWER WHITE PART REMOVED, SEWED INTO A LINEN BAG AND IMMERSED IN WINE FOR SEVEN DAYS. THEREUPON ADD A SACK OF NEW PETALS WHICH ALLOW TO DRAW FOR ANOTHER SEVEN DAYS. AGAIN REMOVE THE OLD PETALS AND REPLACE THEM BY FRESH ONES FOR ANOTHER WEEK; THEN STRAIN THE WINE THROUGH THE COLANDER. BEFORE SERVING, ADD HONEY SWEETENING TO TASTE. TAKE CARE THAT ONLY THE BEST PETALS FREE FROM DEW BE USED FOR SOAKING.

You could prob­a­bly go with red or white, though I’d haz­ard Api­cius went with a fine vinum rubrum. This con­coc­tion, Vehling tells us in a help­ful foot­note, dou­bles as a lax­a­tive. Clever, those Romans. Read the full Eng­lish trans­la­tion of the ancient Roman cook­book here.

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

Cook Real Recipes from Ancient Rome: Ostrich Ragoût, Roast Wild Boar, Nut Tarts & More

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dat­ing Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer

Watch a 4000-Year Old Baby­lon­ian Recipe for Stew, Found on a Cuneiform Tablet, Get Cooked by Researchers from Yale & Har­vard

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

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10,000 Vintage Recipe Books Are Now Digitized in The Internet Archive’s Cookbook & Home Economics Collection

in Archives, Food & Drink | October 13th, 2020

“Ear­ly cook­books were fit for kings,” writes Hen­ry Notak­er at The Atlantic. “The old­est pub­lished recipe col­lec­tions” in the 15th and 16th cen­turies in West­ern Europe “emanat­ed from the palaces of mon­archs, princes, and grand señores.” Cook­books were more than recipe collections—they were guides to court eti­quette and sump­tu­ous records of lux­u­ri­ous liv­ing. In ancient Rome, cook­books func­tioned sim­i­lar­ly, as the extrav­a­gant fourth cen­tu­ry Cook­ing and Din­ing in Impe­r­i­al Rome demon­strates.

Writ­ten by Api­cius, “Europe’s old­est [cook­book] and Rome’s only one in exis­tence today”—as its first Eng­lish trans­la­tor described it—offers “a bet­ter way of know­ing old Rome and antique pri­vate life.” It also offers keen insight into the devel­op­ment of heav­i­ly fla­vored dish­es before the age of refrig­er­a­tion. Api­cus rec­om­mends that “cooks who need­ed to pre­pare birds with a ‘goat­ish smell’ should bathe them in a mix­ture of pep­per, lovage, thyme, dry mint, sage, dates, hon­ey, vine­gar, broth, oil and mus­tard,” Melanie Radz­ic­ki McManus notes at How Stuff Works.

Ear­ly cook­books com­mu­ni­cat­ed in “a folksy, impre­cise man­ner until the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion of the 1800s,” when stan­dard (or met­ric) mea­sure­ment became de rigueur. The first cook­book by an Amer­i­can, Amelia Sim­mons’ 1796 Amer­i­can Cook­ery, placed British fine din­ing and lav­ish “Queen’s Cake” next to “john­ny cake, fed­er­al pan cake, buck­wheat cake, and Indi­an slap­jack,” Kei­th Stave­ly and Kath­leen Fitzger­ald write at Smith­son­ian, all recipes sym­bol­iz­ing “the plain, but well-run and boun­ti­ful Amer­i­can home.” With this book, “a dia­logue on how to bal­ance the sump­tu­ous with the sim­ple in Amer­i­can life had begun.”

