Take a Virtual Tour of the World’s Only Sourdough Library

in Food & Drink, Libraries, Travel | May 4th, 2020

There’s 15-year-old Pre­cious from the Nether­lands…

And Bub­ble from Aus­tralia, age 4…

Yeasty Beasty Methuse­lah, from Twin Falls, Ida­ho, is esti­mat­ed to be around 50…

Every sour­dough starter is spe­cial to the ones who made or main­tain it, but of the 1000s reg­is­tered online with Quest for Sour­dough, only 125 have earned a per­ma­nent place in the Puratos Sour­dough Library in Saint-Vith, Bel­gium. It’s the world’s only library ded­i­cat­ed to Sour­dough, and you can take a vir­tu­al tour here.

Housed in iden­ti­cal jars in a muse­um-qual­i­ty refrig­er­at­ed cab­i­nets, these her­itage starters have been care­ful­ly select­ed by librar­i­an Karl De Smedt, above, who trav­els the world vis­it­ing bak­eries, tast­ing bread, and learn­ing the sto­ries behind each sam­ple that enters the col­lec­tion.

As De Smedt recalls in an inter­view with the Sour­dough Pod­cast, the idea for the muse­um began tak­ing shape when a Lebanese bak­er reached out to Puratos, a hun­dred-year-old com­pa­ny that sup­plies com­mer­cial bak­ers and pas­try mak­ers with essen­tials of the trade. The man’s sons returned from a bak­ing expo in Paris and informed their dad that when they took over, they planned to retire his time-hon­ored prac­tice of bak­ing with fer­ment­ed chick­peas in favor of instant yeast. Wor­ried that his prized recipe would be lost to his­to­ry, he appealed to Puratos to help pre­serve his pro­to­cols.

While fer­ment­ed chick­peas do not count as sourdough—a com­bi­na­tion of flour, water, and the result­ing microor­gan­isms this mar­riage gives rise to over time—the com­pa­ny had recent­ly col­lect­ed and ana­lyzed 43 ven­er­a­ble starters. The bulk came from Italy, includ­ing one from Alta­mu­ra, the “city of bread, pro­duc­er of what Horace called in 37 B.C. ‘the best bread to be had, so good that the wise trav­el­er takes a sup­ply of it for his onward jour­ney.’”

Thus was a non-cir­cu­lat­ing library born.

Each spec­i­men is ana­lyzed by food micro­bi­ol­o­gist Mar­co Gob­bet­ti from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Bolzano and Bari.

A col­lab­o­ra­tion with North Car­oli­na State Uni­ver­si­ty biol­o­gists Rob Dunn and Anne Mad­den revealed that sour­dough bak­ers’ hands share dis­tinct microbes with their starters.

More than 1100 strains of microor­gan­isms have been record­ed so far.

Every two months, the starters are tak­en out of the fridge and fed, i.e. reac­ti­vat­ed, with a com­bi­na­tion of water and some of their flour of ori­gin, year­ly quan­ti­ties of which are con­tributed by their bak­ers. With­out this reg­u­lar care, the starters will die off.

(The pan­dem­ic has De Smedt work­ing from home, but he inti­mat­ed to The New York Times that he intend­ed to make it back to feed his babies, or “moth­ers” as they are known in sour­dough cir­cles.)

#72 from Mex­i­co feeds on eggs, lime and beer

#100 from Japan is made of cooked sake rice.

#106 is a vet­er­an of the Gold Rush.

Their con­sis­ten­cy is doc­u­ment­ed along a line that ranges from hard to flu­id, with Sil­ly Put­ty in the mid­dle.

Each year, De Smedt expands the col­lec­tion with starters from a dif­fer­ent area of the world. The lat­est addi­tions come from Turkey, and are doc­u­ment­ed in the mouth­wa­ter­ing trav­el­ogue above.

For now, of course, he’s ground­ed in Bel­gium, and using his Insta­gram account to pro­vide encour­age­ment to oth­er sour­dough prac­ti­tion­ers, answer­ing rook­ie ques­tions and show­ing off some of the loaves pro­duced by his own per­son­al starters, Bar­bara and Aman­da.

Reg­is­ter your starter on Quest for Sour­dough here.

