Happy New Year! For some reason in the United States, January 1st means an austerity reaction to the overindulgence of the two previous months - from Halloween candy to New Year's Eve champagne and canapes. And while I think balance is necessary in life, I don't appreciate the diet culture nonsense that shames people into extreme restriction and grueling workouts. Teen Vogue did a piece last year on the history of diet culture. 

But while New Year's resolutions and diets rarely work out, the discovery of vitamins in the 20th century (yes, 20th) led to great leaps in nutrition education for ordinary people. When I stumbled across this British film from 1938 in 2022, I wrote a brief reaction for Patreon members, which I'm reposting here for everyone. Whatever resolutions you have (or don't have), I hope one of them is to keep consuming food history content! 

(The following content was originally published for members-only on Patreon in August, 2022.)

I'm always on the hunt for food history primary sources, and there are lots of great videos on YouTube. I'm most partial to the original digitized films, rather than videos created in the modern era. I don't usually go for British stuff, in large part because the Brits have so much more historiography on food history than Americans do. But I found this film fascinating.
Created in 1936, it summarizes some of the recent discoveries of vitamins, and the impact of food and nutrition on children and the general population, with emphasis on calcium and iron intake. 

The Great Depression, which began with the Crash of 1929 and continued until the outbreak of World War II, created real hardship and hunger around the world. The prolonged malnutrition of the Depression would lead to many governments, including the United States government, to attempt to address nutrition for the general public, using the most recent research.

Like many nutritional guidelines of the time, this film emphasizes the importance of milk consumption. Milk boosterism is controversial in the modern era, in large part because non-White people are far more likely to be lactose intolerant. Milk also has problematic associations with whiteness and purity. "The Unbearable Whiteness of Milk: Food Oppression and the USDA" is an academic paper by a law professor, not a food historian, but it raises some interesting points. 

Nutrition is complicated. We made great strides between 1890 and 1950 in understanding nutrition and vitamins, but the problem with nutrition as a field is that it tends to apply the same advice to wide swaths of an incredibly diverse population. Health (or lack thereof) is caused by a whole host of factors besides diet and activity level, including genetics, environment, and even some factors we're only just now starting to understand, like gut biome and epigenetics. Obesity in particular can be caused by a whole host of factors outside of the control of the individual, especially generational trauma, which can be expressed by ancestral malnutrition, transgenerational exposure to toxic chemicals (especially DDT), environmental factors (especially exposure to endocrine disruptors like BPA) and other stress factors including transgenerational genocide, displacement, and famine. (If you want to read the scientific studies, this paper summarizes several.)

Although the field is changing, many nutritionists and certainly official nutrition advice still reflects the bias (conscious or unconscious) of a century ago.
 
That being said, I am personally a dairy enthusiast, especially full-fat dairy, which I think has been too-long vilified. But while I grew up drinking skim milk like water, today I only drink a small glass of milk a few days a week, or on breakfast cereal or fruit as a dessert. But plain yogurt, sour cream, cottage cheese, cream, cheese, and butter are staples in my household. I can certainly understand why dairy grosses some people out, especially those who didn't grow up with it, but I blame my 100% Scandinavian roots for my addiction. Better locally-produced dairy than coffee, alcohol, or drugs, in my opinion. 

But I digress. I found the video interesting not only for its commentary on milk, but also its addressing of the problem through government intervention, which in some circles has become increasingly unpopular. But that was the turning point of the Great Depression in many ways, politically and socially. We went from Herbert Hoover's idea of the Depression, tactics he honed during the First World War as United States Food Administrator - that business was best run by executives, that businessmen were the most knowledgeable and capable of solving problems, and that public-private partnerships that profited everyone were the best way to handle crises. All of those tactics largely worked during WWI. They failed miserably during the Great Depression. It took FDR recycling his cousin Teddy's ideas of a Fair Deal into a New Deal to galvanize the nation and get us on the road to recovery. Whether or not we would have recouped the enormous public investment without a World War is debatable, but it certainly saved hundreds of thousands of people from outright starvation, malnutrition, and despair. 

If you want to learn more about nutrition history and the discovery of vitamins, check out my podcast episodes:

Full of Pep: The Controversial Quest for a Vitamin-Enriched America - Part I 
​
Full of Pep: The Controversial Quest for a Vitamin-Enriched America - Part II 

And one of my recorded talks:

When Sugar Was Good For You: The Development of Nutrition Science in America 

Editor's Note: This article was originally published in December, 2023 on Patreon.

Back in October I hosted a public event at work where I made punch. A simple mixture of sweet cider, cranberry juice, and ginger ale (2 parts cider, 1 part cranberry, 1-2 parts ginger ale). I served it in a giant black ceramic cauldron I brought from home (it was Halloween). A visitor mentioned "I didn't think anyone did punch anymore!" with delight as he ladled it into a cup.

Then, a few weeks ago, with another work event requiring punch, I decided I didn't want to risk transporting one of my own precious punch bowls. I had dropped off some clothes at our local thrift store (which supports our local SPCA!) and lo an behold, not only did the store have THREE punch bowls to choose from, but housewares were 50% off. Which means I got a punch bowl and six cups for - are you ready? - $2.50. 

As the lovely volunteers at the register were wrapping it one commented on how cheap the punch bowl was. The other said, "Yes, no one really buys them anymore." I said, "Except me! This is the second one I've bought from you." It might have been the third, to be honest.

Friends - what a travesty! Punch is so wonderful and versatile. And so easy on the host or hostess! You make it once, guests can serve themselves, and it feels so much more festive than an assortment of sodas, beers, and a bottle of wine. And it's certainly easier and less expensive than making everyone individual cocktails when you have a crowd.

I don't know when I decided to start making punch. Probably when I found a gorgeous and giant swirl-patterned milk glass punch bowl (with 11 matching punch cups) at a thrift store for $8 not long after we moved into our little house and I finally had room for such things. Years later, I found a matching one for $10, more milk glass punch cups of a different style, and in between I found a $5 cut glass punch bowl and cups at the SPCA thrift store. Whenever I throw a large party, I always serve punch. Usually two: an alcoholic one and a non-alcoholic one. Lately I've been feeling the non-alcoholic variations. Not only because we are not big drinkers in my house, but also because so many of our friends eschew alcohol for one reason or another. 

The punch I grew up with was VERY sweet. A mixture of bright red and syrupy sweet "fruit punch," 7UP, and sherbet was usually served at my grandma's house for Christmas (it was an uncle's favorite). Sometimes you'd see similar punches at weddings, although usually without the sherbet. I've found I vastly prefer punches that are not neon colors and so I pour accordingly.

The history of punch is a bit murky, but it seems to have arisen in the Western world in the early 17th century, possibly in India, but more likely in association with the production of rum in the Caribbean (a barrel unit of which was called a "puncheon"). Regardless, by the 18th century highly alcoholic punches were de rigueur at the parties of wealthy Westerners, served in exquisitely expensive punch bowls: cut crystal and silver for the fabulously wealthy, fine porcelain or glass for the upper-middle classes. Ingredients were also expensive - imported citrus, tea, expensive liquors like rum (which was pricey in Europe but cheap in the Americas), and sparkling or fortified wines, not to mention plenty of still-expensive-but-getting-cheaper-thanks-to-the-slave-trade sugar. 