Cook­books are win­dows into history—markers of class and caste, doc­u­ments of dai­ly life, and snap­shots of region­al and cul­tur­al iden­ti­ty at par­tic­u­lar moments in time. In 1950, the first cook­book writ­ten by a fic­tion­al lifestyle celebri­ty, Bet­ty Crock­er, debuted. It became “a nation­al best-sell­er,” McManus writes. “It even sold more copies that year than the Bible.” The image of the per­fect Step­ford house­wife may have been big­ger than Jesus in the 50s, but Crock­er’s career was decades in the mak­ing. She debuted in 1921, the year of pub­li­ca­tion for anoth­er, more hum­ble recipe book: the Pil­grim Evan­gel­i­cal Luther­an Church Ladies’ Aid Soci­ety of Chicago’s Pil­grim Cook Book.

As Ayun Hal­l­i­day not­ed in an ear­li­er post, this charm­ing col­lec­tion fea­tures recipes for “Blitz Torte, Cough Syrup, and Sauer­kraut Can­dy,” and it’s only one of thou­sands of such exam­ples at the Inter­net Archive’s Cook­book and Home Eco­nom­ics Col­lec­tion, drawn from dig­i­tized spe­cial col­lec­tions at UCLA, Berke­ley, and the Prelinger Library. When we last checked in, the col­lec­tion fea­tured 3,000 cook­books. It has grown since 2016 to a library of 10,600 vin­tage exam­ples of home­spun Amer­i­cana, fine din­ing, and mass mar­ket­ing.

Laugh at gag-induc­ing recipes of old; cringe at the pious advice giv­en to women osten­si­bly anx­ious to please their hus­bands; and mar­vel at how var­i­ous inter­na­tion­al and region­al cuisines have been rep­re­sent­ed to unsus­pect­ing Amer­i­can home cooks. (It’s hard to say whether the cov­er or the con­tents of a Chi­nese Cook Book in Plain Eng­lish from 1917 seem more offen­sive.) Cook­books of recipes from the Amer­i­can South are pop­u­lar, as are cov­ers fea­tur­ing stereo­typ­i­cal “mam­my” char­ac­ters. A more respect­ful inter­na­tion­al exam­ple, 1952’s Luchow’s Ger­man Cook­book gives us “the sto­ry and the favorite dish­es of Amer­i­ca’s most famous Ger­man restau­rant.”

There are guides to mush­rooms and “com­mon­er fun­gi, with spe­cial empha­sis on the edi­ble vari­eties”; col­lec­tions of “things moth­er used to make” and, most prac­ti­cal­ly, a cook­book for left­overs. And there is every oth­er sort of cook­book and home ec. man­u­al you could imag­ine. The archive is stuffed with help­ful hints, rare ingre­di­ents, unex­pect­ed region­al cook­eries, and mil­lions of minute details about the habits of these books’ first hun­gry read­ers.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The New York Times Makes 17,000 Tasty Recipes Avail­able Online: Japan­ese, Ital­ian, Thai & Much More

Archive of Hand­writ­ten Recipes (1600 – 1960) Will Teach You How to Stew a Calf’s Head and More

A Data­base of 5,000 His­tor­i­cal Cookbooks–Covering 1,000 Years of Food History–Is Now Online

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

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A Database of 5,000 Historical Cookbooks–Covering 1,000 Years of Food History–Is Now Online

in Food & Drink | September 3rd, 2020

As you know if you’re a read­er of this site, there are vast, inter­ac­tive (and free!) schol­ar­ly data­bas­es online col­lect­ing just about every kind of arti­fact, from Bibles to bird calls, and yes, there are a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of cook­books online, too. But prop­er search­able, his­tor­i­cal data­bas­es of cook­books seem to have appeared only late­ly. To my mind these might have been some of the first things to become avail­able. How impor­tant is eat­ing, after all, to vir­tu­al­ly every part of our lives? The fact is, how­ev­er, that schol­ars of food have had to invent the dis­ci­pline large­ly from scratch.