If you haven’t yet tak­en the sour­dough plunge, you can par­tic­i­pate in North Car­oli­na State University’s Wild Sour­dough Project by fol­low­ing their instruc­tions on mak­ing a starter from scratch and then sub­mit­ting your data here.

And bide your time until you’re cleared to vis­it the Puratos Sour­dough Library in per­son by tak­ing an inter­ac­tive vir­tu­al tour or watch­ing a com­plete playlist of De Smedt’s col­lect­ing trips here.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent: 

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

An Archive of Hand­writ­ten Tra­di­tion­al Mex­i­can Cook­books Is Now Online

400 Ways to Make a Sand­wich: A 1909 Cook­book Full of Cre­ative Recipes

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Her cur­rent starter, Miss Sour­dough, was brought to life with an unholy splash of apple cider. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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Quarantine Cooking: 13 Professional Chefs Cook Pasta at Home with the Most Basic Ingredients Available

in Food & Drink | April 20th, 2020

Bon Appétit takes you to the homes of 13 pro­fes­sion­al chefs, each cook­ing pas­ta with what­ev­er they hap­pen to have on hand. In the next half hour, you may pick up a few handy tips.

Chefs fea­tured include: Claire Saf­fitz, Brad Leone, Chris Moroc­co, Gaby Melian, Andy Baraghani, Sohla El-Wayl­ly, Amiel Stanek, Alex Delany, Car­la Lal­li Music, Priya Krish­na, Rick Mar­tinez, Christi­na Chaey and Mol­ly Baz.

via Mefi

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

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

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Japanese Artist Has Drawn Every Meal He’s Eaten for 32 Years: Behold the Delicious Illustrations of Itsuo Kobayashi

in Art, Food & Drink | March 24th, 2020

Since the 1980s, Itsuo Kobayashi has drawn a pic­ture of every sin­gle meal he eats. How­ev­er notable we find this prac­tice now, it would sure­ly have struck us as down­right eccen­tric back then. Kobayashi began draw­ing his food before the arrival of inex­pen­sive dig­i­tal cam­eras and cell­phones, and well before the smart­phone com­bined the two into the sin­gle pack­age we now keep close at hand. We all know peo­ple who take cam­era-phone pic­tures of their meals, some of them with the reg­u­lar­i­ty and solem­ni­ty of prayer, but how many of them could pro­duce life­like ren­der­ings of the food placed before them with only pen and paper?

“The Japan­ese out­sider artist and pro­fes­sion­al cook, born in 1962, first began keep­ing food diaries as a teenag­er,” Art­net’s Sarah Cas­cone writes of Kobayashi. “In his 20s, he began adding illus­tra­tions of the dish­es he made at work, and those he ate while din­ing out.” When, at the age of 46, a “debil­i­tat­ing neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­or­der made it dif­fi­cult for him to walk, leav­ing him large­ly con­fined to his home,” Kobayashi began to focus on his food diaries even more intense­ly.

His sub­jects are now most­ly “food deliv­er­ies — some­times from restau­rants, some­times from his moth­er. And though his day-to-day exis­tence rarely varies, he’s been push­ing his prac­tice in a new direc­tion, cre­at­ing a new series of pop-up paint­ings.”

After 32 years of mak­ing increas­ing­ly detailed and real­is­tic over­head draw­ings of his every meal — includ­ing such infor­ma­tion as names, prices, fla­vor notes, and faith­ful­ly repli­cat­ed restau­rant logos — Kobayashi’s work has caught the atten­tion of the Amer­i­can art world. The Fukuya­ma-based gallery Kushi­no Ter­race “gave Kobayashi his US debut in Jan­u­ary, at New York’s Out­sider Art Fair,” Cas­cone writes. “His works sell for between $500 and $3,000.” That makes for quite a step up in pres­tige from his old job cook­ing at a soba restau­rant, though his copi­ous expe­ri­ence with that dish shows when­ev­er it appears in his diary.

