Somehow, I missed the Golden Girls growing up. The show first aired in 1985, the year I was born, and went off the air in 1992, when I was seven. But despite the fact that it was apparently syndicated on broadcast television all through my elementary and high school years, I missed it. I did not watch a single episode. Oh, I knew that it existed, and by college, thanks to the virality of the internet, I got the references. I watched Betty White on Hot in Cleveland and watched with glee as she roasted William Shatner and essentially became a saint of the internet age. Thanks to the internet, I knew that Bea Arthur was a patron saint of LGBTQ+ youth, too. But I never saw the show, even when I finally did get access to cable.

When Betty White passed away on December 31, 2021, just a little over two weeks shy of her 100th birthday (coming up on January 17th), I decided to see what all the fuss was about. 

Just one episode in, I was totally hooked. Rose reminds me of Minnesota (I almost went to St. Olaf!), I love Blanche's Southern charm and unapologetic sexuality, and while I'm not a huge fan of how often the show made fun of Bea Arthur's appearance, I appreciate Dorothy's whip smarts and New Yorker bluntness and sarcasm. And who could say no to firecracker Sophia?  

I've been binging episodes ever since. Thank goodness there are so many of them. But one thing that really struck me was the division of household labor, which features fairly prominently in the first few episodes, as well as subsequent flashbacks (once the gay male cook in the pilot episode disappears, that is). The ladies grocery shop together, and argue over what to buy. There's discussion of household budgets. When people come to visit, the ladies help each other clean. And someone or another is always in the kitchen washing dishes, cooking, or having a late-night snack. And although Sophia, with her small-village-in-Sicily background is queen of the Sunday gravy, other characters cook, too.

The four ladies on the show are mature adults - they've all run their own households, raised children, managed husbands, etc. It can't have been easy for them to come to an agreement on how to run the house, but they did. And it reminded me very strongly of a passage I read in a book I now can't remember and can't find (the perils of a historian's mind. If anyone knows this reference, please let me know!) - it described a home economics college program where in their senior year, the girls lived together in a house and put into practice all the skills they had learned in class. But, as the author pointed out, the girls shared the workload together, which may have given them unrealistic ideas about the labor of managing their own households. 

In our last evaluation of memes, we talked about how convenience foods in the 1950s and '60s were in part adopted quickly in reaction to a reduction in available household labor. With no servants/hired help and fewer children, alongside changing expectations of childhood, more and more women were shouldering the burden of household labor alone. 

Which is why Golden Girls is so refreshing: four adults pulling together relatively equally to maintain a household and keep everyone fed. There are occasional hints at people's economic statuses. For one, if any of them were independently wealthy, I doubt they'd need roommates. But while Blanche having a nanny for her children becomes a plot point, as does Rose keeping a secret that her husband was terrible with money, Dorothy and Sophia seem chronically on a budget, unable to afford some of the things the others can. Although that may just reflect Sophia's addiction to the races. But still, everyone is able to afford a rather shocking amount of eveningwear and certainly there's always enough money to keep the fridge stocked with cheesecake. 

The women are all in their 50s and 60s in the show (Sophia purportedly in her 80s, although Estelle Getty was a year younger than Bea Arthur), which means that they were in high school in the 1940s or earlier. In particular, Rose mentions her dismay at being rejected for joining the WACs during WWII. That means they all likely had at least some home economics training in school. And while the show is quintessentially '80s, there are hints of the 1940s and '50s everywhere, from the décor to the clothing (especially the robes). 

That home economics training likely served them in good stead when living with other women. They probably all had similar experiences, maybe learned how to wash dishes or make beds or do laundry a certain way. Because despite the fact that the characters come from very different backgrounds, they celebrate their differences, instead of letting them divide them (for the most, part, anyway). 

Today, more and more Millennials, cash-strapped by an economy that underpays them and bogged down with student loan debt they were promised would get them good jobs, are joining forces to purchase or rent homes with fellow adults they aren't married to. And as my generation contemplates retirement, many of us have thought about purchasing homes or property in concert with friends (Boomers and Gen-Xers are, too). The family/friend "compound" is becoming more and more of a thing. 

Communal living certainly has a lot of historical precedence. The nuclear family is a lot newer (and less effective) than most "traditional family values" folks like to admit. Which features prominently in several Golden Girls plots as the ladies struggle with deadbeat exes, estranged children and siblings, and the sting of sexism and ageism. And while home ownership is still the American Dream for many people, it makes a lot of economic sense to share household resources and labor. In this housing market? Sometimes it's the only way people can afford a place of their own.

Even in the 1980s, Miami was expensive, so roommates made as much sense then as it does in most cities now. But what makes the Golden Girls TV show work is the relationships the ladies build with each other, how they support each other, and how they work together. In our modern era, it's a lot harder to find community than it once was. 

So if you want something similar in your life or your future, tell any naysayers, "Hey! It worked for the Golden Girls!" Just don't forget to hash out your differences with honesty and lots of late-night snacks. ​

​The Food Historian blog is supported by patrons on Patreon! Patrons help keep blog posts like this one free and available to the public. Join us for awesome members-only content like free digitized cookbooks from my personal collection, e-newsletter, and even snail mail from time to time! Don't like Patreon? Leave a tip!

Well friends, I said I was contemplating a part two to last week's examination of 1950s food, and this meme kept popping up on my socials, so here we are again! This one isn't quite as inflammatory, and no fun illustration to catch your eye, but it makes a similar claim nonetheless. Here's the original text:

If you haven't seen any of Dylan Hollis' TikTok videos, I recommend them! He's hilarious. Not a food historian, but he cooks historic recipes and taste tests them. Some are horrific, but most are delicious - and while Dylan's reactions are 99% of the fun, his shock when things are actually tasty, while hilarious, does grate a little sometimes. Yes, people in the past really did know what they were doing!

The meme claims that the food of the 1910s and the Great Depression were better than the 1950s, and were made with love, working with limited ingredients, whereas 1950s recipes were made to sell products during the McCarthy era.

And while those ideas aren't necessarily wrong, they're definitely not the whole story. 

The time period of 1900 to 1950 is my favorite time period for cookbooks. They usually have decent instructions with things like measurements and oven temperatures, but are still from scratch. USUALLY being the key word there. Because starting in the 1870s, corporate food brands started publishing cookbooklets to sell their products. One of the earliest adopters of this sales tactic? Cottolene brand shortening. Not exactly lard, but pretty darn close!

A lot of the corporate cookbooks and cookbooklets of the late 19th and early 20th century were primarily for ingredients. Different brands of flavorings and spices, baking powder, flour, shortening or lard, etc. were the main branded food products at the time. A lot of major food companies today started out as flour companies, including General Mills. So the cookbooks were largely normal scratch recipes that just recommended the cook or baker use the branded ingredients, but it was easy to substitute whatever you had on hand. 

And then, we started to get corporate food products like Campbell's canned soups, and Libby's canned corned beef, and powdered Knox gelatine and Jell-O, and other foods that were closer to finished foods already. You can only eat so much soup in a week. So how was Campbell's to get people to eat more of it? 

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, we had more and more women graduating from food and nutrition schools and college programs. Domestic scientists and expert cooks and home economists happily filled the role of cookbook authors and test kitchen managers for food corporations. Which is how we got things like tomato soup spice cake (Dylan Hollis does a recipe from the 1950s, but it was actually invented in the 1920s!), cream of whatever soup casseroles, and marshmallow mayonnaise. 

While tomato soup spice cake is probably delicious (at least, Dylan Hollis thinks it is!), and cream of whatever soup is a lot easier than white sauce, I'm not sure about the marshmallow mayonnaise, but the cookbook says to serve it with fruit salad, so maybe it is? Who am I to judge?

The point being, by the 1910s, there were plenty of marketing cookbooks and advertisements with recipes for processed foods for housewives to choose from. And while home economists were cranking out recipes that were sometimes smash hits and sometimes abject failures, there was a bit of a storm brewing in households around the country. Mainly, the "servant problem."

​​For most of the 19th century, middle and upper-middle class families had at least one household servant (or enslaved person, prior to the Civil War) who did the bulk of the heaviest household labor. Middle class women and their daughters did household work too, but were generally spared things like scouring pots and scrubbing floors and hauling water and coal. But at the turn of the 20th century, we started to get pink collar jobs - being a shop girl or secretary or teacher or nurse was preferable for many women to the 24/6.5 schedules of being in service. 

Rural families usually had lots of children to help with agricultural labor, but in a family of 6 or 10, the older girls always helped care for the younger children and everyone did household chores. As families shrunk and household servants became harder to find and more expensive, more and more women had to do with less and less help at home. 