“West­ern schol­ars had a bias against study­ing sen­su­al expe­ri­ence,” writes Reina Gat­tuso at Atlas Obscu­ra, “the rel­ic of an Enlight­en­ment-era hier­ar­chy that con­sid­ered taste, touch, and fla­vor taboo top­ics for sober aca­d­e­m­ic inquiry. ‘It’s the baser sense,’ says Cathy Kauf­man, a pro­fes­sor of food stud­ies at the New School.” Kauf­man sits on the board of The Sifter, a new mas­sive, mul­ti-lin­gual online data­base of his­tor­i­cal recipe books. Anoth­er board mem­ber, sculp­tor Joe Wheaton, puts things more direct­ly: “Food his­to­ry has been a bit of an embar­rass­ment to a lot of aca­d­e­mics, because it involves women in the kitchen.”

Luck­i­ly for food schol­ars, the sit­u­a­tion has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly. There are now over 2,000 his­tor­i­cal Mex­i­can cook­books of all kinds online at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas San Anto­nio, for exam­ple. (The UTSA is busy curat­ing and trans­lat­ing hun­dreds of those recipes into Eng­lish for what they call a “series of mini-cook­books.”)  And schol­ars of food his­to­ry may have to be pulled away by force from The Sifter, a vast, ever-expand­ing Wikipedia-like archive of food research.

The data­base col­lects “over 5,000 authors and 5,000 works with details about the authors and about the con­tents of the works,” the site explains. “The cen­tral doc­u­ments are cook­books and oth­er writ­ings relat­ed to get­ting, prepar­ing, and con­sum­ing food, and the activ­i­ties asso­ci­at­ed with them, as well as writ­ings about cul­tur­al and moral atti­tudes.” Like Wikipedia, users are invit­ed to sub­mit their own data, which can be edit­ed by oth­er users. Unlike the pub­lic ency­clo­pe­dia, which we know has seri­ous flaws, The Sifter is over­seen by experts, and inspired by none oth­er than the expert Julia Child her­self, or at least by her library.

Although the Sifter does not con­tain actu­al texts or recipes, it does col­lect the bib­li­o­graph­ic data of thou­sands of such books, a trea­sury for schol­ars, researchers, and his­to­ri­ans. The pri­ma­ry force behind the project, Bar­bara Wheaton, was a neigh­bor of Julia Childs’ in the ear­ly 1960s and used Childs’ library and Har­vard University’s Schlesinger Library Culi­nary Col­lec­tion (where she is now an hon­orary cura­tor) to become “one of the best-known schol­ars of culi­nary his­to­ry.” Her sto­ry illus­trates how a recent wealth of culi­nary schol­ar­ship did not just sud­den­ly appear but has been ger­mi­nat­ing for decades. The Sifter is the result of “Wheaton’s 50 years of labor.”

Wheaton launched the site in July with the help of a team of schol­ars and her chil­dren, Joe and Cather­ine. The Sifter con­tains “more than a thou­sand years of Euro­pean and U.S. cook­books, from the medieval Latin De Re Culi­nar­ia, pub­lished in 800, to The Romance of Can­dy, a 1938 trea­tise on British sweets.” It also col­lects bib­li­o­graph­ic data on cook­books, in their orig­i­nal lan­guages, from around the world. Wheaton hopes The Sifter will gen­er­ate new areas of research into the his­to­ry of what may be at once the most uni­ver­sal of all human activ­i­ties and the most cul­tur­al­ly, region­al­ly, and his­tor­i­cal­ly par­tic­u­lar. Per­haps a sil­ver lin­ing of so many years of schol­ar­ly neglect is that there is now so much work for food his­to­ri­ans to do. Get start­ed at The Sifter here.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Archive of Hand­writ­ten Tra­di­tion­al Mex­i­can Cook­books Is Now Online

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

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

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

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Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock & Other Jazz Musicians Sell Whisky & Spirits in Classic Japanese TV Commercials

in Food & Drink, Music, Television | August 21st, 2020

I like to think that, when the occa­sion aris­es, I can speak pass­able Japan­ese. But pride goeth before the fall, and I fell flat on my first attempt to order a whisky in Tokyo. To my request for a Sun­to­ry neat the bar­tender respond­ed only with embar­rassed incom­pre­hen­sion. I repeat­ed myself, push­ing my Japan­i­fied pro­nun­ci­a­tion to par­o­d­ic lim­its: saaan-to-riii nee-to. At some point the man deci­phered my lin­guis­tic flail­ing. “Ah,” he said, bright­en­ing, “suuu-to-raaay-to?” To think that I could have han­dled this sit­u­a­tion with dig­ni­ty had I but seen the Sun­to­ry com­mer­cial above, in which Her­bie Han­cock sug­gests hav­ing a drink “straight.”