But then, after decade upon decade of dai­ly prac­tice, every­thing Kobayashi draws looks good enough to eat, from bowls of ramen to plates of cur­ry to ben­to box­es filled with all man­ner of delights from land and sea. Though hard­ly fan­cy, espe­cial­ly by the advanced stan­dards of Japan­ese food cul­ture, these are the kind of meals you want to savor, the ones to which you feel you should pay appre­cia­tive atten­tion rather than just scarf­ing down. Or at least they look that way under Kobayashi’s gaze, which even the most ardent 21st-cen­tu­ry food-pho­tograph­ing hob­by­ist must envy. Many of us wish to eat more con­scious­ly, and the work of this cook-turned-artist shows us how: put down the phone, and pick up the sketch­book.

via Art­net

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch Tee­ny Tiny Japan­ese Meals Get Made in a Minia­ture Kitchen: The Joy of Cook­ing Mini Tem­pu­ra, Sashi­mi, Cur­ry, Okonomiya­ki & More

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

Cook­pad, the Largest Recipe Site in Japan, Launch­es New Site in Eng­lish

How to Make Sushi: Free Video Lessons from a Mas­ter Sushi Chef

How the Aston­ish­ing Sushi Scene in Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs Was Ani­mat­ed: A Time-Lapse of the Month-Long Shoot

The Prop­er Way to Eat Ramen: A Med­i­ta­tion from the Clas­sic Japan­ese Com­e­dy Tam­popo (1985)

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 or on Face­book.

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An Archive of Handwritten Traditional Mexican Cookbooks Is Now Online

in Books, Food & Drink, History | February 12th, 2020

“The search for authen­tic Mex­i­can food—or rather, the strug­gle to define what that meant—has been going on for two hun­dred years,” writes Jef­frey Pilch­er at Guer­ni­ca. Argu­ments over nation­al cui­sine first divid­ed into fac­tions along his­tor­i­cal lines of con­quest. Indige­nous, corn-based cuisines were pit­ted against wheat-based Euro­pean foods, while Tex-Mex cook­ing has been “indus­tri­al­ized and car­ried around the world,” its processed com­mod­i­fi­ca­tion pos­ing an offense to both indige­nous peo­ples and Span­ish elites, who them­selves lat­er “sought to ground their nation­al cui­sine in the pre-His­pan­ic past” in order to fend off asso­ci­a­tions with glob­al­ized Mex­i­can food of the chain restau­rant vari­ety.

Stephanie Noell, Spe­cial Col­lec­tions Librar­i­an at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas San Anto­nio (UTSA), explains how these lines were drawn cen­turies ear­li­er dur­ing the “culi­nary cul­tur­al exchange” of the colo­nial peri­od: “[C]onquistador Bernal Diaz del Castil­lo referred to corn dish­es as the ‘mis­ery of maize cakes.’ On the oth­er side, the Nahuas were not impressed by the Spaniards’ wheat bread, describ­ing it as ‘famine food.’” What­ev­er we point to—corn, wheat, etc.—and call “Mex­i­can food,” we are sure to be cor­rect­ed by some­one in the know.

Cook­ing, as every­one knows, is not only region­al and polit­i­cal, but also deeply per­son­al– tied to fam­i­ly gath­er­ings and passed through gen­er­a­tions in hand­writ­ten recipes, some­times jeal­ous­ly guard­ed lest they be stolen and turned into fast food. But thanks to UTSA Libraries, we have access to hun­dreds of such recipes. An ini­tial dona­tion of 550 cook­books has grown to include “over 2,000 titles in Eng­lish and Span­ish,” notes UTSA, “doc­u­ment­ing the his­to­ry of Mex­i­can cui­sine from 1789 to the present, with most books dat­ing from 1940–2000.” Many of the books, like that below from 1960, con­sist of hand­writ­ten con­tent next to cut-and-paste recipes and ideas from mag­a­zines.

The col­lec­tion spans “region­al cook­ing, healthy and veg­e­tar­i­an recipes, cor­po­rate adver­tis­ing cook­books, and man­u­script recipe books.” The old­est cook­book, belong­ing to some­one named “Doña Ignaci­ta,” whom Noell believes to have been the kitchen man­ag­er of a wealthy fam­i­ly, “is a hand­writ­ten recipe col­lec­tion in a note­book,” writes Nils Bern­stein at Atlas Obscu­ra, “com­plete with liq­uid stains, doo­dles, and pages that nat­u­ral­ly fall open to the most-loved recipes.” Like the oth­er man­u­script cook­books in the col­lec­tion, “nev­er intend­ed for pub­lic scruti­ny,” this one “pro­vides essen­tial insight on how real house­holds cooked on a reg­u­lar basis.”