By the mid-19th century punch was falling out of favor and individual cocktails were gaining popularity. But the Temperance movement was horning in on alcohol consumption more generally, and non-alcoholic punches were making narrow inroads. By the Progressive Era, and certainly by Prohibition, champagne, wine, and alcoholic punches were being replaced by fruit punches made with tea, sparkling water, ginger ale, and exotic fruits and syrups. 

These days, it's easier than ever to make non-alcoholic beverages thanks to companies making analogs out of white tea, botanicals, and spices. But a good, old-fashioned punch doesn't need pricey substitutes to taste good. 
​

I have a small but increasing obsession with Peter Pauper Press books from this time period. Here's a nice overview of the history of the company, including information about some of the artists and graphic designers they hired. Sadly, although it looks like these small style books continued until the 1980s, if not later, the modern incarnation of the company seems to have abandoned this style of little book, more's the pity. 

I did, however, treat myself to a few more copies of editions I don't have, since I love them so much, including Festive Chocolate, with recipes by the excellent and pioneering food historian Peter G. Rose! Happy Christmas to me! 

As you celebrate the holidays or any cultural or life event, I hope you'll consider adding punch to your party repertoire. Punch bowls can often be had very inexpensively at thrift stores, but a pretty mixing bowl and a ladle will do in a pinch. You can break out the fancy punch cups, or go the disposable route. Either way, I hope your family and friends react with the same pleasure that visitor did. 

Did you grow up drinking punch? Do you make it now? What's your favorite?

Back when I was researching historic cookies for theKitchn.com's Cookie Time Machine, one of the options for the 1920s was snickerdoodles. My husband had requested them, and I'd found several recipes in my 1920s cookbooks. So I scanned a recipe and sent it to my editor, only to have her respond with, "Snickerdoodles are great, but why does this recipe call for raisins?" 

I was horrified. I hadn't even realized raisins were in the recipe. We ended up choosing Orange Drop Cookies, as they fit the trends of the decade better, but I got curious. I started looking up other Snickerdoodle recipes from the 1920s. And friends, they ALL had raisins in them. 

​What on earth was going on? 

I dug a little deeper, and the trend continued.

1903 - the October, 1903 issue of Home Science Magazine has Mary Johnson Bailey Lincoln's recipe for snickerdoodles with, you guessed it, raisins.

1908 - The L.W. Cook Book snickerdoodle recipe calls for just "a few raisins." 

1911 - the July, 1911 issue of Good Housekeeping​ magazine has a snickerdoodle recipe with raisins in it.

1911 - Cook Book of the Ladies Village Improvement Society of East Hampton, Long Island calls their snickerdoodle recipe a "Pennsylvania Dutch" dish, and calls for running the raisins through a meat grinder.

1914 - The "Home" Cook Book from the Children's Summer Home of Cinnaminson, NJ has recipes for snickerdoodles with and without raisins. 

1916 - The August 1, 1916 issue of The Gas Age magazine has a snickerdoodle recipe that calls for both dates and nuts. 

1917 - the Tried and True Cook Book by the Women's War League of Mexico City has a snickerdoodle recipe that calls for raisins, but suggests that "nuts or shredded cocoanut may be substituted for the raisins." 

1918 - Even the December, 1918 issue of Gleanings in Bee Culture, a magazine for beekeepers, has a snickerdoodle recipe that calls for honey and, you guessed it, raisins.

1920 - The Home-maker's Cook Book by Mabel Marie Horton snickerdoodle recipe calls for currants, instead of raisins.

1920 - the July, 1920 issue of Gas And Electric News has a snickerdoodle recipe that calls "dates or raisins" AND nuts "peanuts are good!"

1922 - the Delta Gamma Cook Book snickerdoodle recipe calls for currants, instead of raisins.

1922 - the Kato Cook Book snickerdoodle recipe also calls for currants.

Not everyone was on the raisin train. The A.A. Cook Book (1895), The Home-Maker (April, 1889), Good Living and How to Prepare It (1905), Recipes Collected by the Ladies of the Presbyterian Church of Kingston, Penn'a (1907), Tried and True: A Collection of Approved Recipes (1907), The Bon Ton Cook Book (1909), Two Hundred Recipes for Making Desserts (1912), The Skaneateles Cook Book (1915), and The Cooking Club Magazine (July, 1916) all have snickerdoodle recipes without raisins, currants, dates, or any other ingredients other than cinnamon and sugar (usually).

Snickerdoodles themselves don't seem to enter the lexicon under that name until 1895, which was the earliest recipe I could find under that name. I find it interesting that the two 19th century recipes I could find do not call for raisins or currants, but by the time we're in the 20th century, they do. This might have something to do with the proliferation of the seedless raisin industry in California at the end of the 19th century. Today, nearly all table grapes and raisins sold in the US are seedless, based in large part on the viticulture and research of William Thompson in the 19th century. It was he who developed seedless grapes and introduced them to California in the late 19th century. California's mild temperatures made it ideal for growing grapes, and its many days of sunshine made turning grapes into raisins simple and economical. 

Prior to Thompson's innovations, most raisins were sold with the seeds inside. They had to be laboriously "stoned," or cut open to remove the seeds. This was a time-consuming and labor-intensive task, usually reserved only for special occasions or the households of the wealthy. Thompson's seedless raisins removed all of that work, making it far easier to cook and bake with raisins. 

The introduction of this new type of raisin is probably why we see their proliferation as an ingredient in snickerdoodles, among other recipes. 

I decided to try a raisin-based snickerdoodle recipe myself. The F.W. McNess' Cook Book, published in the 1920s, is one from my personal library, and the first snickerdoodle recipe I initially found. McNess was a spice and flavoring company. So I decided to give it a go.

Here's the original recipe, as written:

1 cup Light Brown Sugar,
1 Egg,
1/2 cup Chopped Raisins,
2 cups Flour
2 tablespoons Butter,
1/2 cup Milk,
2 teaspoons McNess Baking Powder
Sugar and McNess Cinnamon

Drop by spoonfuls and sprinkle with sugar and cinnamon. Nuts or cocoanut may be substituted for raisins.

Not many directions in that one! But I know the general rule for cookies. I creamed the sugar and butter together, added the egg, then the flour and baking powder, then the milk, and lastly currants, because I didn't have any raisins and was too lazy to chop them anyway. I dropped them onto a greased cookie sheet, dredged a mix of granulated sugar and ground cinnamon over top, and popped them in a 350 F oven for 10-12 minutes, until they were golden brown around the edges. 

The end result? Not too shabby, but it definitely would have been better without the raisins/currants. They have more of a tea cake texture than a chewy sugar cookie. And sprinkling the cinnamon and sugar on top was not super effective. Perhaps bakers in the early 20th century were trying to be more old-fashioned? More in line with currant-based tea cakes or scones? Maybe they were just reveling in the opportunity to bake with raisins without having to spend an hour picking out all the seeds first? Who knows? 

At any rate, although I do enjoy raisins (and currants) quite a bit, I think it's safe to say that snickerdoodles are better off without them. What do you think? Would you eat snickerdoodles if they had raisins in them?

​The Food Historian is supported by patrons on Patreon, subscribers on Substack, and people who leave tips. Your support helps keep this blog free and open to everyone. Thank you!

​(Note: A version of this article was originally published in the High Plains Reader, December 30th, 2021. Today is Sankta Luciasdag, so I'm re-posting this in honor of the December 13th holiday. Enjoy!)