Would even the mad­dest men of the Amer­i­can adver­tis­ing indus­try coun­te­nance the idea of putting a jazz musi­cian in a com­mer­cial? Japan thinks dif­fer­ent­ly, how­ev­er, and in its eco­nom­ic-bub­ble era of the 1970s and 80s thought more dif­fer­ent­ly still.

At that time, Japan­ese tele­vi­sion spots — at least those com­mis­sioned by suf­fi­cient­ly deep-pock­et­ed com­pa­nies — began fea­tur­ing Amer­i­can celebri­ties like James Brown, Woody Allen, Nico­las Cage, Paul New­man, and Den­nis Hop­per. A 1979 Sun­to­ry ad that put Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la along­side Aki­ra Kuro­sawa would, a quar­ter-cen­tu­ry on, inspire Cop­po­la’s daugh­ter Sofia to dra­ma­tize a sim­i­lar East-meets-West com­mer­cial sit­u­a­tion in her film Lost in Trans­la­tion.

Of all the things Amer­i­can embraced (and repur­posed) by Japan after its defeat in the Sec­ond World War, jazz music has main­tained the most intense­ly enthu­si­as­tic fan base. Japan­ese-made jazz has long been a for­mi­da­ble genre of its own, just as Japan­ese-made whisky has long held its own with the West­ern vari­eties. But when the mak­ers of Japan­ese whisky made an effort to sell their own prod­uct on tele­vi­sion to the new­ly wealthy Japan­ese peo­ple, they looked to Amer­i­can jazzmen to give it a shot of authen­tic­i­ty. Hav­ing recruit­ed Han­cock to pro­mote drink­ing their sin­gle-malt whisky at room tem­per­a­ture, Sun­to­ry got bassist Ron Carter as well as both Bran­ford and Ellis Marsalis to pro­mote drink­ing it hot.

Could the cul­tur­al asso­ci­a­tion between jazz and whisky extend to oth­er liquors? That was the gam­bit of a 1987 com­mer­cial fea­tur­ing Miles Davis, recent­ly inves­ti­gat­ed by Insid­e­Hook’s Aaron Gold­farb. Its prod­uct: shōchū, “a col­or­less, odor­less, yet often chal­leng­ing spir­it typ­i­cal­ly dis­tilled from rice (known as kome-jochu), bar­ley (mugi-jochu) or sweet pota­toes (imo-jochu).” New­ly launched with an appar­ent intent to pitch that staid bev­er­age to mon­eyed younger peo­ple, the brand VAN hired Davis to play a few notes on his trum­pet, then take a sip of its shōchū and pro­nounce it a “mir­a­cle.” He also describes him­self as “always on the van­guard,” hence, pre­sum­ably, the name VAN (though its being rem­i­nis­cent of VAN JACKET, the com­pa­ny that had ear­li­er brought Ivy League style to the same tar­get demo­graph­ic, could­n’t have been unwel­come).

Though Davis’ brand of cool did its part for the suc­cess of Hon­da scoot­ers and TDK cas­sette tapes, it proved not to be enough for VAN shōchū. The brand “was a big flop and had a very short life,” Gold­farb quotes an indus­try expert as say­ing, “prob­a­bly because shōchū is so quin­tes­sen­tial­ly Japan­ese, and a for­eign-style shōchū just didn’t make sense to most.” Per­haps the com­mer­cial itself also lacked the plea­sur­able sim­plic­i­ty of Sun­to­ry’s many jazz-ori­ent­ed spots, none of which turned out sim­pler or more plea­sur­able than the one with Sam­my Davis Jr. per­form­ing a cap­pel­la just above. In the process of pour­ing him­self a drink Davis plays the part of an entire jazz com­bo, using only his mouth and the objects at hand, includ­ing the ice in his glass. The con­cept would­n’t have worked quite so well had he tak­en his Sun­to­ry neat — or rather, straight.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A 30-Minute Intro­duc­tion to Japan­ese Jazz from the 1970s: Like Japan­ese Whisky, It’s Under­rat­ed, But Very High Qual­i­ty