“I’ve had stu­dents in tears going through these,” says Noell, “because it’s so pow­er­ful to see that con­nec­tion with how their fam­i­ly makes cer­tain dish­es and where they orig­i­nat­ed.” On the oth­er hand, we also have gener­ic “Cor­po­rate Cook­books” like Rec­etario Bim­bo, a book of sand­wich recipes from the well-known bread com­pa­ny Bim­bo. Recent pub­li­ca­tions like the ultra-hip, 2017 Fies­ta: Veg­an Mex­i­can Cook­book, which promis­es “over 75 authen­tic veg­an-Mex­i­can food recipes includ­ed,” strain the word “authen­tic” to its break­ing point. (“Want to feel all the great ben­e­fits from the keto­genic diet?” the book’s blurb asks, a ques­tion that prob­a­bly nev­er occurred to either Aztecs or Con­quis­ta­dors.)

The UTSA Mex­i­can Cook­books col­lec­tion is open to the pub­lic and any­one can vis­it it in per­son, but Noell wants “any­body with an inter­net con­nec­tion to be able to see these works.” UTSA has been busy dig­i­tiz­ing the 100 man­u­script cook­books in the col­lec­tion, and has scanned about half so far, with Doña Ignacita’s 1789 note­book com­ing soon. While these aren’t like­ly to resolve debates about what con­sti­tutes authen­tic Mex­i­can cooking—as if such a thing exist­ed in a mono­lith­ic, time­less form—they are sure to be of very keen inter­est to chefs, home cooks, his­to­ri­ans, and enthu­si­asts of the his­to­ry of Mex­i­can food. Enter the dig­i­tal col­lec­tion of man­u­script cook­books here.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

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

The Futur­ist Cook­book (1930) Tried to Turn Ital­ian Cui­sine into Mod­ern Art

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

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Cooking with Wool: Watch Mouthwatering Tiny Woolen Food Animations

in Animation, Food & Drink, K-12 | January 17th, 2020

Our fas­ci­na­tion with tiny food can be traced to the mouth­wa­ter­ing illus­tra­tions in Beat­rix Potter’s The Tale of Two Bad Mice.

Just like the doll­house-sized comestibles that so con­found­ed the tit­u­lar rodents, Tom Thumb and Hun­ca­munca, ani­ma­tor Andrea Love’s minia­ture pas­ta with red sauce is as ined­i­ble as it is appe­tiz­ing.

The self-taught stop motion specialist’s medi­um of choice is wool.

In an inter­view with Drag­on Frame stop motion software’s com­pa­ny blog, when they fea­tured Cook­ing with Wool: Break­fast, above, Love explained:

I like to make short per­son­al projects exper­i­ment­ing with the dif­fer­ent ways to ani­mate wool. The tech­nique is called nee­dle felt­ing and it involves shap­ing wool with a barbed nee­dle. I love the fuzzy aes­thet­ic, and feel like the pos­si­bil­i­ties are end­less. Every­thing in this video is made out of wool or felt, and is built over rigid insu­la­tion foam. This was a weekend/evening project, done over the course of three days… It is very chal­leng­ing work­ing with tiny bits of wool, but also amaz­ing how much detail can be achieved on a small scale when you con­sid­er that it is just tiny clumps of fur.

For­get the showstoppers—the melt­ing but­ter, the fried eggs flip­ping in the pan, the steam ris­ing from cup and ket­tle…

Let’s take a moment to admire the atten­tion to detail that went into the back­ground aspects—the rub­ber spat­u­la, the bananas, the cheery flecked wall­pa­per…

The only thing miss­ing is a pothold­er to han­dle that pip­ing hot cast iron skil­let.

Per­haps she ran out of wool?

The Port Townsend, Wash­ing­ton res­i­dent, who grad­u­at­ed from Hamp­shire Col­lege with a con­cen­tra­tion in film stud­ies and sus­tain­able agri­cul­ture, whips up her tee­ny wee­ny wooly meals in the same base­ment stu­dio where she crafts pro­mo­tion­al videos for local busi­ness­es, includ­ing the yarn shop where she sources her wool rov­ings.