​It was 1998. I was in the basement of Elim Lutheran Church in Fargo, putting on a white robe and a tinsel crown. The Swedish Cultural Heritage Society of the Red River Valley (which we all just called the Swedish Society) was celebrating another Sankta Lucia Dag. At age 13, I was still one of the attendants to Lucia. There were usually a lot of us girls, although I was the oldest there that day. And there were always a few star boys, everyone in white smocks or robes. The girls got silver string belts, tinsel crowns, and to carry electric candles. The boys got pointed posterboard hats held on with elastic and spangled with tinfoil stars and a long stick with a silver star on the end. A college student was always Lucia, but this year, the girl who promised, didn’t show. As the oldest girl present, I was immediately elected to fill in, to my chagrin. And my mom’s chagrin, since I had barely dressed up for the occasion, in typical moody teenager style. But I pulled myself together and tried to walk down the church aisle wearing my crown of electric candles and the red sash with my head held high.

Sankta Lucia (also known as Saint Lucy), was an early Christian saint who was credited with relieving a famine in Dalarna, Sweden in the 18th century. She is celebrated in Sweden every December 13th (or thereabouts) with early morning or late evening parades and ceremonies and with lussekatter or Lucia buns – a saffron flavored yeast bun swirled into an S shape with raisins in the curls. But although that’s what the whole world associates with Santka Lucias Dag, that’s not what I remember. Instead, I remember what happened AFTER the Lucia ceremony – gathering in the church basement for coffee (yuck) and about a million different Scandinavian and American Christmas cookies and other treats.

Scores of white-haired ladies in festive sweaters brought paper plates and Tupperware containers laden with pepparkakor, krumkake (which were always protected with crinkled waxed paper to keep them from breaking), sandbakkelse, kringle, rosettes, spritz, almond cake, and other Scandinavian treats alongside more American desserts like molasses crinkles, peanut butter blossoms, sugar cookies, Russian tea cakes, shortbreads, divinity, and fudge. A few savories like lefse, round cinnamon bread spread with Cheese Whiz and a sliced green olive (my favorite, except for the olive), pickled herring, Wasa rye crackers with butter, and super-thin homemade flatbread (which my Norwegian Grandma Eunice made every year at home) were also present. Although I didn’t know it at the time, the fact that I wanted to taste one of everything was a pretty good indicator of a lifelong obsession with food.

Scandinavian baking infused nearly every holiday I can remember. In particular I remember Grandma Eunice’s paper-thin flatbread, frosted tea ring dotted with candied cherries, and fragile spicy pepparkakor, always in star or heart shapes. Family tradition says that if you place a heart-shaped pepparkakor in your palm and press a finger in the middle, if it breaks into three even pieces, you can make a wish. Grandma’s were so thin, it didn’t take much pressure to break them. But although I have fond memories of baking at home, it was those Scandinavian community events that stick with me, and Christmas was bracketed with them – Sankta Lucia Dag before Christmas, and Tjuegondedag Knut after Christmas, in January. Both featured potlucks heavy on the Scandinavian Christmas treats.

About twelve years ago [ed. note - 15 now!] I moved back east to the Hudson Valley of New York. And while I love my life out here, one of the things I miss most from “back home” is the opportunity to be involved in my Scandinavian heritage again. Sure, there’s a Sons of Norway out here, but it’s small and located far from where I live. And it certainly doesn’t have its own building like the one back home in Fargo does! Could I keep the food traditions up myself? I sure could, but going it alone is hard.

I study food professionally now, and so when researching historic Christmas cookie recipes for a lecture, I ran across a gem – “Recipes From Many Lands, Furnished by the North Dakota Homemaker’s Club” compiled by Dorothy Ayers Loudon, and published by Agricultural Extension Division of the North Dakota Agricultural College (now NDSU) in Fargo, North Dakota. Published as Extension Circular 77 in July of 1927, this little cookbook is a treasure trove of immigrant recipes, including Scandinavian ones. And while there is no specific Christmas section, Scandinavian baked goods feature prominently. There are twenty-six different recipes for fattigman, ten different sandbakkels recipes, and multiple recipes each for krumkake, lefse, kringle, rosettes, rice pudding, rommegrot, and others. Not to mention a whole bunch of other recipes, including cakes, breads, meats, and more. Each recipe lists the woman who submitted it and which homemaker’s club she belonged to, and her location. The recipes brought the memories of those Scandinavian community events and their groaning boards rushing back to the surface, and I got terribly homesick.

I think about the women (and occasionally some men) who baked for those events. Did they learn to bake from their parents or grandparents? Did they bake from their own heritage, or learn for a spouse? Did they hone a specialty they took pride in? Did they get joy from sharing their baking with the community, or did they just bring something because they felt obligated? Was the treat they brought a favorite of theirs, or did they make it for someone else? When they saw some teenager filling a plate, did they feel happy, or did they roll their eyes at gluttonous kids?

I’m not a white haired little old lady yet. I’m not widowed (thank goodness) and I’m not retired (sadly). So while I don’t have as much time on my hands as some of those bakers maybe did, it’s not as if I couldn’t keep the traditions. I’ve got the krumkake iron and rolling cone, the sandbakkel tins, I’ve even got a heart-shaped waffle iron. And I do make my split pea soup just like they always did for Tjuegondedag Knut. Maybe this year I’ll dig them out and do them justice, sharing my family traditions with friends, instead of just the folks back home. I don’t always agree with blind adherence to tradition, but traditions can connect us – to the past, to family, to each other.

To that end, I’m sharing two recipes with you. One is old, but new to me. A sandbakkel recipe from “Recipes From Many Lands.” The other is my Grandma Eunice’s flatbread recipe, which was published in the Elim Lutheran Church Centennial Cookbook. Flatbreads aren't as popular as the sugary cookies and other sweet confections. But I could tell the grownups always enjoyed them, and I always ate at least a few every year. While Grandma passed away a few years ago, her recipe lives on. But only someone who has experienced her baking can tell you that the flatbreads have to be so thin they practically break when you pick them up, and they have to be patterned with the weave of the floured pastry cloth she always rolled them out on. And only someone who has tasted them can tell you about their subtle, nutty sweetness. 

That's the thing about keeping traditions - if they aren't passed on from generation to generation, you lose something that can't be conveyed printed in a book. 

1 ¼ c. buttermilk
¾ c. sweet cream
½ c. sugar (scant)
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. soda (scant)
½ c. melted butter
​3 ½ c. flour
​(not listed: whole wheat flour)

Mix together – alternate dry ingredients with liquids. Roll in whole wheat flour. Bake at 400. Roll in small balls and flatten with rolling pin. Roll thin & watch closely. Bake until slightly brown.

1 cup softened butter (2 sticks)
1 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon almond extract
2 cups flour (plus more to knead)

Preheat the oven to 350 F. In a large bowl, cream the butter and the sugar together, then add the egg and extract and mix until smooth. Add the flour, a little at a time, until the dough starts to come together, then knead with the hands until smooth. Take half dollar sized pieces of dough and press into the tart tin, pressing the dough all the way out to the edge of the tin, but not over the edges. Make sure to press well to ensure good fluting. The dough is buttery enough that you won't need to grease the tins.

Place tins on a sheet pan and bake 12-15 minutes or until golden brown. Let cool in the tins. ​

​And there ends the original article, but like any good writer and historian, I thought I'd add a few more notes and some context, for folks who don't live in the Fargo-Moorhead area.