At the same time, education levels for women were rising. Girls stayed in school beyond the elementary level and attended high school and college in larger and larger numbers. Many parents also wanted better lives for their children than they had, and wanted to spare girls the drudgery of household labor. Upper and upper-middle class girls, in particular, had been raised in households with servants and mothers who spared them all but the basics of running a household. So when they married, all of a sudden girls with college educations had to figure out household budgets and weekly grocery shopping and cooking on their own, without many skills or resources to help them.

Enter the ad man and the home economist. 

Swearing to save the clueless young bride from a lifetime of drudgery, while still pleasing her husband, all sorts of companies targeted young, inexperienced women just starting their households, but none perhaps as diligently as Spry, which manufactured first lard and later shortening (there's that lard reference again!). Aunt Jenny was the fictional grandmotherly character who knew just everything and would teach it all to her clueless niece. And of course, the secret was always a giant can of Spry. While Spry cookbooklets joined the legion of competitors, it was their cartoon-style print ads and extensive radio shows and advertisements that helped sway millions of American women to the Spry way of life. 

Is it any wonder that women who married in the 1930s and '40s raised children in the 1950s on corporate foods? Untrained, without the household help of their mothers and grandmothers, and with high expectations for home cleanliness and cooking three meals a day, 364 days a year would be enough to drive anyone into the arms of kindly home economists and fictional characters like Aunt Jenny, Mary Lee Taylor, Betty Crocker, and others. 

Recipes as advertisements for corporate foods did NOT start in the 1950s by any means. But the meme is somewhat correct in that scratch cooking was more prevalent in the Great Depression in particular, largely because at the time industrial foods were still more expensive than cooking from scratch, and because women who were adults in the 1930s were more likely to have been born into households that still taught them something about cooking and household management. And although the balance of population in the United States tipped from rural to urban in the 1920s, we still had a huge population of people primarily involved in agriculture, meaning families were larger (my mom's parents, born to farmers in the 1930s, came from families of 9 and 10 children, respectively), so women had more household help. Rural areas were also slower to adopt new fashions, including fashionable food, and often had less access to industrial goods of all sorts, including processed foods. Rural families were also much more likely to grow and preserve the bulk of their own food, well into the 1970s, than the rest of America. If you had land and free labor, it was certainly cheaper than buying commercially canned goods. 

If your grandmother grew up in a rural area during the Great Depression, like mine did, she probably learned how to cook from scratch. But by the 1950s, she was raising kids on her own, and maybe had a career of her own, or was supporting her husband's career, which meant less time to cook from scratch as she cared for her own children and a house with higher standards of cleanliness and fashion than her mother's with a lot less help. At the same time, in the 1950s, the general consensus was that industrial foods were the wave of the future - they were boons to help a busy housewife, not things to be scorned and rejected. And as incomes rose, it was much easier to purchase foods than doing your own home preserving.

And while the Great Depression did result in a lot of creative cooks (banana bread, for instance), I find the mention in the original meme of Saltines ironic. Although Saltines and cracker companies like Ritz didn't invent cracker-based mock apple pie (that dates back to the 1850s, believe it or not), they sure hopped right on that bandwagon and used it as a selling point. 

Necessity is the mother of invention. But rising incomes are the mother of convenience. And while McCarthyism probably did prevent the spread of some delicious and interesting foodways through its xenophobia and rigid conformity, the road to corporate convenience foods was a long one. They didn't appear overnight once the calendar ticked over from 1949 to 1950.  

Indeed, scratch cooking and baking continued well into the 1950s, and many of the foods we associate with the 1950s (Cool Whip, anyone?) weren't actually invented until the 1960s. For instance, the Pillsbury Bake-Off baking contest didn't start until 1949, and while modern incarnations of the contest are usually dominated by mutated versions of whatever convenience food Pillsbury has cooked up (usually crescent rolls or cinnamon rolls or canned biscuits), the original contest was meant to promote Pillsbury flour, so the recipes are all from scratch. And looking at my food historian library shelves, the 1950s section has plenty of community cookbooks filled with can-of-this, box-of-that recipes, and advertising cookbooklets galore, but there are also cookbooks like The Magic in Herbs (first printed in 1941 but on its seventh printing by my 1950 copy) and The Peasant Cookbook (1955, and my copy was from the library of the Ladies' Home Journal!), and Whole Grain Cookery (1951) and those community cookbooks always had scratch recipes in them, too. And my 1930s section? I have more corporate cookbooklets from the 1930s than any other era!

​Like most of history, individual decades might be changed and marked by big events, but history is complicated. In the Progressive Era we had brutal strikes and food riots, but we also had Gibson Girls and Vanderbilts and Rockefellers. During the Great Depression we had the Dust Bowl and migrant workers, but we also had the glamour of Hollywood. And yes, in the 1950s we had McCarthyism (and sexism and racism) and processed food, but we also had folks like James Beard and Julia Child and plenty of scratch cooking.

So let's stop stereotyping decades and accept them for what they are - complicated, messy, and fascinating time periods with both good food and bad. And the next time you see a corporate food cookbook from the 1950s - give it a gander. You might be surprised by what you find inside. There are good recipes in just about every cookbook, if you take the time to look.

​The Food Historian blog is supported by patrons on Patreon! Patrons help keep blog posts like this one free and available to the public. Join us for awesome members-only content like free digitized cookbooks from my personal collection, e-newsletter, and even snail mail from time to time! Don't like Patreon? Leave a tip!

It's hard to believe it's already 2022. Another year has come and gone, and we're still in a global pandemic. A few days ago this political cartoon from 1921 was posted on Reddit and a whole host of other social media pages. It ended up in my newsfeed and seemed particularly apt. I've written before on the comparisons between a century ago and today (here and here), but the longer the pandemic drags on, the more the comparisons seem spot on. 

"A return to normalcy" was the slogan of Warren G. Harding's 1920 political campaign. It promised that Americans could ignore all of the scary things that had happened since 1917, when the U.S. entered the First World War. Although his rhetoric about a return to the mythic, bucolic past (sound familiar?) he won the election by a landslide. Unfortunately for Americans, his strategy of conservative (in the original definition) rhetoric and laissez-faire deregulation after the federal control of World War I ultimately failed. The United States didn't return to pre-WWI normalcy, and while the deregulated economic boom lifted some boats very high, it left other Americans in the lurch and completely on their own. Harding's successors largely followed his economic plans, including World War I Food Administrator Herbert Hoover, who ended up overseeing the crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression. 

While I don't think we're headed for another Great Depression (for one, our social safety net is far better than the non-existent one of the 1920s), there has been a strong social reaction to the pandemic that is similar - a craving for a return to normalcy of our own, of wanting the pandemic to be over before it is, and of ignoring many of the traumas it has inflicted on us individually and collectively. 

I've felt that a lot this past year. After the frenetic pace of working on reduced hours through the 2020 lockdown, desperately trying to squeeze everything into fewer hours and pushing myself to be more and more efficient, 2021 has taught me the importance of rest. I'm not always very good at taking it, but these last few weeks I've tried my best to not feel guilty about sleeping in and doing nothing, even as I can't stop myself from commenting on food history memes! 

2021 was less frenetic than 2020, but it was a lot. Here's the year by the numbers:

Welcome to our new Patreon members, Susan, Elizabeth, Becky, Phyllis, Steve, and Deborah! It's been lovely having your support! 

I did FORTY separate food history talks in 2021. All but one was virtual, thank goodness, but it meant that being The Food Historian essentially amounted to a second job on top of my museum day job. And although they weren't quite once a week (there was a blank spot in July and August after I got Lasik surgery), I did actually post exactly 52 blog posts in 2021. Those of you on my email list have hopefully enjoyed regular blog posts in your inbox and look at those website visit numbers! 

​A few things didn't make it to the end of 2021 - Food History Happy Hour had to be sacrificed to the lecture gods, sadly. We made it to June, but Lasik surgery derailed things. Although I'm very happy with my new eyes and giving up glasses after 25 years, recovery took longer than expected. Guess it was 2021 telling me to rest again. 

Despite the two month break, I'm very happy with how many posts I completed! Here's the top ten of the year.

1. The Real Story Behind the "Gross" Black and Orange Halloween Taffy
I posted this one in the fall of 2020 just before Halloween, but it was by far the most popular, racking up over 9,000 unique pageviews. A number of older blog posts were also popular, but this is a review of 2021, so I'm not including the others! 

2. Before Nestle: A History of White Chocolate
I posted this one on Valentine's Day. And while it was a bit of a slow burn, it was the most popular of my 2021 blog posts. Inspired by a comment about who "invented" white chocolate, it sent me down the research rabbit hole. 

3. Visiting Home & a Brief History of North Dakota Caramel Rolls, a.k.a. Dakota Rolls
This was my first blog post after Lasik surgery and after a trip home. I hadn't been home in several years, and seeing (and eating!) giant North Dakota-style caramel rolls made me wonder what the history was, but there wasn't much on the internet, so I wrote one!

