Presentation to library faculty & staff at an internal training day in 2012.

1. From the Farm to the Kitchen:
The History of Food & Drink
Collection
Kira A. Dietz, Archivist and Foodie
In-Service Day
May 17, 2012

2. Amuse-Bouche

3. The First Course,
Or “Gathering Ingredients”
The Origins
of the
Collection

4. The History of Food & Drink Collection
• Peacock-Harper Collection
• Culinary History Collection
• Ann Hertzler Children’s
Cookbook and Nutrition
Collection
• Cocktail History
• And more!

5. The Second Course,
Or “The Three R’s”
Receipts, Recipes, and
Remedies

7. Although it varied, in
general, Civil War POWs
received very limited rations.
They found any number of
creative ways to supplement
soup or beans and molding
bread.

8. The (Abominable) Frosted Sandwich

9. The Joys of Jell-O, 1963

10. In addition to home
remedies, the 19th and
early 20th century saw
a flood of pamphlets
and newspaper
advertisements for
commercial cure-alls
(or cure-most-things).

12. The Third Course,
Or “Just Who’s Running This Place?”
Household
Management
and
Domestic &
Social
History
Frontis piece from The Williamsburg Art of
Title page from The Virginia Housewife, 1846 Cookery…, 1947

13. Household
Management
& Domestic
History

14. Race and Kitchen
Politics

15. Gender Stereotypes
and the Domestic
Sphere
“There is no sincerer
love than the love of
food.”
-George Bernard Shaw

16. Sidebar: The
cookbook as artifact

17. The Fourth Course,
Or “Why Everyone Needs a Set of Meat
Flash Cards”
Education, Dietetics, and Nutrition

18. “Susie and Calcium” from the Ann Hertzler Children’s Cookbook and Nutrition
Literature Archives. This is one of several booklets for children about the
importance of different vitamins in the diet.

19. 1961 National Dairy
Council pamphlet (this
is just about actual
size, by the way!) for
women looking to lose
(“Mrs. Plentiful”) and
gain (“Miss Slender”)
weight.

21. Know Your Cuts of Meat!

22. Know Your Cuts of Meat!

23. Know Your Cuts of Meat!

24. Die Österreichische
Hausfrau: Ein Handbuch
für Frauen und Mädchen
aller Stände, Anna
Bauer, 1891
(The Austrian Housewife: A
Handbook for Women and
Girls of all Levels)

25. “Uncivilized man takes his
nourishment like animals,-
-as it is offered by nature;
civilized man prepares his
food before eating, and in
ways which are in general
the more perfect the higher
his culture.”
-Food and Cookery
for the Sick and
Convalescent, 1911

26. From Modern Dietetics (1951), when butter was a food
group, and there was a lot to know about the egg!

28. The Fifth Course,
Or “How Jell-O Found a Way Into Our
Meals”
Technology, Food Processing and Food (D)Evolution

29. “The agricultural revolution
led to another major
advancement in food
preparation, helping to
usher in the idea of cooking
to improve taste. Up to that
time, cooking was primarily
used to make food digestible
or to remove toxins, but
after the advent of
agriculture, cooking became
less of a pure necessity and
more of an art.”
-Modernist Cuisine
Commercial spice grinder, c. 1898

30. New chicken brooders and
incubators, c. 1900

31. “We may find in the
long run that tinned
food is a deadlier
weapon than the
machine-gun.”
-George Orwell

36. “Any woman with a little ingenuity or none at all can
make an almost endless variety of these fruited desserts
by changing their form or using different flavors of Jell-O
and different fruits.” (1917)

37. Marketing Jell-O took all kinds of forms from its early days in the 1890s
to the modern era. Prior to 1940, however the most common seemed to
be small pamphlets that came attached to packages, were given away or
could be sent away for cheaply.

39. Modernist Cuisine offers
interesting new
techniques , plus
theories about current
and future trends.

40. The Sixth Course,
Or “When Will My Food (Resources) Be
in Pill (Online) Form?”
Access, Digitization, and the Future of the History of Food & Drink

46. After Dinner Cocktails
(“Wait—Did she say cocktails?”)
“Lives, without doubt, have been saved by the use
of champagne.”
Cocktails and the “Age of Entertaining”

47. 1940s Entertaining 101: Better Homes & Gardens

48. “The most attractive
salads are remarkable
for their simplicity.
Salads should taste as
good as they look.”
From the 1941 Better Homes and
Gardens Cookbook

49. There was something
for everyone in the
“age of entertaining”:
Fondue for teen
parties…

50. Economical liver
and onions with
pineapple, tomat
o, and green
peppers salad for
four,

51. A giant burger
for dad and the
kids,

52. Celery for the
mom on a diet,

53. And chicken-less
chicken dishes for
the perfect dinner
party.

54. Introducing:
The History of
the American
Cocktail

58. The Bacardi Cocktail Party Book, 1971

59. The Bacardi Cocktail Party Book, 1971

60. “Can I Get You Anything Else,
Or Would You Like the Check?”
Questions, Comments, or Recipe Requests
are welcome!