If you've never made sandbakkelse before, you're going to need to get some special tins. Bethany Housewares, based in Iowa, makes them (along with tons of other Scandinavian baking tools), and they are conveniently available on Amazon (affiliate link). If you live somewhere in the Midwest, you may be able to find scores of them at thrift stores, which was how my mom amassed her collection, which is now mine.

Scandinavian holiday desserts mostly consist of butter, cream (see: Rommegrot, rice pudding), sugar, white flour, and occasionally some almonds and cinnamon. They're rich and melting and oh-so-delicious. But pepparkokkar and lussekatter aside, they can start to taste a little too alike if you make them all at once. I recommend adding one or two to your holiday baking rotation, and see how they go. Sandbakkelse are extremely easy to make, if you have the tins. And if you don't, try pressing them into muffin tins, or even a pie plate, and see how they go. 

​Happy Sankta Lucias Dag, alle! 

(Note: A version of this article originally appeared as a patrons-only post on Patreon.) 
​
Rømmegrøt is a Norwegian immigrant food that has been part of my life for a very long time. When I was just a baby, my mom told me, she took me to the big annual summer Scandinavian Festival in my hometown. My Grandma Ruby (mom's mom) was visiting and unbeknownst to mom, fed me some rømmegrøt. I was apparently hooked from the start.

Rømmegrøt has all the makings of a good baby food, and is often associated with births and holiday celebrations. Rømmegrøt is a type of flour and cream porridge. Very thick and smooth and rich, it's typically served at Christmastime here in the U.S., although historically it was also served at midsummer and other special occasions. Serious stick-to-your-ribs food, it joins a long line of other, grain-based pudding type dishes throughout Europe. 

In Norway, it is often left out on Christmas Eve as a treat for the nisse - the red-capped house elf who cares for animals and the home during the winter months. Artist Lennart Helje made some of the most famous tomte/nisse paintings around. Nisse are said to be friends with all animals, with special affinity for cats. But I love the Helje paintings featuring foxes the best.

Rømmegrøt in Norway was typically made with soured cream and was more often served with dried meats than cinnamon and sugar (a much later addition). In fact, if we break down the word we get "rømme" or sour cream and "grøt" or porridge. Modern Norwegian recipes usually call for dairy sour cream today. But they have a very different flavor from the kind I grew up with. 

As my mother pointed out, rømmegrøt is easy to make, calorie-rich, and tastes special without costing that much. Typically reserved for very special occasions like Christmas, midsummer, and births, rømmegrøt was also used as a food for new mothers to help build up their strength, which makes sense considering how rich-tasting it is.

In the United States, ready access in the late 19th and early 20th century to refined white flour and sugar made rømmegrøt easy and cheap to make if you kept dairy cows, like my great-grandparents on my mom's side of the family. It's not clear why Scandinavian Americans stopped using sour cream, but my guess is that because most American dairy farmers were sending their milk to cooperative dairies, instead of processing it at home, they had far more access to heavy cream than sour cream. In fact, both sets of my mom's grandparents were dairy farmers, and during the Great Depression, the "cream check" from the dairy was often the only thing keeping the family in store-bought goods. The cows, chickens, and huge kitchen gardens did the bulk of the heavy lifting in feeding families of 11 and 10 children, respectively. 

Although I have eaten rømmegrøt many a time at Scandinavian heritage festivals, those are few and far between out here in the Northeast. So I decided to try my hand at making rømmegrøt from scratch. I decided to use a recipe from the 90th Anniversary Elim Lutheran Church Cookbook, which was the church my grandfather (dad's dad) was pastor at for decades.

This recipe comes from Nellie Anderson and Erna Tronsgard - two ladies I never met, but likely my grandmother Eunice (who also contributed a recipe to this cookbook) knew well. Here's their original recipe:

1 pint heavy cream
1 cup boiling milk
1/2 cup flour

Bring the cream to a boil and boil for 10 min. Sift in flour, reduce heat and stir until thick. In a few minute the butter will separate - remove this and save. Add milk which has been brought to boiling, add a little at a time, stirring hard. This will get smooth. This will get smooth. Now add 1 tablespoon sugar and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Ladle in dishes, top with cinnamon, sugar, and the butter that was cooked out.

With only three cups of liquid I knew this recipe wouldn't make much, and I wanted to make a big batch, so I doubled the recipe:
1 quart heavy cream (4 cups)
2 cups boiling milk
1 cup flour

I found a few tiny issues with this recipe. The first one is that 1 cup flour seemed like too much, so feel free to make it a scant cup, or add more hot milk. The other is that as you are boiling the cream, you have to keep stirring or it will boil over!

Once you add the flour, you're essentially making a type of roux, which is why a sauce whisk comes in very handy for this type of thing. The key is to keep stirring ​as it keeps cooking and then all of a sudden the mixture will "break" and the butter will automatically cook out by itself! Let the butter keep cooking out and use a deep spoon or small ladle to remove as much as you can (reserve the melted butter for topping later). Then add the hot milk and beat vigorously until smooth - it will look like a very thick white sauce. Then add the salt and sugar which are listed in the instructions, but not the "top" of the recipe measurements. Because the recipe was written by home cooks, not polished, published professionals!

As you can see, mine turned out VERY thick, and it will only thicken more as it sits. I had JUST enough milk left (trying to eat down the fridge before going out of town for the holidays), but I would add more in the future. 

Serve it warm or hot with cinnamon and sugar (pre-mixed is best) and traditionally it's also served with some of the melted butter on top. I find that to be too rich, for me. I like a lot of cinnamon and sugar with mine, as this is not really sweetened at all. But it's nice for people to be able to add theirs to taste. 

No lie, I added more cinnamon and sugar to this bowl after tasting, because even though the recipe calls for a smidge of sugar, it's really not sweet at all. And this is about the serving size you want at it is extremely rich. But some folks like to add the butter back as a topping, and if you were living in dark, frigid, 18th century Norway, you'd probably want all the extra fat you could get in your diet. However, the butter is always too much for me. I've yet to find a decent use for the leftover semi-clarified butter, however. Maybe I just need to use it on bread! Or maybe lefse? But that's a Scandinavian treat tale for another day.

My mother-in-law, who had never had it before, said the flavor reminded her of rice pudding, which it does - creamy and thick and cinnamon-sugary. And rice pudding is super common in Norway and other Scandinavian countries at Christmastime. But rømmegrøt is much older, as rice was not imported to Scandinavia until the 18th century. 

To me, it tasted of nostalgia. Made me think of summer Scandinavian festivals, but still tasted like Christmas and the Midwest. With the advent of central heat, rømmegrøt is definitely not an everyday food, but it still connects us to the past in a way that reading about it never quite does. 

Have you ever had rømmegrøt? What Christmas food traditions in your family bring back fond memories or connect you to your heritage?

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Earlier this month, I posted an article on my Substack about grocery prices, price gouging, and price fixing. I mentioned the investigation of meat packers during and after the war, but I hadn't yet done much digging on the subject. When browsing a February, 1919 issue of The Delineator, imagine my surprise when I came across this advertisement from Swift & Company!

One thing I've been researching for my book is the continuation of wartime measures after November 11, 1918. This whole issue of the New-York-based magazine is chock-full of references to food conservation, and the ads are no exception. But unlike the others, this advertisement isn't touting how their products can be used to meet food conservation goals. Instead, it is a company defending itself from criticism. 