Watch Aki­ra Kuro­sawa & Fran­cis Ford Cop­po­la in Japan­ese Whisky Ads from 1979: The Inspi­ra­tion for Lost in Trans­la­tion

The Best Com­mer­cial Ever? James Brown Sells Miso Soup (1992)

Nico­las Cage, Paul New­man & Den­nis Hop­per Bring Their Amer­i­can Style to Japan­ese Com­mer­cials

Woody Allen Lives the “Deli­cious Life” in Ear­ly-80s Japan­ese Com­mer­cials

Glo­ri­ous Ear­ly 20th-Cen­tu­ry Japan­ese Ads for Beer, Smokes & Sake (1902–1954)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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The Recipes of Famous Artists: Dinners & Cocktails From Tolstoy, Miles Davis, Marilyn Monroe, David Lynch & Many More

in Food & Drink | August 17th, 2020

Celebri­ties (those who are not pro­fes­sion­al celebri­ty chefs, that is) release cook­books at an alarm­ing rate. Do we imag­ine most of their recipes were actu­al­ly curat­ed by the per­son on the cov­er? Do we sup­pose that per­son has spent the count­less hours in the kitchen required to become an author­i­ty on what the rest of us should eat? As in all things, it depends.

Stan­ley Tuc­ci seems to have more than proven his met­tle, releas­ing two well-loved cook­books and earn­ing praise from Mario Batali. But I’d also take a chance on Snoop Dogg’s From Crook to Cook, which includes 50 of his own recipes, such as “baked mac and cheese and fried Bologna sand­wich­es with chips.” How could you go wrong?

Many a celebri­ty cook­book aims for the fine-din­ing approach famous peo­ple are used to get­ting from per­son­al chefs. But Snoop joins a long tra­di­tion of artists whose sig­na­ture dish­es are every­day com­fort foods and hol­i­day favorites. What­ev­er else he and Leo Tol­stoy might find to talk about, for exam­ple (use your imag­i­na­tion), they would sure­ly swap mac and cheese recipes.

Tolstoy’s recipe for mac and cheese is made on the stove­top, not baked, but it sounds deli­cious all the same, with its lay­ers of Parme­san cheese. Far more com­plex meals, fit for Russ­ian aris­to­crats, appear in The Cook­book, a col­lec­tion of Tol­stoy fam­i­ly recipes, though we can hard­ly imag­ine the Tol­stoy fam­i­ly did much of the cook­ing them­selves.

Not so with Miles Davis, who also uses Parme­san in a dish not usu­al­ly known to fea­ture the Ital­ian cheese. His chili—or rather “Miles’s South Side Chica­go Chili Mack”—sounds incred­i­bly rich in a recipe pub­lished in 2007. “I could cook most of the French dish­es,” Miles wrote in his auto­bi­og­ra­phy, “and all the black Amer­i­can dish­es.” His skills in the kitchen were well attest­ed, though his per­son­al recipe book has been lost.

Oth­er celebri­ties like Mar­i­lyn Mon­roe also go with com­fort­ing old favorites. What appears in her recipe for turkey and stuff­ing (besides wal­nuts and no gar­lic… feel free to make sub­sti­tu­tions…)? That’s right, Parme­san cheese. If there’s a pat­tern in this rep­e­ti­tion, maybe it’s that the rest of us home cooks should do more with Parme­san cheese.