4. What's the Difference Between Hot Chocolate and Hot Cocoa? With Recipes!
One of the first posts of 2021! Posted in conjunction with a talk I do on hot chocolate, this was a fun one to put together, and answered a burning question!

5. When Kitchens Worked: The Rise and Fall of Functional Kitchens
This post was inspired by a wonderful 1940s film on YouTube outlining the ideal kitchen layout. I fell in love, and clearly other folks did, too!

6. Meatless Monday: Easy Rice Pudding
2021 was a year for comfort foods, and this simple recipe was one of my favorites. Clearly it resonated with other people, too. 

7. World War Wednesday: The Mystery of Carter Housh
I originally wrote this post in 2020, but the mystery kept bugging me. In 2021, I decided to revisit Carter Housh's biography, tracking down little snippets and finding as much information as I could! It inspired me to do research on subsequent poster artists for WWI and WWII. 

8. Food History, Slavery, and Juneteenth
This one was a look into some of the quintessentially American foods created by enslaved people and made accessible by the global slave economy.  

9. World War Wednesday: Eat More Milk
It's always interesting to see which post make the list, and I think this one is in the top ten solely because of the stunning WWI poster. 

10. Making Their Own Way: Black Women Cooks in the 19th Century
​This was one of my favorite posts of the year, and I'm so glad it made the top 10! It was inspired by the compelling story of the first known published Black woman cookbook author - Malinda Russell.

I did also make some progress on last year's goals! Once again the uncertainty of the pandemic and the nation's attempted return to normalcy meant I didn't have a ton of mental space to work on the book, although I have gotten several tasks done and I'm getting ever closer to completion. I did, however, get my bookshelves up and my library organized! 

Getting my library catalog updated is going to take a little longer (anyone want an internship? Lol.). But having spent the last year working from home two days a week my little garret office is as cozy as can be, with lovely lamps and my matching bookcases, and a little green velvet chair and footstool, and a vintage-looking bluetooth speaker for lovely music. And for Christmas I got an ergonomic cushion for my chair and my husband got me a very fancy second monitor, which will make transcribing newspaper articles and editing videos so much easier! 

And although getting published in the popular press was NOT one of my goals for 2021, it happened anyway! I was invited to select historic cookies and write about them for TheKitchn.com, and an editor friend asked me to write for a local arts weekly back home. The pieces were published in December and you can find them below:

• "From the Church Basement: Scandinavian Baking Traditions Fit for a Saint" High Plains Reader
• “Classic 1920s Orange Drop Cookies” TheKitchn.com
• “1930s Vintage Pinwheel Cookies” TheKitchn.com 
• “Honey Cookies with Lemon and Nutmeg (1940s)” TheKitchn.com
• “Classic Spritz Cookies (1950s)” TheKitchn.com
• “The Original Peanut Butter Blossoms (1960s)” TheKitchn.com
• “Classic Moravian Christmas Cookies (1970s)” The Kitchn.com
• “Classic 1980s Seven Layer Bars” TheKitchn.com
• “Simple Espresso Shortbread (1990s)” TheKitchn.com
• “The Original Chocolate Brownie Cookies (2000s)” TheKitchn.com
• “Classic Salted Caramel Thumbprints (2010s)” TheKitchn.com

My goals for 2022 are more modest. Make progress on the book (hopefully finally finish!), keep up the blog, and try to get some more work published. I've got lots of post-book plans, so go to hurry up and turn it in to the editor! 

A friend of mine chooses a word every year to aspire to. This year I decided to follow suit! My word of the year is "cultivate." Appropriate for a food historian and someone who is hoping to start a garden this spring. But it also represents the slow, steady pace of growing The Food Historian, planting seeds for the future, and, in terms of the book manuscript, weeding! If you pick a word of the year, tell me in the comments!

2021 wasn't a dumpster fire for me, but the last two years have been pretty destabilizing, globally. I hope you'll all be a little kinder to yourselves and the people around you. Try to get some more rest, sleep in, drink lots of water, get outside, stretch every now and again, and do the things you love. Here's to a year of finishing what we start, and making a new beginning, rather than trying to go backwards. Normalcy is overrated. 

​The Food Historian blog is supported by patrons on Patreon! Patrons help keep blog posts like this one free and available to the public. Join us for awesome members-only content like free digitized cookbooks from my personal collection, e-newsletter, and even snail mail from time to time! Don't like Patreon? Leave a tip!

There's this weird trend in modern America where we love to mock the foods of the 1950s (and, to a lesser extent, the 1960s and '70s). Everyone from James Lileks (here and here) to Buzzfeed-style listicles to internet memelords have weighed in on how terrible food was in the 1950s. 

But was it? Was it really? Or are we just expressing bias (conscious or not) about foods we haven't tried and don't understand? 

I have seen this meme all over my social feeds lately. Including, regrettably, in some food history and food studies groups. 

Some clever memer stole an image from Midcentury Menu (which is a delightful blog, please check out Ruth's work) and added their own commentary. The author of the meme is unclear, but it appears to have been posted about a week ago. 

Whenever I challenge the idea that maybe 1950s foods aren't nearly as bad as we think they are, I often get accused of engaging in nostalgia (spoiler alert, I was born in the 1980s) or romanticizing the past, usually accompanied by an assertion that these foods are "objectively" bad. But I can't help but thinking of how our concepts of disgust are much more a product of the society and time period we were brought up in, than anything resembling objectivity. 

The New York Times Magazine just published an article about the science of disgust earlier this week, but what I find interesting about the article is how many of the examples centered on food, and yet how little food is actually discussed. Indeed, almost all of the science of disgust seems focused entirely on evolutionary factors, such as protecting us from spoiled foods, from acquiring diseases from bodily fluids and corpses, or from weakening our gene pool through incest. Very few people outside of the food world discuss the cultural reasons behind disgust that have nothing to do with biology and everything to do with cultural, racial, religious, and ethnic factors.

Earlier this year The New Yorker published a piece by Jiayang Fan on the controversial Disgusting Food Museum in Malmo, Sweden. The museum "collects" foods from around the world that its founders deem disgusting, with much controversy. Although the museum includes European foods like stinky fermented fish and salty licorice, it also includes many foods from non-Western societies. Many argue it reinforces cultural prejudices. Fan does not make specific value judgements about the museum itself, but does share her personal experiences as a Chinese person in the United States. I found the following passage in particular to be illuminating for Western audiences.

Asian foodways, especially Chinese foods, are often at the top of the "disgusting" lists - a combination of racism and deliberate misunderstanding of ancient foodways. For instance, lots of ancient Roman foods were also "gross," but are rarely consumed today, so modern Italians don't get the same level of derision. Many people like to argue that foods they find disgusting are "objectively" bad - but these same folks probably don't bat an eye at moldy congealed milk (blue cheese), partially rotten cucumbers (fermented dill pickles), or 30 day-old meat (dry aged steak). It's all about upbringing and perspective - something that folks who fail to recognize their own personal bias don't seem to get.

And certainly, everyone is entitled to their own personal feelings on particular foods. For instance, despite several attempts, I can't stand the flavor of beets. But I know that, because I've tried them. "Disgusting" foods are often vilified by people who have never actually tried them.

While immigrant foodways have often been the target of othering through disgust in the United States (see: Progressive Era Americanization efforts), for some reason the Whitest, most capitalistic of the historic American foodways - the 1950s - is the target of the same treatment today. 

Perhaps it is that in our modern era we have vilified processed corporate foods. And while I'm the first person to advocate for scratch cooking and home gardens and farmer's markets and all that jazz, there's much more seething under the surface of this than just a general dislike of gelatin. 

When processed foods first began to emerge in the late 19th century with the popularization of canned goods, they democratized foods like gelatin, beef consommé, pureed cream soups, and out-of-season fruits and vegetables that had previously been accessible only to the wealthy. Suddenly, ordinary people could afford to have salmon and English peas and Queen Anne cherries year-round - not just the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts of the world. After the austerity of the Great Depression and the Second World, the world seemed poised to combine those lingering ideas of what the wealthy ate with all the convenience modern technology could offer. 

Certainly, as some have argued, corporate marketing and test kitchens played a major role in shaping what Americans ate. But just because it was invented for an advertisement doesn't mean Americans didn't eat it on a regular basis. 

By the 1970s, many of those miracle technologies such as canning, freezing, dehydrating, reconstituting, etc. had become hallmarks of affordable - and therefore poor - foodways. "Government cheese," canned tuna, white bread, canned vegetables, mayonnaise, boxed cake and biscuit mixes, and yes, gelatin and Cool Whip were what poor people ate. Wealthier people ate "real" food - a trend that continues today.