It reads:

The head of a Philadelphia family writes to ask us why the price of meat is so high. He wants to know especially about the increase during the past four years.

There are, of course, many reasons.

The heavy demand for meat, caused by large orders from the Allies and by high wages at home, has helped to boost prices. The lower purchasing power of the dollar has also caused the prices of all commodities to increase.

But one important factor is the high cost of producing and marketing meat along the line from farm to retailer.

The retailer, for example, must pay higher wages to clerks and more for delivery service, in fact, everything entering into store operation has advanced tremendously.

And the retailer has to get a much higher price for meat, because he has to pay the packers more for it.

The packers, in turn, are in the same position as the retailers. It costs them more to do business. Labor, transportation, machinery, materials - all items in the packing business - have mounted rapdily. Wages of packing house laborers, for example, have increased over 100 per cent in the past three years. But here again the packers have to get higher prices for meat when they have to pay such high prices for live stock.

During the past four years, cattle prices to Swift & Company advanced 74 per cent, whereas the price received for beef by Swift & Company has advanced only 61 per cent during the same period.

The farmers have had to get more for cattle because it costs more to raise them. 

Cor, for example, has doubled during the past four years; farm labor is scarce and wages are high.

But even with these higher production costs, the price of meat has gone up no more than the price of other foodstuffs - and this is in face of the enormous quantities sent overseas to our Army and to the Allies. 

During the past five years, flour has increased 100 per cent, corn meal 133 per cent, sugar 65 per cent. During the past year alone, fruits have advanced 30 per cent.

If the packers were to eliminate their profits entirely, there would be practically no change in the price of meat. Swift & Company's profits average only a fraction of a cent per pound of meat.

Well! Quite the claim there, and I'm not sure how effective it was. But why was a major meat packing company spending their advertising budget on a full-page ad defending themselves? Well, as it turns out, since the U.S. entrance into World War I, Swift & Company had been under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), alongside other meat packers, for price fixing and unlawful collusion. Although ordinary citizens had been encouraged to voluntarily reduce their consumption of meat in order to free up supply for the Allies and American armed forces, meat prices were quite high throughout the war. President Woodrow Wilson had ordered an investigation of the meatpackers by the FTC as soon as the U.S. entered the war.

Considering that the big four meat packers of 2024 (JBL, Tyson, Cargill, and National Beef) were all sued for price fixing last month just reinforces how much the history of World War I repeats itself approximately 100 years later (for other instances, see one of my earlier blog posts).   

Swift & Company had already been under fire since 1902, when President Theodore Roosevelt investigated the Beef Trust. The U.S. government took them to court in 1905 and the Swift & Co. v. United States Supreme Court case sided with the Roosevelt Administration. Thanks in large part to Upton Sinclair's book The Jungle in 1905, which detailed the horrific conditions of the meatpacking industry, Teddy got to go even further. Sinclair had been trying to get the public to support labor reform. Instead, he terrified them into sanitation and food safety reform. Theodore Roosevelt passed the Federal Meat Inspection Act of 1906. Meatpackers like Swift were no longer able to have as much free rein as they did before the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, but despite regulatory gains, there was still work to be done.

But this one little ad wasn't the end of Swift & Company's attempt to exonerate themselves in the public eye.

The advertisement in The Delineator was one of many Swift & Co. released that February. This was another, touting its 1919 yearbook as providing "both sides" of the argument at hand. It reads:

Do you want to know both sides? 
Swift & Company's 1919 Year Book, just out, tells you

What Swift & Company profits were in 1918,
The truth about the Federal Trade Commission's investigation,
Why the prices of butter and eggs are so high,
And many other vital facts.

Whether or not you agree with us after reading this Year Book, you will at least know both sides.

You will find it interesting; Americans like to hear about big things done in a big way.

You will also discover that we are merely human beings like yourself, doing in the best possible way a necessary service.

Legislation is pending in Washington; as a good American citizen you want to know both sides of this question. It concerns you, as well as one of the most important industries in the country.

Do not hesitate to send for a copy of this booklet. Your name and address are all we need. 

I have yet to find a digitized copy of their 1919 yearbook, but I did manage to find this interesting gem from 1919, The Meatpacking Industry in America: An Illustrated Lecture, issued by Swift & Company. It explains not only how Swift & Company operate their meatpacking plants, but it also touts their sanitation and safety measures, including employee healthcare! And of course, how little profit they actually make.

Unfortunately for them and their meatpacking compatriots, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) did not agree. In a six volume report published in the summer of 1919 (you can read volumes 1-2 here, and volumes 3-6 here), the FTC found that the five major meatpackers, including Swift & Company, had violated anti-trust laws by colluding to control production, prices, and competition through vertical integration. Their report read:

"The rapid rise of the packers to power and immense wealth and their present strangle hold on food supplies were not based necessarily on their ownership of packing houses but upon their control of the channels of distribution particularly the stockyards, private car lines, cold storage plants, and branch houses. Similarly great profits which they have secured and are now securing are not primarily due to exceptional efficiency in operating packing houses and manufacturing plants, but are secured through their monopolistic control of the distributive machinery This applies not only to the meat industry but to the other branches of the food industry which they control as is evidenced by the fact that, particularly in recent years, they have made far greater efforts to secure control of the distribution of the product than to secure manufacturing plants in the case of such products as cheese and canned goods."

"As long as the packers control these distributive utilities, producers will be at the mercy of the big packers competition will be restrained, and consumers generally will continue to pay the price of monopoly. Control and manipulation of the live stock markets have been the great factors in the discouragement of live stock production Control of the transportation and marketing facilities have been the instruments by which competitors have been crushed."

Their solution? Complete government takeover. No wonder Swift & Company were spending money right and left to convince the public of the justice of their business model!

Ultimately Swift & Company was not brought under government control. It was, however, restricted only to meatpacking operations. Alexander Mitchell Palmer, attorney general of the United States under President Wilson, forced major meat packers to a consent decree to get out of anything but meatpacking. For the public, it wasn't enough. In 1921, Congress passed the Packers and Stockyards Act of 1921, also known as the Packers Bill, and it was signed into law by President William G. Harding, President Woodrow Wilson's Republican successor. 

The Packers and Stockyards Act substantially curtailed the expansion of the major meatpackers into other foodstuffs and prevented them from vertically integrating - that is owning the stockyards and even railroads that transported livestock to their slaughterhouses. Of course, litigation began almost immediately, as did amendments to the Act.

In their first annual report, the Packers and Stockyards Administration, under the auspices of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), outlined not only brief biographies of some of their staff, but also the names and locations of the stockyards subject to the rules. The report also outlined complaints against packers and stockyards, including short-weight butter sales (selling 1 pound cartons of butter that contained only 15 ounces), as well as deceptive marketing of livestock, anti-competitive behavior, and general fraud. 

The Packers and Stockyards Administration is today the Grain Inspection, Packers, and Stockyards Administration (GIPSA), part of the USDA. It still operates and regulates meatpacking, stockyards, and now grain markets in the United States. Like the Food & Drug Administration oversees the safety, accuracy, and sales of manufactured foods and drugs, GIPSA oversees the safety, accuracy, and sales of grain and livestock. 