If you’re won­der­ing what kind of cheese Ernest Hem­ing­way puts on his favorite burg­er, the answer is none. Anoth­er celebri­ty cook who sure­ly did a good bit of his own cook­ing, Hem­ing­way asks a lot of those will­ing to take a chance on his burg­er recipe, which com­min­gles India rel­ish, capers, Beau Monde sea­son­ing, Mei Yen Pow­der with gar­lic, green onions, egg, and red or white wine.

Despite such unusu­al top­pings, a burg­er is still a burger—for mil­lions of peo­ple the most com­fort­ing food they can imag­ine. Crack­ing open Sal­vador Dali’s 1973 cook­book reveals few dish­es that are famil­iar, or actu­al­ly edi­ble or even legal. Dali formed ambi­tions to become a chef, he claimed, at the age of 6. Maybe that’s also when he came up with “Tof­fee with Pine Cones,” “Veal Cut­lets Stuffed with Snails,” and “Thou­sand Year Old Eggs.”

None of these recipes have in mind the needs of the carb-con­scious, or of veg­e­tar­i­ans and veg­ans. But some cre­ative reimag­in­ing could make them suit­able for sev­er­al kinds of mod­ern diets. (In Hemingway’s case, a sim­ple swap for any burg­er alter­na­tive might do the trick.) When it comes to cock­tail recipes, alter­na­tives are trick­i­er.

If you don’t drink alco­hol or eat meat, you’ll have lit­tle to gain from Leonard Cohen’s recipe for The Red Nee­dle, which involves two ounces of tequi­la and should be served with Mon­tre­al smoked meat sand­wich­es. Like­wise, I doubt there’s any veg­an, low-sug­ar, non-alco­holic way to make Eudo­ra Welty’s “Mother’s Eggnog” (which she also attrib­uted to Charles Dick­ens).

Maybe celebri­ty cook­books these days don’t con­tribute so much to the epi­dem­ic of heart dis­ease and hyper­ten­sion. But there’s some­thing to be said for the authen­tic­i­ty of recipes from famous peo­ple of the past. They reflect dish­es and drinks made with deep affection—for but­ter, cheese, carbs, salt, fat, and booze.

If it’s health­i­er fare you’re look­ing for, why not take a chance on Allen Ginsberg’s cold sum­mer borscht? Or David Lynch’s easy quinoa recipe? Aleis­ter Crowley’s recipe for a rice meant to be eat­en with cur­ry sounds delight­ful, though one can’t help but won­der at anoth­er lost recipe the infa­mous occultist once made for his fel­low moun­taineers on an expedition—a rice so spicy, he claimed, it made them “dash out of the tent after one mouth­ful and wal­low in the snow, snap­ping at it like mad dogs.”

See many more recipes from famous artists at the links below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dessert Recipes of Icon­ic Thinkers: Emi­ly Dickinson’s Coconut Cake, George Orwell’s Christ­mas Pud­ding, Alice B. Tok­las’ Hashish Fudge & More

The Recipes of Icon­ic Authors: Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, the Mar­quis de Sade & More

Pablo Picasso’s Two Favorite Recipes: Eel Stew & Omelette Tor­tilla Niçoise

Ernest Hemingway’s Sum­mer Camp­ing Recipes

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

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Dessert Recipes of Iconic Thinkers: Emily Dickinson’s Coconut Cake, George Orwell’s Christmas Pudding, Alice B. Toklas’ Hashish Fudge & More

in Food & Drink, Literature | August 11th, 2020

Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Of all the desserts to attain cul­tur­al rel­e­vance over the past cen­tu­ry, can any hope to touch Alice B. Tok­las’ famous hashish fudge? Call­ing for such ingre­di­ents as black pep­per­corns, shelled almonds, dried figs, and most vital of all Cannabis sati­va, the recipe first appeared in 1954’s The Alice B. Tok­las Cook Book. (Tok­las would read the recipe aloud on the radio in the ear­ly 1960s, a time when the fudge’s key ingre­di­ent had become an object of much more intense pub­lic inter­est.) More than a how-to on Tok­las’ favorite dish­es, the book is also a kind of mem­oir, includ­ing rec­ol­lec­tions of her life with Gertrude Stein — her­self the author of the osten­si­ble Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Alice B. Tok­las.

