Researching Food History

Last month I started making some Pinterest boards.   Most of the pictures so far are from my old postings, so I am using it as an pictorial ...

Jean-Etienne Liotard (1702-1789) did the famous watercolor "The Chocolate Girl" (La Belle Chocolatiere) c1744 which has been...

A recipe for Chocolate Hearts is from the Baker's Chocolate booklet, 1913.

7 great images showing the equipment being made and used to refine sugar from a french book, 1764.

Zoar Village in Ohio has a gorgeous flour bin in their 1845 bakery.  The top lid was made from one large width of wood and was constructed b...

Emma Darwin kept a small handwritten recipe book, and about fifty of her recipes with modern interpretations are in Mrs. Charles Darwin'...

The tiny purple shells of the Cochineal (found on cactus - see last section of this post) was used as a dye.   The scale insects were gener...

5 events in UK and USA

The beguiling display of elaborate cakes in the windows lured those walking by and waiting patrons too close to the window sills. Misch...

Cutting the round "cannon ball" pudding in a wedge slice.

Notice how the round pudding was cut in slices from the top left side.

The panetiere was/is a wooden French bread box or bread bin; a nd a gloriously elaborate one at that.  Not your 1960s bread box - causing a ...

"The Little Mouse, who made itself a House in a Christmas Cake" - excerpts of the poem with illustrations from the book Aunt Aff...

Black Cake certainly doesn't sound as festive as Christmas Cake as it was sometimes called, or even Fruit Cake or Plum Pudding.  Not on...

Uncle Sam's Thanksgiving Dinner by Thomas Nash depicts the many immigrants affected by the Fourteenth Ammendment...

Nutting?? Two social events were called Nutting Parties - an indoor party with a nut theme (see below for a 1907 description) and an outing ...

Election Cakes, which appeared in the 1796 cookbook by Amelia Simmons, were labeled “old fashioned” by 1830 in Child’s The Frugal Housewife ...

18th Century British campaign tables, George Washington, and 19th Century American Civil War army tables.  40 sketches and photographs sho...

Just look at that chicken climbing the ladder. The following 9 pictures show three basic types of ladders and ramps since the 16th century.

17th century paintings show elaborate peacock and swan pies adorning the dining tables.  No question, a real show piece.  But - a real head,...