This advertising campaign from Swift & Co. is just one example of the many ways in which the First World War had a lasting impact on the American economy and government. Even though many of the regulatory agencies of the war were designed to be temporary - notably the United States Food Administration - other regulatory bodies like the Packers and Stockyards Administration had their roots in the Progressive Era and lasted long beyond the war. 

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It's Thanksgiving! So I thought I'd do another deep dive into a little cookbook I got years ago (here's the last one). This time I thought I'd tackle one of my favorite pies - pecan pie - by my favorite First Lady - Eleanor Roosevelt.

Pecan pie is a perennial Thanksgiving favorite, but it is actually a very recent addition, dating back only to the late 19th century at the earliest. But it was popularized in the early 20th century, thanks in part, perhaps, to Eleanor Roosevelt.

Eleanor Roosevelt was not famed for her cooking prowess, or her palate. About a decade ago I toured Val Kill Cottage in Hyde Park, NY - Eleanor Roosevelt's private refuge away from her mother-in-law. Unfortunately the tour guide I had was an older gentleman with a folksy air and a rather misogynistic take on Eleanor - he gleefully recounted her inability to cook anything other than scrambled eggs and toast, and her obsession with denying poor Franklin the foods he loved. 

Franklin and Eleanor's opposing ideas about food represented the two warring food trends of the 1930s - between epicures concerned about disappearing regional foodways, and home economists bent on providing nutritious and low-cost meals in the face of the Great Depression. Franklin was an epicure who wanted to eat well and expensively - filet mignon, salmon, caviar. After attending boarding school in London, Eleanor had worked in a settlement house in New York City - she had been educated as many wealthy young women at the time, but after much tragic loss in her childhood, she was determined to chart a different course than the brainless society debutant so familiar at the time. Although she taught dance and calisthenics at the settlement house - not nutrition - she likely absorbed some of the ideas about nutrition and home economics from that experience. 

The New Yorker did an excellent article several years ago on these competing trends of the 1930s. Unfortunately for Franklin's refined appetites, Eleanor and the home economists won. The USDA founded the Department of Home Economics in 1923 (likely inspired by the development of Home Bureaus to answer to Farm Bureaus in World War I). And when the Great Depression hit, Eleanor didn't want the White House to maintain a slate of menus more reflective of the Gilded Age opulence than the financial reality of most Americans. Her menus balanced nutrition and price - but flavor was low on the priority list. White House head cook Henrietta Nesbitt agreed, and made famously bad meals. The White House was no longer a place to enjoy good cooking at political banquets. Instead, it reflected the worst of home economists' opinions on food, taste, and morality. 

Eleanor's notorious lack of interest in food is why I was surprised to see this recipe in the above cookbook, Hollis Pantry Secrets, published in 1946 in Hollis, a community in Queens, NY. Of course, there were a number of famous people in the cookbook, including Elizabeth Trump. But Eleanor didn't have much of a connection to Queens. She grew up visiting her grandmother in Tivoli, NY (far north on the Hudson River), her uncle Theodore Roosevelt's home in Oyster Bay, NY (way out on Long Island), and then her husband's family home in Hyde Park, NY. Did she know someone who was organizing the cookbook? Or was her submission the same she sent to community cookbooks around the country? 

​Let's take a look at the recipe:

3 eggs.
1 cup brown sugar.
1 tbsp butter.
1 cup corn syrup.
1 cup pecans. 
1 tsp. vanilla.
a few grains of salt.

Cream butter and sugar and add syrup, well-beaten eggs, salt, and vanilla. When mixed add the finely chopped pecans and turn into a pie-plate lined with pastry. 

Bake in a modern oven until firm.

Walnuts may be substituted.

The recipe itself is simple and the prose spare and uncomplicated - reflective of Eleanor's personality and beliefs. 

It was not uncommon for first ladies of all levels, from Governor on up, to have a special recipe to share with constituents when asked. In fact, this cookbook also includes a recipe from Mrs. Thomas E. Dewey (wife of New York governor Thomas Dewey) for soybean cookies - far less palatable than pecan pie, that's for sure! It strikes me that this recipe was likely was the one Eleanor used at home. But why pecan pie? 

A friend of mine is a historian who specialized in Eleanor Roosevelt history when she worked for the National Park Service. Her theory is that all the time the Roosevelts spent in Warm Springs, Georgia may have influenced Eleanor's decision to use a pecan pie recipe rather than a more typically New York recipe that reflected her Dutch origins. 

The history of pecan pie is a bit murky. Some sources claim it dates back to the French colonial days of Louisiana. Pecans are native to the lower Mississippi River valley (including Louisiana), eastern Texas, and northern Mexico. But they did not come into commercial cultivation in the United States until the 1880s. Although pecans show up in cookbooks and magazines as part of the nut course for fancy dinners throughout the 19th century, they are used in very few published recipes prior to the 1890s. Pecan meal shows up in a pie crust recipe from the John Harvey & Ella Kellogg's Health Reformer magazine in 1894, but the Kelloggs routinely used nuts as meat and grain substitutes. While popular, their recipes weren't exactly standard household fare.

The earliest known recipe for "pecan pie" comes from Harper's Bazaar in 1886, which calls for the pecans to be cooked in milk and then added to a "rich custard" baked in a pie crust. Not quite the same as our modern incarnation. Sarah Tyson Rorer's column in the July, 1898 issue of The Ladies Home Journal includes a recipe for "Texas Pecan Pie" from Mrs. M. B. which sounds very familiar, except for the addition of an egg white meringue on top! The meringue persists on top of pecan pie; the 1901 Twentieth-Century Cook Book says to bake it in a "rich paste" (a.k.a. pie crust) like a custard. The October, 1910 issue of Good Housekeeping also calls for pecan pie with meringue. The San Francisco Bulletin's cookbook, published in 1917, also calls for meringue in a recipe submitted by Mrs. H. J. Warner. The June 3, 1915 issue of The Wisconsin Agriculturalist includes a recipe for a strange mashup between pecan pie and lemon meringue pie - calling for just a half a cup of pecan nutmeats and the juice of one lemon in addition to the egg white meringue. Notes on the Early History of the Pecan in America, published in 1919 by USDA scientist Rodney True, includes a whole section on pecan recipes furnished by the president of the Texas Pecan Growers' Association, including the now-familiar recipe with meringue, but also a molasses-based pecan pie recipe which seems much closer to the corn syrup modern version we're familiar with today. 

Pecan pie remained fairly rare, however, as in 1924 even the National Pecan Exchange News expressed disbelief. Their Domestic Science Department wrote:

"Who ever heard of making pie out of nuts?" This is what we said when we saw a recipe in the Country Gentleman a recipe contributed by Mrs. Bessie Underwood, Denton, Texas for pecan pie. The novelty of the thing appealed to our appetite; and, having resolved not to risk another recipe on our readers without having either Miss A. B. Degree's stamp of approval or having tried it ourselves, we left an order with our chef to have one done according to the recipe appended below. We have passed through all the stages of boyhood's favoritism for green apple pie, gooseberry pie, blueberry pie, mince pie, cherry pie, and had reached man's estate with a settled preference for lemon pie. We claim we know a good pie when we set our remaining teeth in one. The Pecan pie was the surprise of our life. Mother was a cook unexcelled, but, verily, mother never made anything like this. Try it. 

The recipe included calls for a scant 1/2 cup of pecans and meringue. 