View more of Andrea Love’s fiber-art stop motion ani­ma­tions, includ­ing a “dig­i­tal” banana paint­ing cre­at­ed with a woolen tablet and sty­lus, on her web­site and Insta­gram page.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Online Knit­ting Ref­er­ence Library: Down­load 300 Knit­ting Books Pub­lished From 1849 to 2012

Behold an Anatom­i­cal­ly Cor­rect Repli­ca of the Human Brain, Knit­ted by a Psy­chi­a­trist

20+ Knit­ters and Cro­chet Artists Stitch an Aston­ish­ing 3‑D Recre­ation of Picasso’s Guer­ni­ca

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, Feb­ru­ary 3 for New York: The Nation’s Metrop­o­lis the 21st install­ment of her book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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A Brief Animated History of Alcohol

in Animation, Food & Drink, History, TED Talks | January 6th, 2020

Almost any­thing can be pre­served in alco­hol, except health, hap­pi­ness and mon­ey…

Rod­er­ick Phillips’ Ted-Ed les­son, a Brief His­to­ry of Alco­hol, above, opens with a bon mot from ear­ly 20th-cen­tu­ry quote maven Mary Wil­son Lit­tle, after which, an unwit­ting chim­panzee quick­ly dis­cov­ers the intox­i­cat­ing effects of over­ripe plums.

His eyes pin­wheel, he falls off a branch, and grins, drunk as a monkey’s uncle.

And though the sub­ject is alco­hol, this pri­mate is the only char­ac­ter in Anton Bogaty’s 5‑minute ani­ma­tion who could be hauled in on a drunk and dis­or­der­ly charge.

The oth­ers take a more sober, indus­tri­ous approach, illus­trat­ing alcohol’s promi­nent role in ear­ly med­i­cine, reli­gious rit­u­als, and glob­al trad­ing.

Ancient Egyp­tians har­vest the cere­al grains that will pro­duce beer, includ­ed as part of work­ers’ rations and avail­able to all class­es.

A native of South Amer­i­ca stirs a ket­tle of chicha, a fist­ful of hal­lu­cino­genic herbs held at the ready.

A Greek physi­cian tends to a patient with a gob­let of wine, as a near­by poet pre­pares to deliv­er an ode on its cre­ative prop­er­ties.

Stu­dents with an inter­est in the sci­ence of alco­hol can learn a bit about the fer­men­ta­tion process and how the inven­tion of dis­til­la­tion allowed for much stronger spir­its.

Alco­hol was a wel­come pres­ence aboard sea­far­ing ves­sels. Not only did this valu­able trad­ing com­mod­i­ty spark live­ly par­ties on deck, it san­i­tized the sailors’ drink­ing water, mak­ing longer voy­ages pos­si­ble.

Cheers to that.

Edu­ca­tors can cus­tomize the les­son here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Beer Archae­ol­o­gy: Yes, It’s a Thing

5,000-Year-Old Chi­nese Beer Recipe Gets Recre­at­ed by Stan­ford Stu­dents

How Carl Jung Inspired the Cre­ation of Alco­holics Anony­mous

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC tongight, Mon­day, Jan­u­ary 6 when her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates Cape-Cod­di­ties (1920) by Roger Liv­ingston Scaife. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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

in Food & Drink, History, Libraries | December 10th, 2019

With the hol­i­days fast approach­ing, two interns at the Sal­lie Bing­ham Cen­ter for Wom­en’s His­to­ry and Cul­ture at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty’s Ruben­stein Library turned to the center’s col­lec­tion of vin­tage adver­tis­ing cook­books for inspi­ra­tion.

Their labors, and the fruits thereof—a queasy-look­ing Crown Jew­el Dessert and a savory fish-shaped “sal­ad” as per the Joys of Jell‑O Gelatin Dessert cookbook—are show­cased above.

While the library has yet to dig­i­tize that par­tic­u­lar early-60’s gem, there are plen­ty of oth­er options from the Nicole Di Bona Peter­son Adver­tis­ing Cook­book Col­lec­tion avail­able for free down­load, includ­ing sev­er­al that are gelatin based.