This puts us in the realm of seri­ous lit­er­a­ture where sweets, you might assume, are scarce­ly to be found. But bak­ing con­sti­tut­ed a part of the cre­ative process of no less a lit­er­ary mind than Emi­ly Dick­in­son, whose hand­writ­ten recipe for coconut cake appears above.

That same sheet of a paper’s reverse side, which you can see in our ear­li­er post about it, bears the first lines of her poem “The Things that nev­er can come back, are sev­er­al.” Dick­in­son also, as we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly post­ed here on Open Cul­ture, had her very own recipes for gin­ger­bread, donuts, and some­thing requir­ing five pounds of raisins called “black cake.”

It may seem obvi­ous that women like Tok­las and Dick­in­son, born and raised in the 19th cen­tu­ry, would have been expect­ed to learn this sort of thing. But a fair few of the lit­er­ary men of gen­er­a­tions past knew some­thing of their way around the kitchen as well. George Orwell, for instance, wrote an essay on “British cook­ery,” ear­ly in which he states that “in gen­er­al, British peo­ple pre­fer sweet things to spicy things.” While describ­ing “sweet dish­es and con­fec­tionery – cakes, pud­dings, jams, bis­cuits and sweet sauces” as the “glo­ry of British cook­ery,” he admits that “the nation­al addic­tion to sug­ar has not done the British palate any good.” And so he includes the recipe for a Christ­mas pud­ding which, sub­tle by that stan­dard, calls for only half a pound of the stuff.

Born a gen­er­a­tion after Orwell, Roald Dahl made no secret of his own sug­ar-addict­ed British palate. In his book Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry Dahl had “daz­zled young read­ers with visions of Cav­i­ty-Fill­ing Caramels, Ever­last­ing Gob­stop­pers, and snozzber­ry-fla­vored wall­pa­per,” writes Open Cul­ture’s own Ayun Hal­l­i­day. But his own can­dy of choice was “the more pedes­tri­an Kit-Kat bar. In addi­tion to savor­ing one dai­ly (a lux­u­ry lit­tle Char­lie Buck­et could but dream of, pri­or to win­ning that most gold­en of tick­ets) he invent­ed a frozen con­fec­tion called ‘Kit-Kat Pud­ding,’ ” whose sim­ple recipe is as fol­lows: “Stack as many Kit-Kats as you like into a tow­er, using whipped cream for mor­tar, then shove the entire thing into the freez­er, and leave it there until sol­id.”

If you’re look­ing for a slight­ly more chal­leng­ing dessert that still comes with a cul­tur­al fig­ure’s impri­matur, you might give Nor­mal Rock­well’s favorite oat­meal cook­ies a try. Going deep­er into Amer­i­can his­to­ry, we’ve also got Thomas Jef­fer­son­’s recipe for ice cream, the taste for which he picked up while liv­ing in France in the 1780s. That same coun­try’s cui­sine also inspired Ernest Hem­ing­way’s fruit pie, meant for sum­mer-camp­ing with one’s pals: “If your pals are French­men,” Hem­ing­way adds, “they will kiss you.” Alas, if any­one has deter­mined the exact recipe for the most famous dessert in all of French lit­er­a­ture, Mar­cel Proust’s mem­o­ry-trig­ger­ing madeleines, they haven’t released it to the hun­gry pub­lic.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Recipes of Icon­ic Authors: Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Roald Dahl, the Mar­quis de Sade & More

Ernest Hemingway’s Sum­mer Camp­ing Recipes

82 Vin­tage Cook­books, Free to Down­load, Offer a Fas­ci­nat­ing Illus­trat­ed Look at Culi­nary and Cul­tur­al His­to­ry

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

Wagashi: Peruse a Dig­i­tized, Cen­turies-Old Cat­a­logue of Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Can­dies

Ani­mat­ed Noir: Key Lime Pie

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include 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, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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