Researching Food History

This young chap (look at the bottom of his shoes!) is carving large turnips in the British artist Edward Docker's work "Making La...

In this 1854 poem Peggy, the cook, starts the fire an hour before sunrise to fry the cakes (pancakes, hoecakes?). After breakfast and cle...

Were guns kept above the fireplace?  During an 1856 flood at Malvern, UK (some of us can relate) one gun kept on hooks on the kitchen chimn...

Suet (the fat around the kidney - generally beef) was clarified or rendered down - slowly cooked then strained - to make tallow "...f...

Instructions on how to butcher, cook and carve a spare rib of pork from an 1831 Cincinnati cookbook is below.  During this time, the city...

Unlike the previous post on medieval cats, HERE, the cats in these paintings are more active.  In fact, the first painting is filled with a...

Cats have always been clever creatures...the cats in the 3 images are staying near the food and people, and yet appear aloof. In the post on...

In the early 1900s workers were given a metal token token or "check" for a set number of baskets filled with fruit or vegetables...

Dijon mustard or Anjou mustard, mustard seeds soaked overnight in water, dried mustard cakes and a mustard lasting eight days were four re...

Cast iron 6 panel or 'box' stoves from the 18th century heated rooms and perhaps a kettle on the top.  Then came more panels to ma...

Few people were in Washington, D.C. during the summer 1822, so the markets were "cruelly ill-supplied."  Bad potatoes, lamb, roc...

Famous for The Virginia Housewife , 1824, Mary Randolph was from an interesting and prominent family. Thomas Jefferson was raised with her f...

16 events in Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, DC, NY, CT, TX, MS, IN, VA

Batter puddings are a lighter cake-type 'pudding'. The following recipe is by Sarah Josepha Buell Hale (1788-1879) best known fo...

When the British traveler Mrs. Trollope first tasted water-melon she "thought it very vile stuff."  She also felt the men, women a...

Mrs. Goodfellow (1767-1851) made a lemon pudding (pie) at her cooking school and shop in early Phila. (more HERE) .  I've not found a...

Mrs. Goodfellow (c1767-1851) was a renowned baker, confectioner and founder of a cooking school for wealthy young ladies. She changed the ...

At Mercersburg, Pa., before the Civil War, the town folk and farmers would go out to President James Buchanan's birthplace and share a...

The mother of the "Mother of the American Valentine," (both named) Esther Allen Howland, wrote the small cookbook in 1844 which ...

June 18 is the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo and the defeat of Napoleon. The Duke of Wellington celebrated his victory with ...