The authors of the pre-Women’s‑Suffrage Jell‑O: Amer­i­ca’s Most Famous Dessert, would have bog­gled at our 21st-cen­tu­ry abun­dance of fla­vors (and our god­like tele­phones), just as our eyes widen at their lush full-col­or illus­tra­tions and hun­dred-year-old social norms.

As one might expect, giv­en the Sal­lie Bing­ham Center’s mis­sion of pre­serv­ing print­ed mate­ri­als that reflect the pub­lic and pri­vate lives of women, past and present, these vin­tage cook­books speak to far more than just culi­nary trends.

Roy­al Bak­ing Powder’s 55 Ways to Save Eggs puts a pos­i­tive spin on wartime economies by fram­ing cheap ingre­di­ent sub­sti­tu­tions as some­thing clever and mod­ern, attrib­ut­es the young house­wife depict­ed on the cov­er would sure­ly wish to embody.

(Shout out to any home bak­ers who were aware that cream of tar­tar is derived from grapes…)

Dain­ty Dish­es for All the Year Round (1900) finds its pub­lish­er, North Broth­ers Man­u­fac­tur­ing Co., sit­ting pret­ty, unable to imag­ine a future some twen­ty years hence, in which tech­no­log­i­cal advances would result in the com­mer­cial mass pro­duc­tion of ice cream, thus damn­ing their star item, Shephard’s “Light­ning” Ice Cream Freez­er, to the cat­e­go­ry of inessen­tial coun­ter­top clut­ter.

Sad­ly, not all of the deli­cious-sound­ing ice cream recipes by Mrs. S. T. Ror­er, a lead­ing culi­nary author and edu­ca­tor and America’s first dieti­cian, are includ­ed, but you can browse many illus­trat­ed ads for North Broth­ers’ built-to-last goods, includ­ing a meat cut­ter, a num­ber of screw­drivers, and a mag­nif­i­cent­ly steam­punk Christ­mas tree stand.

Would it sur­prise you to learn that our cur­rent pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with ancient grains is far from a new thing?

1929’s Mod­ern Ways with an Ancient Food was aimed square­ly at moth­ers anx­ious, then as now, that their chil­dren were prop­er­ly nour­ished.

The grain in ques­tion was not quinoa or freekeh, but rather fari­na, referred to by most Amer­i­cans by its most pop­u­lar brand name Cream of Wheat, a fact  not lost on this vol­ume’s pub­lish­er, Cream of Wheat com­peti­tor Heck­er H‑O Com­pa­ny.

His­to­ry shows that Cream of Wheat trounced Hecker’s Cream-Fari­na.

Giv­en the bland­ness of the grain in ques­tion, chalk it up to Cream of Wheat’s mus­cu­lar adver­tis­ing approach, and robust licens­ing of prod­ucts fea­tur­ing the icon­ic image of Ras­tus, a smil­ing black spokeschef whose pal­pa­bly offen­sive, dialect-heavy endorse­ments are one pit­fall Heck­er seems to have skirt­ed.

Begin your explo­rations of the Sal­lie Bing­ham Center’s Nicole Di Bona Peter­son Adver­tis­ing Cook­book Col­lec­tion here, and let us know in the com­ments if there’s a recipe you’re intend­ing to try.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

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

400 Ways to Make a Sand­wich: A 1909 Cook­book Full of Cre­ative Recipes

The Futur­ist Cook­book (1930) Tried to Turn Ital­ian Cui­sine into Mod­ern Art

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Join her in NYC tonight, Mon­day, Decem­ber 9, as her month­ly book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain cel­e­brates anoth­er vin­tage adver­tis­ing pam­phlet, Dennison’s Christ­mas Book (1921). Fol­low her @AyunHalliday

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A New Digitized Menu Collection Lets You Revisit the Cuisine from the “Golden Age of Railroad Dining”

in Archives, Food & Drink, History | December 4th, 2019

The com­ing of the rail­road in the U.S. of the 19th cen­tu­ry meant unprece­dent­ed oppor­tu­ni­ty for millions—a tri­umph of trans­porta­tion and com­merce that changed the coun­try for­ev­er. For many more—including mil­lions of Amer­i­can bison—it meant cat­a­stro­phe and near extinc­tion. This com­pli­cat­ed his­to­ry has pro­vid­ed a rich field of study for schol­ars of the period—who can tie the rail­road to near­ly every major his­tor­i­cal devel­op­ment, from the Civ­il War to pres­i­den­tial cam­paigns to the spread of the Sears mer­chan­dis­ing empire from coast to coast.