Disdain for poor people and their food seems universal, but even today, certain poor people have their foodways elevated over others (namely, pre-Second World War European peasants and select "foreign" street food purveyors). People living predominantly subsistence agricultural lives are seen as "authentic," while their urban counterparts, who consume processed foods by choice or by circumstance, are "selling out." But even "authenticity" only goes so far with some people. And even when foodies pride themselves on "bravely" eating chicken feet and fermented fish and other foods many would deem "disgusting," there's still an element of othering and disdain at play, a loud proclamation of worldliness and coolness at eating what their peers might avoid, that has little to do with actually understanding the culture behind the food. 

The food of the 1950s, once the clean, efficient, technologically advanced wave of the future quickly became the purview of the poor and working class. And while mid-century foodies like MFK Fisher and James Beard and (to a lesser extent) Julia Child descried processed foods and hailed European cuisines, peasant and "haute" alike, the vast majority of ordinary people ate ordinary, processed foods, and tried recipes dreamed up by home economists in corporate test kitchens. And within two decades, once the futurism wore off and the affordability factor set in, it became perfectly acceptable, cool even, to deride and mock those foodways.

​Which brings me back to the tuna on waffles. Canned tuna in cream of mushroom soup on top of hot, crisp waffles (probably NOT frozen, as frozen waffles weren't invented until 1953) is not something most of us are likely to eat on a regular basis today. However, it is hearkening back to a much older recipe: creamed chicken on waffles, which dates back to the Colonial period in America. Although the history of creamed chicken on waffles isn't crystal clear, this dish is clearly what Campbell's was emulating with their recipe. 

But what's the disgust factor? How is creamed tuna on waffles different from a tuna melt? Creamed chicken and biscuits? Fried chicken and waffles? Perhaps it is because today we associate waffles exclusively with sweet breakfast foods, so the idea of savory waffles is baffling. But they've only been used that way for a fraction of their history, for most of which they were used much more like biscuits or bread than a dessert. 

Or perhaps it's the tuna? Despite being hugely popular in the 1950s, tuna has fallen out of favor nationwide. Concerns about mercury, dolphins, and its association with poverty have helped dethrone tuna. But in the 1950s, it was a relatively new, and popular food. Today, it's a "smelly" fish associated with cafeterias and diners and cheap meals like tuna noodle casserole.

Maybe it's the canned cream of mushroom soup? Cream of whatever soups remain a popular casserole (hotdish, for my fellow Midwesterners) ingredient even today, and the ability to replace the more labor-intensive white sauce with a canned good has helped many a housewife. Today, canned soups are vilified as laden with sodium and, for the creamy ones, fat. But canned goods have also been scorned as poverty food, with modern foodies touting scratch made sauces and fresh vegetables as healthier and better tasting.

In the context of the 1950s, fresh vegetables were not always widely available as they are today, so canned and frozen vegetables took the drudgery out of canning your own or going without. In fact, our modern food system of fresh fruits and vegetables is propped up by agricultural chemicals, cheap oil, watering desert areas, and outsourcing agricultural labor to migrant workers or farms in the global south. Something many foodies like to conveniently overlook.

My ultimate point isn't that people shouldn't reject processed foods in favor of scratch cooking. Indeed, I think that anyone who can afford to cook from scratch, should. But there's the rub, isn't it? Afford to. Because as much as homesteaders and bloggers and foodies like to proclaim that cooking from scratch is cheaper and healthier, it requires several ingredients they take for granted that aren't always available to everyone - a kitchen with working appliances, adequate cooking utensils, access to a grocery store and the means to transport fresh foods (fresh fruits and vegetables are HEAVY), the skills to know how to cook from scratch effectively and efficiently, and most importantly, TIME. As the old adage goes, you can have good, fast, and cheap, but never all three at once. Good and fast is expensive, good and cheap takes time, and fast and cheap is usually not very good. And when you're working multiple jobs to make ends meet, getting decent-tasting food on the table in a timely manner is more important than worrying about cooking from scratch. 

Those were the same concerns many working class people in the 1950s had, too. Even though the stereotypical White 1950s housewife had plenty of time to cook from scratch, plenty of women, especially women of color, worked outside the home in the 1950s. And mid-century Americans spent a far higher percentage of their income on food than they do today. And while fast food was around in the 1950s, it wasn't particularly cheap. For most Americans, it was an occasional treat, and restaurant eating in general was reserved for special occasions. Casual family dining as we know it today didn't exist. So that meant the typical housewife, wage working or not, had to cook 2-3 meals a day, nearly 365 days a year. Is it any wonder they turned to processed foods where most of the work was done for them? 

Maybe I've got a little personal bias of my own - after all I was raised in the land of tater tot hotdish and salads made with Cool Whip (That Midwestern Mom gets me). Foods that are often vilified by (frankly snobbish) coastal foodies, but that are "objectively" quite delicious. I like melty American cheese on my burger and grilled cheese as much as I enjoy making a scratch gorgonzola cream sauce. Fruit salad made with Cool Whip is a fun holiday treat. And while I prefer to make my own macaroni and cheese from scratch, I'd never mock or turn up my nose if someone offered me Kraft dinner. 

I think the driving force behind this pet peeve of mine is the idea that anyone can be the arbiter of taste (or disgust) when it comes to someone else's foodways. As my mom always used to say, "How do you know you don't like it if you don't try it?" 

​Everyone's food history deserves respect and understanding. So let's give up the mean girl attitudes about foods we're not familiar with and let go of the guilt about liking the foods we like, be they 1950s processed foods or 500 year old family recipes.

And the next time someone talks about how "gross" or "disgusting" a food is, or goes "Ewwww!" when presented with something new, give them a gimlet eye, ask them if they've ever had the dish, and then ask, "Who are you to judge?" 

​The Food Historian blog is supported by patrons on Patreon! Patrons help keep blog posts like this one free and available to the public. Join us for awesome members-only content like free digitized cookbooks from my personal collection, e-newsletter, and even snail mail from time to time! Don't like Patreon? Join with an annual membership below, or just leave a tip!

This article comes at the request of Ramona, who wanted to know more specifically about how to construct a cheese or charcuterie board, I think, but being a food historian, I had to delve into the history first. She also asked about this several months ago, but it took me a while to finish the research. So Ramona, I hope this arrives in time for your holiday party planning! 

Of course, anyone who has been paying attention to social media and/or entertaining in the last few years has probably run across a "charcuterie board" or two. Or perhaps even the "shark coochie" and related spelling mishaps. Business Insider has cataloged the modern phenomenon, with some speculation about its popularity, should you care to read it. But as any good host knows, when you're having a big party of a mixed group, nothing goes over better than beautifully plated, delicious food that people can graze on all evening. 

But its modern popularity is really rooted in several different historical influences. First, let's talk ingredients.

Charcuterie - from the French chair, meaning "meat" (or really, "flesh") and cuit, meaning "cooked," really defines a whole range of processed and cured meat products. Serious Eats has a great introduction to all the French meats included in the term "charcuterie." Most European nations have their own variations - Germans like all sorts of sausages and soft meat spreads. Italians love their cured pork and sausages. The Spanish and Portuguese add smoked fish and seafood to their sausages. Even the British have their own versions. 

Americans also have their own cured meats, including hams, summer sausage, beef jerky, and liverwurst. But these are generally seen as less "fancy," and therefore less likely to have a place of prominence on the vaunted board.

Cheese is also crucial. In fact, the charcuterie board trend likely started as the cheese plate trend. Cheese, of course, is highly dependent on the country of origin, and when you serve it, or if you serve it at all, also varies. Again, traditional American cheeses like Colby, Monterey jack, brick cheese, and various cheddars are not considered as "fancy" as European cheeses, which often take precedence on the plate.

Modern charcuterie boards also tend to have assorted nuts, dried fruits, crackers, and breads alongside the cured meats and cheeses and are generally accompanied by wine. So let's look at some of the history behind the evolution of the modern charcuterie board.

In the United States we are highly influenced by both British and French traditions when it comes to meals. In late 18th century America, dinner in wealthy households was often served in multiple courses with removes in between, but unlike what we maybe think of today, where dishes are served one at a time, "French" style service, put all the food for each remove on the table at the same time. The term "remove" comes from the practice of removing all the dishes between courses. Today Americans often start a meal with a salad, but in the French tradition, the salad comes at the end of the meal, with the cheese course. In British traditions, a multi-course meal also ends with a cheese course, but there's dessert first. The French either end with the cheese course and no dessert, or have dessert after cheese. The Brits end with cheese because it was almost always accompanied by fortified wines like Port or Madeira and encouraged less formality at the end of the meal and allowed guests to linger. (To recap: British = dessert, then cheese; French = cheese, then dessert.)