The earliest recipes for pecan pie using corn syrup arrive in the 1920s. One comes from Marian Cole Fisher's Handbook of Cookery, published in 1927. Like its earlier molasses-based ancestors, this recipe does NOT call for meringue. Another earlier recipe, from 1925's 800 Proved Pecan Recipes, is titled "Molasses Pie," but then goes on to describe a pecan pie made with Karo (corn) syrup - nary a drop of molasses in sight. 

​Corn syrup production dates to the late 19th century, and in 1902 Karo syrup was introduced, in a variety of flavors. Created by the Corn Products Refining Company (along with Mazola corn oil and Argo corn starch), Karo became popular enough that the brand name came to mean "corn syrup" in many households. There were three types - blue label, which was dark and caramelly; green label, which was maple-flavored, and red label, which was light-colored and often flavored with vanilla. Eventually the green label was dropped and dark and light corn syrup began to be referred to without the label color, although Karo brand still uses those colors today.

Initially, Karo syrup was marketed primarily as a substitute for maple syrup, and advertisements usually showed it being used on pancakes and waffles. The primary recipe of the early 20th century that featured Karo syrup was divinity fudge. Company lore indicates that pecan pie made with Karo syrup was invented by a company executive's wife in 1931. But as we've seen, Karo syrup was used in pecan pie as early as 1925. And I found this 1928 newspaper article from Nowata Oklahoma, which has a recipe for "Karo Pecan Pie" shared by a cooking school instructor as a "variation on custard pie." In January, 1931, Mrs. A. U. Given got her "Karo Pecan Pie" recipe printed in the Elizabethton, Tennessee newspaper. In February & March, 1931, Mrs. Frank Herring's "Karo Pecan Pie" was shared as a "Favorite Recipe" in newspapers throughout Oklahoma and Mississippi. By 1931-32, there were "Karo Pecan Pie" categories in county fairs, in reports of committee meetings, and even on restaurant menus. A 1931 pie contest in Shawnee, Oklahoma contained a number of pecan pie entries (with recipes!), and multiple nut pie recipes, not all of which called for Karo syrup, although the second-place winner was a pecan pie that used karo syrup. It was clear, however, that "Karo pecan pie" was becoming increasingly popular, alongside un-branded pecan and other nut pies. ​

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was diagnosed with polio in 1921 (although modern medical experts now think it may have been Guillain-Barré syndrome). In 1924, he visited Warm Springs, Georgia, hoping that the natural springs there might help cure his paralysis. The waters offered no permanent cure, but the buoyancy allowed him to stand for the first time, and the warmth and a regimen of swimming soon increased his strength, especially in his legs. A nationally syndicated article featuring him and his health struggles soon brought polio patients from around the country to Warm Springs in hopes of a cure. Franklin returned every year from 1924 on (except for 1942, when he was dealing with WWII). In 1932, while still governor of New York, he and Eleanor built a cottage in Warm Springs, Georgia that later became known as "The Little White House." 

The interactions the Roosevelts had in Warm Springs, GA influenced their public lives and public policy. In 1936, FDR commissioned the Eleanor Roosevelt School in Warm Springs, with funding from the Rosenwald Fund, which built quality schools for African American children in the rural south. It was last Rosenwald school to be built.

Warm Springs was known for its hot springs more than anything else, but it was in the middle of pecan grove country, and is likely where the Roosevelts first encountered pecan pie, especially since they often celebrated Thanksgiving there.

On November 29, 1930, shortly after Thanksgiving, the residents of Warm Springs treated FDR to a possum hunt and dinner. The dinner included pecan pie, and both Franklin and Eleanor were present.

Eleanor spent less time in Warm Springs than Franklin, but she was there for Thanksgiving in 1938 and again in 1939, as she recounted in her nationally syndicated newspaper column, "My Day."

November 23, 1939 - WARM SPRINGS, Ga., Thursday—Here we are in Georgia celebrating Thanksgiving Day, but I do not know how many of my readers will be celebrating it on this same day! Just for my own satisfaction I am going to put down some of the things for which I am grateful, and for which I will willingly be thankful on both the 23rd and the 30th if necessary.

I am thankful that I live in a democracy and that it is in the United States of America. I am thankful we are not at war. I am thankful that more of our citizens are thinking about their government today and are realizing their obligations to that government.

I am thankful that I can think as I please, and write as I please and act as I please, within certain limits which guard these same liberties for other citizens. I am thankful that in this country, courage can still dominate fear. I am thankful for the answering smile of the passer-by, and the laughter of children in our streets.

Even here in Warm Springs, where many people are facing handicaps which must give them moments of stark terror when they are alone, they can still manage to meet the world with a smile and give one the feeling of a marching army with banners flying.

Do you remember my mentioning a manuscript written by a blind woman who learned to live alone? Now I have been asked to go to see her. The book had so much courage in it that even though I am half afraid of shattering an illusion, I think I will take a chance and go. We always picture to ourselves what kind of person it is who has written something we like, and are a little afraid we may not like the real person as well. Yet I may find a new friend, which is always a delightful experience.

It is a curious sensation to be putting on summer clothes again and adding a few days to a season you felt was over for another year. At this season down here there is always a tang and a sharpness in the air of the Georgia hills, in spite of soft breezes and warm sunshine, and walks in the woods are a never ending joy.

There are two swimming pools here, one in which the patients take their exercise, the other in which they play. If ever you feel creeping over you a sense of impatience with the work you have to do, which may be somewhat monotonous and slow in showing results, just come down here and stand around the exercise pool for a while, then go out to see a light-hearted game of ball after the work is over. Day in and day out for months, perhaps for years, this exercise work must go on. If watching this does nothing more for you, it will make you feel you should never be sorry for yourself.

Whichever day you celebrate Thanksgiving, my wish for you is that you may have something to be thankful for no matter how dark your clouds may be, and above all may hope and faith in the future always be with you.

E. R.

The following day, on November 24, 1939, Eleanor recounted actual Thanksgiving, but with no mention of her own Thanksgiving dinner, or whether or not they had pecan pie:

November 24, 1939 - Thanksgiving Day in WARM SPRINGS, Ga.—A blue sky overhead, a warm sun, and yet enough chill in the air to make a brisk walk pleasant. In the evening, a great log fire on the hearth gives added cheer. We are alone for lunch, but tonight we will eat our turkey with the patients and guests in Georgia Hall.

Many messages have come to us this day which warm the heart. I feel each day an increasing gratitude that I am a citizen of the United States at peace and free.

I have just received a little bulletin published by the Washington Electric Cooperative of East Montpelier, Vermont. The bulletin is only two months old, but I predict it will appeal to its circulation. There is a poem glorifying electric lights for rural areas and a practical New England item on a nearby page, which says: "Under the Rural Electrification Administration, lines are being built at a new cost of about $810.00 a mile. Before Rural Electrification Administration days, $1,500 was considered low."

The question and answer department in this little bulletin amused me, particularly the answer to the question: "If I should want to do something to my wire, is it all right if I put a ladder on the pole and turn off the transformer?" The answer ran: "It is a convenient way out. In order to save trouble for your family we suggest that you make the funeral arrangements first and leave a note for the police so that they will not think it was murder."

I think we all enjoy keeping in touch with the human side of the REA movement. Like all other things which the Department of Agriculture has a hand in these days, there is a conservation side to rural electrification which affects the lives of human beings. Men and women can get more joy and ease out of life when they have electricity to work for them on the farms.