But as time wore on, pas­sen­ger trains became both more com­mon­place and more lux­u­ri­ous, as they com­pet­ed with air and auto trav­el in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry. It is this peri­od of rail­road his­to­ry that most attract­ed Ira Sil­ver­man as a grad­u­ate stu­dent at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty in the 1960s. While enrolled at Northwestern’s Trans­porta­tion Cen­ter in Evanston, Illi­nois, Sil­ver­man and his class­mates found end­less “oppor­tu­ni­ties for research, adven­ture, and unpar­al­leled feast­ing,” writes Claire Voon at Atlas Obscu­ra.

Sil­ver­man espe­cial­ly took to the din­ing cars—and more to the point, to the menus, which he col­lect­ed by the dozens, “even­tu­al­ly amass­ing an archive of 238 menus and relat­ed pam­phlets. After a long career in tran­sit, he donat­ed the col­lec­tion to his alma mater’s Trans­porta­tion Library, which recent­ly dig­i­tized it in its entire­ty.” Silverman’s col­lec­tion rep­re­sents “35 Unit­ed States and Cana­di­an rail­roads,” points out North­west­ern, and its con­tents most­ly date from the ear­ly 60s to the 1980s—from his most active years rid­ing the rails in style, that is.

But Sil­ver­man was also able to acquire ear­li­er exam­ples, such as a 1939 menu “once perused by pas­sen­gers aboard the famed 20th Cen­tu­ry Lim­it­ed train,” Voon writes, “which trav­eled between New York City and Chica­go.” Twen­ty years after this menu’s appear­ance, Cary Grant, “play­ing an adman in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by North­west, orders a brook trout with his Gib­son” while rid­ing the same line. The Art Deco menu for the “new stream­lined” line fea­tures such del­i­ca­cies as “gen­uine Russ­ian caviar on toast and grilled French sar­dines.”

Even kids’ menus—now reli­ably dom­i­nat­ed by chick­en fin­gers, piz­za, PB&Js, and mac & cheese—offered far more sophis­ti­cat­ed din­ing than we might expect to find, with “items such as grilled lamb chops, roast beef, and sea­son­al fish” on the North Coast Lim­it­ed menu below. “The mid-20th cen­tu­ry seems to have been a gold­en age of rail­road din­ing,” remarks North­west­ern Trans­porta­tion Librar­i­an Rachel Cole. “It was nev­er some­thing that rail­roads prof­it­ed on, but they used it to com­pete against each oth­er and attract pas­sen­gers,” tak­ing pride in “selec­tions that would be rivaled in restau­rants.”

The fine din­ing-car expe­ri­ence might also include nov­el­ty items pas­sen­gers would be unlike­ly to find any­where else, such as North­west­ern Pacific’s Great Baked Pota­to, “a mon­strous spud,” Voon explains, “that could weigh any­where between two to five pounds” and came served with “an appro­pri­ate­ly sized but­ter pat.” One can see the appeal for a food and trav­el enthu­si­ast like Sil­ver­man, who had the priv­i­lege of try­ing dish­es on most of these menus for him­self.

The rest of us will have to rely on our gus­ta­to­ry imag­i­na­tions to con­jure what it might have been like to eat prime rib on the West­ern Star in the Pacif­ic North­west in the ear­ly 60s, or braised smoked pork loin on an Amtrak train in 1972. If your mem­o­ries of din­ing on a train most­ly con­sist of pulling sog­gy, microwaved “food” from steam­ing hot plas­tic bags, or munch­ing on pack­aged, processed salty snacks, expand your sense of what rail­road din­ing could be at the Ira Sil­ver­man Rail­road Menu Col­lec­tion here.

via Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Food­ie Alert: New York Pub­lic Library Presents an Archive of 17,000 Restau­rant Menus (1851–2008)

Mark Twain Makes a List of 60 Amer­i­can Com­fort Foods He Missed While Trav­el­ing Abroad (1880)

What Pris­on­ers Ate at Alca­traz in 1946: A Vin­tage Prison Menu

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

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