In Colonial America, an upper-class dinner was likely followed by a cheese course with port or Maderia, nuts, and fruit. George Washington in particular was fond of both Madiera and walnuts, and enjoyed them by the bowlful after dinner, ​sometimes even eating pickled black walnuts, which were pickled green as an accompaniment to cheese.

Cheese courses continued to be popular for formal dinners throughout the 19th century in British and American households. In French households, the cheese course is much more universal, across classes, but cheese is something of a religion in France, so that's not surprising. ​

The Practical Cook, English and Foreign: Containing a Great Variety of Old Receipts, Improved and Remodelled; and Many Original Receipts in English, French, German and Indian Cookery. With Copious Directions for the Choice of All Provisions, the Laying Out a Table, Giving Small and Large Dinners, and the Management of a Cellar by Joseph Bregion and Anne Miller was published in 1845. It offers several options for a cheese course, including the table layout, as pictured below. The course outlined above calls for Stilton, generally a blue cheese, bread and butter, "small cheese biscuits," which was likely similar to cheese pennies (a cheddar-based part-cracker, part-shortbread), "or sliced roll," and "a cream cheese, or grated Parmesan, in a covered cut Glass." 

This other menu, which also includes the layout of the table, includes French Gruyere or Roquefort (another blue) in lieu of Stilton, specifies Neufchatel cream cheese, not to be confused with American neufchatel, which is a type of cream cheese we know as an ingredient in dips or cheesecake. The Neufchatel listed here is an mold-ripened, somewhat grainy, soft cheese from France. Once again the Parmesan is listed as grated, which I find interesting. Is it sprinkled on buttered bread? Eaten with a spoon? It's not perfectly clear. This menu also calls for either "shred cucumber" and/or salad to accompany the course. 

By 1865, cookbook authors like Mrs. Beeton were offering up serving advice. In her Mrs. Beeton's Dictionary of Every-day Cookery Isabella recommends cutting the cheese "into neat square pieces, and to put them into a glass cheese-dish, this dish being handled and round." Of course this works well for medium-aged cheeses, but "Should the cheese crumble much, of course this method is rather wasteful, and it may then be put on the table in the piece, and the host may cut from it." She closes by noting that "Rusks, cheese-biscuits, pats or slices of butter, and a salad, cucumber, or water-cresses, should always form part of a cheese-course." Rusks are similar to biscotti in that they are twice-baked and hard, but could be in nearly any shape and may not be sweetened. The salad, cucumber, and watercress were clearly present to cut the richness of the cheeses. 

By the end of the 19th century, cheese courses were quickly being replaced by dessert courses. Although formal menus continued to list cheese, nuts, and fruit as the final course, the emphasis was placed on increasingly fancy desserts, including cakes, molded ices, and ice creams. For ordinary Americans, particularly those not producing their own cheeses, dinner was followed by dessert and nothing else, except, perhaps, a bowl of popcorn by the fireside. 

Charcuterie boards have antecedents from the working class side of life as well. Throughout Europe, cheeses, bread, and either wine or beer, often accompanied by cured meats, fruits, and/or pickled vegetables were standard peasant laborer fare. These were all portable, did not have to be kept cool, and required few utensils and no plates to eat. In France, country pate or rillettes with mustard, butter, cheese, and baguette went with wine. In Italy, it was salami, an aged cheese like Parmesan or Pecorino, bread, and olive oil with wine. In Germany, smoked meats with pickles or sauerkraut, dark bread, and butter and/or cheese went well with beer of all kinds. But perhaps the most famous iteration of these is the English "ploughman's lunch." Although the term was not part of the broader cultural lexicon until the 1950s, the idea of a "ploughman's lunch" dates back to the Medieval period, when agricultural laborers subsisted largely on cheese, bread, and beer, often accompanied by raw or pickled onion, especially when eating out in the fields. In the 18th and/or 19th century, mustard and sometimes fruit such as apples or pears were added to the list. By the 20th century, a "ploughman's lunch" could include all of the above plus hard boiled eggs, lettuce, and sausage or pork pies. The ease of preparation made it very popular fare in local pubs, where it continues to be a popular lunch today. 

The cheese course persisted in wealthy households and hotels until the 20th century, but home consumption of cheese on its own was not as common, with a few exceptions. Welsh rarebit, cheese toasts, cheese canapes, and cheese crackers were all favorite snacks, but all involved toasting or melting the cheese on the crackers. Serving cold or room temperature cheese was far less common.

Today, charcuterie boards are usually used for parties. In the 1910s, the burgeoning trend was the cocktail party. "Invented" in 1917 by St. Louis socialite Clara Walsh, the cocktail party allowed for large groups of people to consume lots of booze and finger foods in a socially informal setting over a relatively short period of time. The 1910s and '20s were also the time when midnight suppers - usually hosted at home after the theater or concerts - proliferated. Midnight suppers usually featured easy, informal meals like welsh rarebit or shrimp wiggle that could be made in a chafing dish, or cold meats with bread for dainty sandwiches with a cold bottle of beer from the icebox, or hot coffee with cake. Between cocktail parties and midnight suppers, more informal dining made its way into the American social lexicon. 

Fashionable meals continued to become increasingly informal during the 1920s, '30s, and '40s. After World War II, an interest in European cuisines proliferated with returning GIs. Americans "discovered" French cheeses and Italian cured sausages, Greek olives and German rye. But the biggest party fad of the 1940s and '50s was the smorgasbord, which bears a distinct similarity to modern charcuterie boards.

A direct inspiration of Scandinavian smorgasbords, which were essentially a buffet of open-faced sandwich fixings, the American smorgasbords were adopted with almost the same alacrity as Scandinavian design, mid-century. 

At the same time, Americans were rediscovering raw vegetables in the 1940s (popularized in part thanks to the discovery of vitamins between 1912 and 1945), and the crudité platter came into vogue. Raw vegetables, or sometimes blanched and marinated, generally served with a creamy dip, came to deck home buffet tables and supper club dining rooms alike. The classic "relish tray," I grew up with at holidays combined crudité (usually, raw carrot and celery sticks with ranch) with green and black olives, and sweet and dill pickles. In a cut glass, compartmentalized tray, of course (there are silver versions, too). Fancy dinner parties might include carrot curls, celery fringe, and radish roses as a garnish. 

By the 1970s, the informal party had almost completely supplanted the formal dinner party. Fondue parties, French onion dip with potato chips, and grilling were de rigeur for home entertaining. And while crudité and relish trays never really went away, it wasn't until the 1990s that the charcuterie board began to make a resurgence as Americans rediscovered wine and peasant food. Bread with olive oil and olives with salty cheeses and rustic Tuscan reds, or fancy French cheeses with pate, crackers, and merlot, started to be consumed by ordinary Americans, as grocery stores diversified their offerings and specialty food stores could be found in more and more American cities. ​

Which brings us to the present. Charcuterie boards in the 2020s are things of insanity and beauty. Complicated, overflowing, and with an eye more towards Instagram than whether or not guests can actually eat the stuff (how exactly does one eat a salami rose, for instance?), I find today's charcuterie boards to be needlessly complicated and expensive. However, they're not dissimilar from what people did in the past (radish roses, bowls made of hollowed-out cabbages and pumpkins, and tinting things coordinating colors, anyone? All very early 20th century), and they can be very easy and popular. When playing host, it's so much nicer to have a whole bunch of foods that people can nibble on at will and which don't require cooking or much advanced preparation. So, as a practiced home entertainer, here are my suggestions for how to build a balanced, delicious, and beautiful charcuterie board.

1. Ditch the board. 
Seriously. Who wants to store (and clean!) a wooden board the size of a small table? Just use the table! Coffee table, dinner table, whatever you want. Ceramic serving dishes are easier to wash and store and are prettier anyway. Hit up a thrift store for some inexpensive platters. Pick a color (white goes with everything) and you won't have to worry about matching. Unless you're really in love with wooden cutting boards. In which case, do what you love.

2. Know your guests.
You don't want to serve ham to bunch of vegetarians, Jews, and Muslims. And you don't want to serve only cheese if your friends are lactose intolerant or vegan. Know your guests and plan accordingly.

3. Bring the balance. 
No one wants to eat only three different kinds of cheddar, just meat and cheese and nuts is too rich, and I've even seen dessert "charcuterie" boards, which is just too much sweet. Here's my suggestion for a balanced group of foods to serve. Choose at least one from each group.

