Food-Drink

This beautifully illustrated volume gives an historical overview of European dining customs from the Middle Ages through present day. Many pages feature artworks depicting dining scenes paired with photographs of food and drink related objects from the time period to provide a sumptuous picture of “la table” through the ages. The French text gives detailed information on eating habits as well as tablewares including porcelain, glassware, silverware, textiles, and even furniture.

The Godey’s Lady’s Book was a widely read journal that pioneered the field of women’s magazines. When first published in 1830, it included mainly images of the current fashions, but later it expanded to include fiction, essays, and recipes. In 1870, the magazine published its first cookbook, The Godey’s Lady’s Book Receipts and Household Hints. The book is a compilation of featured recipes along with a chapter of household and cooking advice. The chapter ends on a playful note with a poem —each couplet is a cooking tip or proverb.

Any glass collector worth their salt should consider adopting this charming book on pressed glass salt dishes. “Lacy glass” is the term given to the first glass products pressed in America and on the European Continent, from about 1825-1850. This volume contains actual-size drawings of each salt dish described. Glass is often difficult to photograph accurately due to the refraction of light by facets on the pieces. But even producing these drawings required the making of molds and castings of each and every lacy salt dish to capture the intricate details.

Fannie Farmer, who was born in 1857, suffered a paralytic stroke in her teenage years that forced her to give up her formal education at the time.  She eventually found an interest in nutrition and cooking.  She enrolled at the Boston Cooking School and did so well that she joined the staff, eventually becoming head of the school. She is still an important and recognized figure in the study of American cookery.

Catharine Esther Beecher was born in 1800, the daughter of Lyman Beecher, an outspoken minister and co-founder of the American Temperance Society. Her younger sister was Harriet Beecher Stowe, well-known abolitionist and author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Disappointed in the limited curriculum available to young women during her own school years, Catharine became a teacher in 1821 and a strong advocate for women’s education. In 1823 she opened a private girls’ school, the Hartford Female Seminary, in Hartford, CT. Harriet graduated from the Seminary and later helped her sister there.

This is one of earliest ethnographic publications on the entirety of Iroquois, or more aptly Haudenosaunee, food ways such as cultivation, preparation and preservation, utensils and materials, recipes, and the social or ceremonial customs surrounding food and sustenance. The ‘author’ Frederick W. Waugh gathered substantial traditional knowledge from a number Haudenosaunee informants from the Six Nations Reserve in New York, and New York, and Canada.

This is a reprint of a step-by-step demonstration guide with photographs of Cherokee elder, Aggie Lossiah, teaching Cherokee children how to make Cherokee bean bread. Aggie tells the youngsters “I'll show you how bean bread ought to be made. How my old Cherokee granny made it when we lived in that cave of the Tennessee River.” Aggie was the granddaughter of Principal Chief John Ross who built a trading post on the Tennessee River known as “Ross’s Landing” and was a strong advocate against Cherokee removal from their traditional homelands.

Chocolate lovers abound globally, yet few know that chocolate derives from the cacao tree which grows in many parts of Central and South America. It was the ancient Mesoamerican civilizations who cultivated and converted the cacao bean to the delightful creation known as “chocolate” which was a delicacy reserved for royalty and ceremony. In the 18th century, naturalist Carolus Linnaeus aptly bestowed the cacao tree’s scientific name, Theobroma cacao, or “Food of the Gods” as cacao played a significant role in creation stories as a sacred tree for the protection of the deities.

This 1872 book offers guidance to “the inexperienced housewife.” It is organized into three parts – housekeeping, cooking, and pharmaceutical concerns – and includes 5,000 practical receipts and maxims “from the best English, French, German, and American sources.” The editor of the volume was E. F. (Elizabeth Fries) Ellet, an American writer, historian, and poet who published her first book of poetry at age 17. She also wrote a three-volume history titled The Women of the American Revolution.

This pocket-sized, waterproof booklet was created by Smithsonian scientists for soldiers and airmen in the Pacific to carry with them during World War II.  It details survival information for stranded servicemen, including how to navigate without instruments, abandon ship, start fires, find water, build shelter, and identify edible and dangerous plants and animals in the tropics, the arctic, and the desert.  Over 1 million booklets were distributed by the end of the war and potentially saved numerous lives.