Researching Food History

Drinking the water, shooting, bowling, billiards, dancing, walking, talking, riding and eating...

Scottish short bread in some 19th century recipes was baked in a "petticoat" shape.  A recipe from 1820 had carraway seeds, a mu...

Two Spring Cakes, one with candied violets, and angelica stems from 1920, and a Regency recipe, Gateau de Mai (Cake of May) which is n...

It is not Fall butchering time nor Burns Night (January 25), but after hearing an talk on Haggis yesterday, I wanted to do a quick picto...

11 Activities in Virginia, Maryland, Ireland, Amsterdam, UK, Italy, Mass., Miss., and Ill.

BETTY the COOK MAIDS HEAD DREST is a satirical image from London in 1776.   Her exaggerated wig contains some cooking tools, cheese, veget...

The marvelous mahogany hues of hard-boiled eggs boiled in onion skins make a wonderful backdrop to etch with a needle or knife, as seen in t...

You can't eat just one... in 1887 - "The more you have of them, the more you will want one."  The paper thin chips were eate...

Egg shells filled with scented rose-water were to be thrown by the ladies during banquets... after the cannons were fired on board pastr...

In 1818 Cobbett listed the many “groceries” the Americans paid half or even a third the price that the British paid.   Furthermore, everyone...

For hundreds of years depictions have shown extensive creases on the tablecloths. This was achieved by ironing, placing in a napkin press...

Radiators could do more than heat a room.  The steam pipes could warm plates, keep food hot for the table, or raise bread dough as was done...

New England "rum makes pancakes light. Flip makes very nice pancakes." 

The meat industry changed radically from the colonial farm to the corporate giants of today. Along the way railroads and their stockyar...

When a Coffee Cake is coffee in a cake...

Once again a lot of us are in the midst of a snow storm...DC is shoveling out now, and in this 1925 photo.  Several years ago I posted rec...

Three centuries of fruit in jelly and jelly shaped as fruit.  The early receipts used a base of jelly from calves feet, issinglass or harts...

Literally.  'Grotesques costumes' created by Nicolas de Larmessin (died 1694) included many tradesmen and women.  Tools and product...

A mother peeling carrots while the son eats one in "A Family Seated Round a Kitchen Fire" by Brekelenkam, 17th century (in Manch...

Thousands of pigs roamed the streets eating "whole joints of meat"  from the butchers and refuse from homes.  At night they wan...