1. Something salty and rich. This could be cured meats, cheese crackers, salty aged cheeses like parmesan or pecorino or an aged cheddar, smoked salted almonds, olives, etc. Heck, even potato chips.
2. Something creamy. Deviled eggs, a creamy cheese like brie or goat cheese, a creamy chip or vegetable dip, creamy hot dips, flavored butters, etc.
3. Something crunchy and fresh. This is gonna be your vegetables - carrots, celery, radishes, raw bell peppers, broccoli, cucumber, even fancy stuff like jicama, kohlrabi, etc. But you can also do crisp pickled vegetables or crisp fruit like apples or Bosc pears or melon.
4. Something pickled, sour, or spicy. Pickles, pickled vegetables (dilly beans or pickled carrots are great), pickled herring, sauerkraut, kimchi, pickled onions, etc. You can also do hot nuts, spicy dips, salsa, spicy cheese, pickled peppers, etc.  
5. Some carbs. Crackers, bread, tortilla chips, potato chips, pita or other flatbreads, buns, biscuits, etc. Essentially you want a vehicle for anything than needs one.
6. Something sweet. Fresh or dried fruit are great, as are small, simple cookies, chocolates, etc.

4. Looks matter. 
Much as I hate to admit it, part of why people love charcuterie boards so much is that they're pretty. But it's not difficult to replicate an aesthetically pleasing look. Just make sure you have a variety of colors and textures (all brown and white is something you generally want to avoid), and arrange things nicely on your board or platter. Line crackers, sliced cheeses, and sliced meats in a line or a curve. Place berries and dips in pretty bowls and arrange foods around them. Fill gaps with nuts or chocolates or olives. Keep the wet stuff contained and keep cross-contamination to a minimum, especially with foods that might cause allergies (at a party earlier this summer with a friend, she couldn't eat any of the fruit, or the dip, because there were strawberries everywhere and someone had dropped a strawberry in the ranch dip - she's deathly allergic). 
​
Since the holiday season is upon us, here's a Christmassy one to get you started:

Holiday Spread
Assorted cured meats
Baked brie with cranberry sauce
OR
Cream cheese mixed with grated parmesan or pecorino, black pepper, chopped dried cranberries, sliced scallions (optional)
Plus sliced pepperjack and cheddar
Assorted crackers (mix of butter and water crackers)
Red and green vegetables with ranch
Pimento-stuffed green olives, black olives, assorted pickles
Hot spinach dip with cubes of peasant bread
Dried and candied fruit with chocolate
Assorted Christmas cookies

I've been thinking on this a lot. What is it about charcuterie boards that has made them dominate the home entertaining airwaves (and internet waves) for the last several years? For one, it does not take a lot of cooking prowess to put together a good charcuterie board. You serve most things either in their raw form (fruits, vegetables, nuts) or purchase them already lightly processed (cheese, cured meats, crackers, dried fruits, chocolate). And while you can choose to make some dips or desserts, most people are perfectly fine with store-bought.  

For two, charcuterie boards are all about aesthetic. If you served everything in its original packaging (think plonking the box of crackers and the cheese in plastic right on the table), it would not have nearly the mystique of a well-organized, beautiful board. The folks so popular in Instagram right now get popular because they know what they're doing. And while arranging is an art, once you learn the basics it's not a particularly difficult art. Have some diversity of color, group, layer, or line up things nicely, and try not to worry too much if most things are in piles instead of straight lines. 

For me, charcuterie boards aren't just the type of food the Lunchables generation wants to eat. It's a modern twist on a very OLD way of eating and celebrating and coming together. So whether you're into the Instagram-perfect board aesthetic, or you're like me and you put together a whole table full of food on thrifted serving dishes, charcuterie has been around for a long time, and I hope it continues to be around for decades to come.  

Happy snacking, happy holidays.

​The Food Historian blog is supported by patrons on Patreon! Patrons help keep blog posts like this one free and available to the public. Join us for awesome members-only content like free digitized cookbooks from my personal collection, e-newsletter, and even snail mail from time to time! Don't like Patreon? Join with an annual membership below, or just leave a tip!

Friends, I am super proud to announce that yours truly wrote this feature for TheKitchn.com. When they approached me several months ago about a research and writing project on iconic cookies for every decade from 1920 to 2010, I was excited, but a bit daunted. How to choose? Especially since Christmas cookies don't usually change that much from year-to-year. But we figured it out and I'm so proud to share what I think are cookies that represent the events, trends, and fashions of every decade. It was tough keeping the word count limited, but each cookie has an explanation connecting it to the history of the decade, plus a historic recipe. And author and baker Jessie Sheehan (of Vintage Bakes) has come up with some truly awesome and creative modern twists on all the historical recipes. 

So head on over to TheKitchn.com and read the article! And then let me know which cookie (or story!) is your favorite!

This month has been all about pumpkins and Thanksgiving, chez Food Historian. I have done my "As American as Pumpkin Pie" talk several times in the last few weeks. If you missed it, you can catch a recording, and the recipe for Lydia Maria Child's 1832 Pumpkin Pie here. I've also been doing a lot of media interviews about Thanksgiving, including for National Geographic and USA Today. And of course, my goal is always to try to debunk the mythology of the 19th century concept of Thanksgiving, which is rooted, wittingly or not, in white supremacy, Christian supremacy, and the supremacy of New England culture.

Food historian Andrew F. Smith in the Association for the Study of Food and Culture Facebook page posted earlier this week about Thanksgiving. He writes:

Sorry to report that the "Pilgrims" had nothing to do with Thanksgiving; it's all a made up story.

Days of thanksgiving were frequently celebrated in colonial America– particularly in New England. These thanksgivings were usually declared in response to local events, such as surviving a long trip, military victories, good harvests, or providential rainfalls. These were solemn religious occasions spent in prayer, and little evidence has surfaced suggesting that a formal meal was part of the thanksgiving observance: only two records mention food, and they’re unusual. Thanksgiving dinners were well established by the American War for Independence (1776-1783). To celebrate the victory at Saratoga in 1777, the Continental Congress declared a day of thanksgiving.  Joseph Plumb Martin, a soldier, noted in his journal that for this celebration, “Each man was given half a gill of rice and a tablespoonful of vinegar.” More sumptuous fare appeared in 1779 descriptions of thanksgiving meals. In one, a goose was served; in the other, venison, goose and pigeons were served along with a plethora of side dishes and deserts.  

In New England, the thanksgiving dinner became particularly significant event by the late eighteenth century. A participant in a 1784 thanksgiving meal in Norwich, Connecticut, proclaimed: “What a sight of pigs and geese and turkeys and fowls and sheep must be slaughtered to gratify the voraciousness of a single day.”  William Bentley, the pastor of the East Church in Salem, Massachusetts, reported in 1806, that, “A Thanksgiving is not complete without a turkey. It is rare to find any other dishes but such as turkies & fowls afford before the pastry on such days & puddings are much less used than formerly.” Bentley’s description suggests that a two-course meal —the first consisting of turkey and perhaps other meat dishes, and the second, of dessert. This pattern was common during the early nineteenth century and these traditions were long maintained.

The first association between the Pilgrims and thanksgiving appeared in 1841, when Alexander Young published a copy of a letter written by Edward Winslow, dated December 11, 1621, to a friend in England. It described a three-day fall event, the dates of which were not cited. In this letter, Winslow writes:

 Our harvest being gotten in, our Governor sent four men on fowling, that so we might after a more special manner re[j]oice together, after we had gathered the fruit of our labours. They four in one day k[i]lled as much fowl as, with a little help besides, served the Company almost a week. At which time, amongst other recreations, we exercised our arms, many of the Indians coming amongst us, and amongst the rest their greatest king, Massasoit with some 90 men, whom for three days we entertained and feasted. And they went out and killed five deer which they brought to the plantation and bestowed on our Governor and upon the Captain and others.

You will note that there is NO statement that this was a “thanksgiving.”  

In a footnote to the 1841 reprint of the letter, Alexander Young claimed that the event described by Winslow “was the first thanksgiving, the harvest festival of New England. On this occasion they no doubt feasted on the wild turkey as well as venison.” However, Winslow did not use the word thanksgiving to describe this or any other event in the fall of 1621. The Puritans made no subsequent mention of this event and it was not remembered or observed in later years by the Pilgrims or Puritans. The feast described by Winslow makes no mention of prayer and it does include many secular elements: the Puritans would not have considered this a thanksgiving. 

However, the idea that the 1621 event at Plimoth Plantation was the “First Thanksgiving” was picked up by others, and by the mid-nineteenth century it was generally believed in New England that the Pilgrims had invented thanksgiving in America. Of course,  Jamestown, settled in 1607, observed many days of thanksgiving years before the Pilgrims landed at Plimoth Plantation, and a plaque in Jamestown marks the purported site of the real “First Thanksgiving,” but factual knowledge was unable to stop the fakelore of the Pilgrim connection with thanksgiving from spreading.

The driving force behind making thanksgiving a national holiday in the United States was Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book. Hale commenced her campaign to create a national thanksgiving holiday in 1846. For the next seventeen years, she wrote annually to members of Congress, prominent individuals, and the governors of every state and territory, requesting each to proclaim a common thanksgiving day. In an age before word processors, typewriters, or mass media, this was a difficult campaign to wage.

