Researching Food History

15 events in the USA and Europe

When a Sweet Potato Pie is a sweet, Potato Pie.  Using Irish or white potatoes.  One of the recipes, by Mary Randolph, states 1 pound of pot...

The most striking images of a Papal Conclave - at least for food historians - are found in The Opera of Bartolomeo Scappi , 1570.   Close-u...

Jean-Etienne Liotards pictures, including an interesting one of a boy cutting a piece off a butter cone, highlight an interesting 1803 brea...

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 ...