Hale believed that a thanksgiving holiday would help bind the United States together. She came close to success in 1859 when thirty states and three territories observed thanksgiving on the third Thursday of November. During the Civil War, she was unable to communicate with many Southern states, so rather then request each state, she approach President Lincoln, asking for thanksgiving to be designated a national holiday. A few months after the North’s military victories at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in 1863, Hale achieved success: Lincoln declared the last Thursday in November a national day of thanksgiving, and the holiday has been celebrate ever since in the United States.

Smith outlines a good argument. Days of thanksgiving were common throughout early American history, could be declared at any time of year, and were usually not associated with feasting. When they were, it was often after the fall harvest, as the "original" 1621 version. Harvest feasts are very English, so it makes sense that the Separatists (what the Pilgrims were actually called) would celebrate a successful harvest after so devastating a winter with a feast. Harvest Home, or Ingathering, is an ancient tradition in the British Isles. It also makes sense that traditionally British foodways, such as eating sour fruits with wild game birds (turkey and cranberry sauce, anyone?), pies, gravy, and mashed root vegetables, would make their way onto New England harvest dinner tables. 

But days of thanksgiving were also declared for far darker reasons, including the "victory" in May, 1637 known today as the Pequot Massacre. The idea that our modern Thanksgiving stems from the celebration of that massacre is making the rounds of the internet lately, and while the connection is not direct, it's not as indirect as Snopes makes it out to be. 

Although, as Smith notes, Sarah Josepha Hale was the driving force behind our modern celebrations, whatever her intentions, the subtext of a distinctly British, New England tradition being sanctified by national authority to be celebrated throughout the land definitely fit with the driving cultural force of the 19th century - that White, Protestant, Yankee/English culture was superior to all others. It's no surprise that Thanksgiving finally became a national holiday in 1863 - the midst of the American Civil War. It's also no surprise that the mythology of the peaceful, helpful Indians was becoming part of our national conversation just as millions of Indigenous people were being forcibly removed from their lands and treaties violated right and left by the federal government notably during the "Plains Wars" of the mid and late 19th century. The Great Plains were some of the last areas of the United States to be colonized by Europeans, and so their Indigenous peoples were some of the last to be forcibly removed. It's also why most portrayals of Indians in Thanksgiving imagery depict them in the garb of Northern Plains Indians, which is substantially different from how Native peoples in the Northeast dressed historically. 

By framing Indigenous people as complicit in their own destruction, Europeans could justify land theft (they weren't "using" it anyway!), genocide ("Kill the Indian, save the man"), and breaking countless treaties that legally have the same standing as the Constitution (you can't stop progress!). This is also why, for many Indigenous people, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning.

A lot of people still celebrate Thanksgiving, and since the holiday in the modern era is much more focused on food and family, I think that's a good thing. However, it's important to understand what Thanksgiving myths are out there and why and to not perpetuated them. And it's equally important to support Indigenous people - emotionally, politically, and financially - as we celebrate. If you want to decolonize your Thanksgiving by educating yourself further, check out last year's post with a list of resources. The amazing film Gather is now available on Netflix and is fantastic. It would make a wonderful post-Thanksgiving-dinner watch with friends and family.

Taking tangible actions is also important. You can support Indigenous food producers as you plan meals all year round, not just at Thanksgiving. You can support Indigenous people in their efforts to prevent oil and natural gas pipelines from violating treaties and polluting or utterly destroying the last vestiges of important ecological landscapes (which, newsflash, helps the whole planet). You can support the land back movement, which focuses on returning public lands acquired through treaty violations back to Indigenous ownership and/or stewardship. Especially since Indigenous people are generally much better at managing public lands than state and federal organizations. You can donate to legal aid organizations that help Indigenous people and tribes protect their individual and collective rights. And finally, you can push back against stereotypes of Indigenous people and Thanksgiving alike. Like my friend whose kindergartener came home with a Thanksgiving worksheet featuring stereotypical depictions of Pilgrims and Indians, who sent her teacher this amazing resource put together by the Native American Services department of Oklahoma City Public Schools on how to interpret Thanksgiving for children in a way that does not erase Indigenous people or perpetuate harmful myths.  

American history is messy. And that scares a lot of people. But history is complicated, and by better understanding it, we can better understand how we got to where we are today, and whether or not we should do anything to change or fix it. So this Thanksgiving, don't buy the same old stories you grew up with. They're myths for a reason, and we can challenge those reasons, because they suck. 

And if you don't want to make a Thanksgiving meal that puts New England foodways on a pedestal, feel free to skip the turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed root vegetables, pumpkin pie, and anything else you don't like but always feel obligated to eat. Make your own traditions, and celebrate your own, local harvest season with foods that reflect your family and your geography, without the guilt. Throw off the tyranny of "tradition." Life's too short for bad meals and bad history.

​The Food Historian blog is supported by patrons on Patreon! Patrons help keep blog posts like this one free and available to the public. Join us for awesome members-only content like free digitized cookbooks from my personal collection, e-newsletter, and even snail mail from time to time! Don't like Patreon? Join with an annual membership below, or just leave a tip!

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving in the United States, so I thought it would be apt to visit the matching pair of posters. It's not clear if they were meant to be displayed together or not, but the artist, A. Hendee, clearly recycled one beautiful image for another version. 

In both images, produce is stored in an attic. Red peppers, turnips, corn, beets, carrots, and what looks like red onions hang from the rafters. A sack of potatoes, a basket of fruit (including bananas!), cauliflower, grapes, a lone cucumber, a few nuts, and two fat pumpkins sit on the wooden floor. 

In the first image, a white placard with the United States Food Administration seal on the bottom admonishes "Eat less, and let us be thankful that we have enough to share with those who fight for freedom." Much of the propaganda around food and the First World War admonished self-restraint when it came to food. Although the phrase "eat less" has had some controversy in the modern era, in the 1910s it was far less about ideal bodyweight (although that played a role) and far more about reducing waste. As the poor wheat harvests in 1916 and 1917 did not allow for normal consumption levels AND exporting to the Allies, most of the rhetoric in 1917 and 1918 was focused on reducing waste, refocusing American eating habits on other types of food, and reducing consumption in general. For instance, while messages of "eat less" were common, so was the Gospel of the Clean Plate, which exhorted Americans not to waste food.

In the second poster, the message reads, "This is what God gives us - what are you giving so that others may live? Eat less wheat, meat, fats, sugar - send more to Europe or they will starve." The Library of Congress tentatively dates this poster as 1917, but that could be simply because it is WWI-related. However, this message is far more explicit than the first, so it may very well have been the first printed. We have specific foods to avoid, and the spectre of starvation in Europe is raised. But we also have a more explicit reference to the image itself, "This is what God gives us" is referencing the abundant produce. Which, you'll notice, does not include hams or bushels of wheat or other foods you might find in a 19th century attic. The focus is entirely on produce, which is on purpose, as eating more fruits and vegetables instead of more calorie-dense and shelf stable foods like wheat, meat, fats, and sugar. Potatoes in particular were touted as an alternative to bread. 

Although the Library of Congress has no other posters attributed to "A. Hendee," I've managed to track her - yes her! - down, thanks to a clue post from a UK museum that found her full maiden name. Alice Julia Hendee, later Alice Hendee Price, was born in 1889, possibly in Kansas as she attended the Kansas City Art Institute before moving to New York to attend the National Academy of Design and the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts. In 1917 she was listed in a city directory as living on the Upper West Side, and in 1923 she moved to Bronxville, NY in Westchester County. At some point she married architect and illustrator Chester A. Price. Alice made the local news quite frequently for her art, and by 1950 was teaching classes to area women. 

She died in Westchester county in 1969 and outlived her husband, but in typical mid-century fashion, not his name. Like many of the illustrators and artists who created iconic propaganda posters for the First World War, Alice Hendee Price's recorded history makes no mention of her wartime work. But the stunning images remain. 

And this Thanksgiving, although we no longer need to curtail our eating habits for wartime, the message of being thankful for what we have and sharing with others is a timeless one. Have a lovely Thanksgiving, everyone, whether you're celebrating with family or friends, and I hope you can enjoy all the bounty of the season.

The Food Historian blog is supported by patrons on Patreon! Patrons help keep blog posts like this one free and available to the public. Join us for awesome members-only content like free digitized cookbooks from my personal collection, e-newsletter, and even snail mail from time to time! Don't like Patreon? Join with an annual membership below, or just leave a tip!

Last time for World War Wednesday, we discussed how important it was during the First World War to save wheat and reduce bread consumption. During the war a number of cookbooks were published to help Americans reduce their consumption of wheat, meat, butter, and sugar and how to go without or reduce the use of scarce or expensive ingredients like eggs. 

When it came to bread, there were very few recipes that used no wheat flour at all, but instead most recipes used alternative grains like barley, rye, corn, and oatmeal or other ingredients like mashed potatoes or cooked rice to reduce the overall ratio of wheat flour used. 

Liberty Recipes was written by Amelia Doddridge, who the title page lists as "Formerly, Instructor of Cooking, Manual Training High School, Indianapolis, Indiana; and Emergency City Home Demonstration Agent, Wilmington, Delaware. Now, Head of Home Economics Department, Wooster College, Wooster, Ohio." The book was published by Stewart & Kidd Company in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1918.

I wasn't able to find much more on Amelia herself. I found a dissertation that notes that several classes in food and household management at Wooster College were taught by Amelia, who was then Acting Dean of Women. But those classes were apparently only offered temporarily during the war, "These particular classes were offered only between 1918-1919 during the "confused period of war, fuel shortages, S.A.T.C., Spanish flu, and demobilization." Which seems to indicate that Amelia herself may not have survived as an instructor after the war. A reference from 1922 places an Amelia Dodderidge in Montevallo, Alabama as head of the home economics department "at Montevallo," which possibly meant the college located there. I found a reference to an Amelia Doddridge teaching high school home economics in Ohio in 1924. And another to an Amelia Dodderidge working at a Farm Bureau in Pennsylvania and/or as a county home economics representative, and/or as the Home Economics Extension representative from the state college, all in Pennsylvania, all in 1926. In 1929 there's a Miss Amelia Dodderidge in Modesto, California, acting as an "assistant home department agent." By the 1950s she appears to be living, retired, in Franklin, Indiana and throughout the late 1950s and 1960s there are numerous articles in the Franklin Star authored by Amelia Dodderidge. A 1962 article indicates she was working for the Methodist Home (likely a home for the elderly) in Franklin, IN and, indeed, most of the articles she published in the Franklin Star were called "The Home Window," apparently reporting on the activities and events of the Methodist Home. The trail runs cold at the very end of 1963. The last reference to Amelia is published on December, 31. It's unclear whether the newspaper simply did not run her column again or if the newspaper itself ceased publication or if it simply wasn't digitized past 1963. Although it's tough to prover all these Amelia Dodderidges were the same person, it is very likely. Amelia apparently continued her home economics work throughout her life, even after "retirement." 

But back to ​Liberty Recipes. The cookbook is a fascinating one, and I particularly love some of the slogans listed in the frontspiece; my two favorites are "Place meat and buns behind the guns" and "Husband your stuff; don't stuff your husband." 

Also interesting are the references in the foreword to the cookbook itself being much more convenient for reference by housewives rather than taking "too much trouble to hunt in a pile of leaflets for the recipes she wishes at the particular time she needs it" - a reference to the numerous bulletins and cookbooklets being published by the USDA and other government agencies. In addition, the foreword claims that although the recipes listed are designed for the "present emergency," "they should be usable and still practical even after the war clouds pass and Freedom is ours."

There are numerous bread recipes in the cookbook - both yeast and quick breads. In addition, the cookbook focuses on meatless and meat-saving recipes, a few salads, and numerous sugarless, low-sugar, and wheat- and fat-saving dessert recipes. 

This recipe for Sweet Potato Bread seemed quite modern, and a fun recipe to share in the lead-up to Thanksgiving. Although I have not had time in a while to bake yeast bread, I thought I would share it anyway. Maybe I can take a stab over the holiday. 

The original recipe makes references to other recipes, so I've combined the instructions for your convenience. A cake of yeast is about the same as dried yeast packets that are sold today. Although you can try it with RediRise or similar fast-acting yeast, I recommend plain ol' active dry yeast.

2 cups mashed sweet potatoes (about 5 potatoes of medium size.)
6 cups wheat flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon fat (if desired.)
1 tablespoon sugar
1/2 cup lukewarm water
1 cake compressed yeast (or 1 envelope active dry yeast)
2 cups liquid

Use the potato water for the liquid. Pour it gradually over the hot mashed potatoes. When lukewarm add the softened yeast, salt, sugar, and fat. Stir in the rest of the flour gradually. When the dough becomes too stiff to stir, work in the remainder of the flour by kneading with the hands. It may take a little more flour or a little less depending upon the kind of flour used. The dough should be of such a consistency that it will not stick to the hands or to the bowl. Knead 10 or 15 minutes until the dough is smooth and elastic. Place in a bowl, cover, and keep it in q warm temperature (75 to 85 F). When risen twice its bulk, cut down and knead again. Then shape into loaves, place in greased pans, and set in a warm place. When light and doubled in bulk it is ready to bake. To prevent a crust from forming over the top of the loaf while rising, rub the surface with a little melted fat. Watch the rising and put into the oven at the proper time. If risen too long, it will make a loaf full of holes; if not risen enough, it will make a heavy bread.

Bake 45 minutes to 1 hour in a moderately hot oven (375 to 400 F). If oven is too hot, the crust will brown before the heat has reached the center of the loaf and will prevent further rising. The loaf should raise well during the first 15 minutes of baking; then it should begin to brown, and continue browning for the next 15 or 20 minutes. The last 15 to 30 minutes, it should finish baking and the heat may be reduced. When done, the bread will not cling to the sides of the pan. If a tender crust is desired, brush the bread over with a little melted fat as soon as it is taken from the oven.​

If you end up making this recipe, let us know in the comments how it turned out! There are lots of other interesting recipes to be had in Liberty Recipes, including a potato biscuit pie crust recipe, buckwheat spice cake, and cornmeal gingerbread, to name a few! Are there any recipes in there that you want to try?

The Food Historian blog is supported by patrons on Patreon! Patrons help keep blog posts like this one free and available to the public. Join us for awesome members-only content like free digitized cookbooks from my personal collection, e-newsletter, and even snail mail from time to time! Don't like Patreon? Join with an annual membership below, or just leave a tip! ​

Halloween is tomorrow and that quintessentially American holiday is feeling a little less festive this year. Although I did have a very small party last weekend, and I certainly decked the halls with lights, decorations, and lovely Halloweenish dishware like tiny ceramic cauldron bowls, a big ceramic cauldron for punch, and a big white pumpkin soup tureen for sweet potato-tomato soup, the gloss of my favorite holiday had worn a little thin. A year and a half of pandemic without much of a break will do that to a girl! 

That being said, nothing makes you feel better than a perfect recipe, and this is one of the more perfect ones I've invented. Inspired by a cocktail I made for my wedding (the "Fallen Apple"), this sweet little cocktail is easy to keep as a mocktail, or for grownups to spike. 

This recipe can be made individually or as a punch. For the party I made a big cauldron of punch and let people spike as they wanted (or not). It feels VERY vintage and turns a lovely reddish shade thanks to the cranberry juice. A nice accompaniment to the casual Halloween party menu I put together (see below).

1 part sweet apple cider
1 part cranberry juice cocktail
1 part ginger ale
1/4 part alcohol (I like Winter Jack best, but other party-goers used apple pie spiced moonshine, spiced rum, bourbon, and applejack)

This basic recipe can be used to make punch (use a quart each of the non-alcoholic stuff and add 1 cup alcohol). If you're doing individual servings, it's about a third of a cup of each of the juices and ginger ale with 1 ounce of alcohol. 

The drink is very sweet, so if you want to tone down the sugar, try substituting hard apple cider for the sweet cider, unsweetened cranberry juice for the cocktail, and/or a punchier ginger beer for the ginger ale.

Sadly I did not get any photos of the food from last week's Halloween party! But I thought I would share the menu with you. 
​
I've found one of the nicest ways to have a Halloween party that doesn't break the bank or mean hours of work is to select your treats by color instead of fussy things that look like decapitated body parts or ghosties and ghoulies. This is a hallmark of early 20th century parties, too. White, orange, and dark purple/black are usually lovely classic colors. A little green isn't remiss, either. Here's my simple menu from last week's party:

The other surprise hits of the evening were the salad (I heated frozen pecans in a little butter in a saucepan - so good!), the cocktail, and my friend Jess' amazing homemade blackberry maple jam with the gingerbread. Sadly we ate almost the whole jar, but I've got six other flavors from her to savor.

The seven people who attended had a great time grazing all the yummy things for the SEVEN HOURS we hung out. Lol. Party started at 4 pm and the last guests left at 11 pm. It was nice having a smaller party because I made less food, we were actually able to use real dishes, and we had some great conversations. 

If you're more ambitious than I was this season, you can always check out my 2019 vintage party, or download last year's Halloween History Packet. 

​We are getting a little festive on Sunday night, going "trick or treating" in costume to a friend's very well-decorated house. What are your Halloween plans? Whether you're celebrating solo or with family or friends, I hope you have a lovely Halloween!