One farm wife in Knox County, Ohio, tells the story of her new electric range and its uses in harvest time. She fed as many as twenty and thirty men at times and her meals were not light luncheons, for farm hands like real food. "Pies and fried chicken and baked beans," writes this farmer's wife, "were what I served." Yet her monthly bills with all this cooking never amounted to more than $6.57. Besides the range she had a radio, electric lights, a washing machine and an ironer and her farmer husband uses electricity on his corn shellers, emery wheel and cream separator. If this isn't a story of a better life on a farm, then I do not know what it is.

E.R.

Eleanor's mention of the Rural Electrification Act (REA) while in Warm Springs was likely not an accident. Some historians speculate that FDR's encounter with high electricity prices in Warm Springs was one of the inspirations for the Act, along with other New Deal policies.

Eleanor would not write her column from Warm Springs for another two decades. Devastatingly, she was not there on April 12, 1945, when he died of a massive stroke  in The Little White House in Warm Springs. Instead she briefed Vice President Harry Truman on her husband's death, and then flew south to make funeral arrangements.

Whether or not Eleanor was thinking of her husband's love of Warm Springs and Georgia when she submitted a pecan pie recipe to the "Hollis Pantry Secrets" cookbook in 1946 we may never know. But it wasn't the first time she had submitted a pecan pie recipe to a community cookbook. As early as 1934, she was sending pecan pie recipes out upon request, and referencing pecan pie as being served at the White House.

There was also a recipe circulating called "White House Pecan Pie" as early as 1938. Was this Eleanor's recipe? Well, maybe? But more likely it was named after White House Brand pecans, as the recipe is not an exact match for Eleanor's.

But if Eleanor was not much of a cook, who came up with the pecan pie recipe? Well, we may never know its true origin, but the recipe Eleanor submitted to newspapers and "Hollis Pantry Secrets" is almost verbatim the pecan pie recipe White House cook and housekeeper Henrietta Nesbitt published in her 1951 cookbook, The Presidential Cookbook: Feeding the Roosevelts and Their Guests. 

I find it ironic that the much-maligned housekeeper and wife who tried to keep Franklin in simple, low-calorie foods would propagate one of the richest pie recipes out there for the general public. Still, it's easy to see why pecan pie became such a national favorite in the early 20th century - it's one of my favorites, too! 

Of course, my encounters with pecan pie were largely by accident. My mom once told me that when she and my dad were first married, my dad's mother made pecan pie for Thanksgiving. Because my mom's family were living in Ohio, Grandma mistakenly thought they were from the South, and made pecan pie to make Mom feel more at home. Of course, Mom had only moved to Ohio her senior year in high school and was, in fact, born in the upper Midwest. Still, it was a sweet gesture, and one that I appreciated, as pecan pie became a regular Thanksgiving player, and by extension my favorite as a child.

What kind of pie is your favorite? What will you be having for Thanksgiving? 

​If you'd like to read more about Warm Springs, GA and its connection to the Roosevelts, check out the book Hi'ya, Neighbor by Ruth Stevens, published in 1947 and containing first-person accounts of Warm Springs during the Roosevelts' tenure. Happy reading!

​The Food Historian is supported by patrons on Patreon, subscribers on Substack, and people who leave tips. Your support helps keep this blog free and open to everyone. Thank you!

A few weeks ago I found myself in used bookstore heaven. Catnap Books in Schoharie, NY is a classically old-fashioned bookstore. Tucked away in the back by the office was heaven - four full shelves of cookbooks, the vast majority of them vintage ones. I easily spent $100 that day and could have spent more. One of the books I bought was Rain, Hail, and Baked Beans: A New England Seasonal Cook Book by Duncan MacDonald and Robb Sagendorph. Originally published in 1958, it's one of my favorite styles of cookbooks - a vintage, scratch cookbook that hearkens back to an earlier time. There are nine chapters for each of the NINE seasons of New England (not four, not six), which I loved. Much more sensible. And for those who are interested in the history of early 20th century inns and food tourism, there's an index of New England Inns and their recipes in the back, too. 

I've talked before about why Americans all over the country think of New England when they think of fall, but being in such close proximity to it (New York is ALMOST New England), I can appreciate the sentiments. When I opened the book for a read-through, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the first chapter was "Early Fall" - clearly the authors thought fall was the best time in New England back then, too. 

It's a quick and delightful read, although some of the recipes seem more 1950s-flavored than 18th or 19th century. I turned to it when I had a little dilemma I wanted to solve. I had leftover homemade applesauce I needed to use up before it started to ferment in the fridge, so I wanted a classic applesauce spice cake recipe. And since I love putting fruit in things, I wanted to add blackberries. Last year I made apple blackberry crumble, which was divine, but I felt like something different this time around. ​

This recipe was a fairly classic spice cake recipe, but I liked that the immediately previous recipe calls for cooking apples to make your own sauce, which I appreciated, having done the exact same thing not quite a week earlier. Here's the verbatim:

1 teaspoon baking soda
1 tablespoon warm water
1 cup applesauce, unsweetened
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup butter
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup molasses
2 cups flour, sifted
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup seedless raisins, chopped
1/2 cup walnuts

Dissolve soda in water and stir into applesauce. Mix sugar and spices. Cream sugar mixture and butter. Stir in applesauce and vanilla. Add molasses, then stir in flour sifted with salt, raisins, and walnuts. Bake in a greased 9-inch tube pan in a moderate oven (350 F) for 40 minutes.

I made a few modifications for my recipe, the two largest being substituting blackberries for the raisins and walnuts, and not baking it in a tube pan, because all I had was a bundt pan, and that's not quite the same thing. 

I also realized halfway through that I didn't have enough molasses - only about a 1/4 cup. Unwilling to run to the store, I rinsed the bottle with a little hot water, and filled the rest with maple syrup. This made the batter rather runnier than it probably should have been, but the molasses also gave the cake an intense molasses flavor which drowned out the apples entirely. 

Because the cake was so moist and because I baked it in a 9" round pan, instead of a cake pan, I baked it for quite a bit longer than 40 minutes - it ended up being over 60 minutes until the cake sprang back properly when touched, and even then it was very soft in the center still. 

Despite being more molasses-y than I would have liked, and moister than it was probably supposed to be, it still turned out deliciously, and was a huge hit with my husband, for whom dry cake is anathema. It definitely had all the right flavors for fall and New England and as a bonus, it used up both the homemade applesauce in my fridge and a carton of blackberries languishing in there, too. And what better way to honor New England food traditions than to be frugal and not let autumn produce go to waste? 

What do you think - is this a cake you would like to try? Have you read Rain, Hail, and Baked Beans? If you haven't, luckily for you HathiTrust has digitized the whole thing. Happy reading!

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Yesterday I went to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. I had not been in many years, and I've never seen the whole thing. It was enormous and full of priceless artifacts. But.

Most of those artifacts were displayed apart from their historical and cultural context. The labels were sparse. The introductions often non-existent. Some of the exhibit cases resembled a robber baron's garage sale, with objects arranged and labeled with little or no relation to each other. Undefined terminology and jargon strange even to a veteran historian with a Master's degree popped up often. To be honest, much of the museum smacked of gatekeeping. 

There's a lot of gatekeeping in academia. Some folks are so insecure in their abilities that excluding others makes them feel important. Others are so wrapped up in the minutiae of their studies they forget that the outside world does not share their frames of reference. Still others were raised to think of themselves as more talented, more intelligent, more deserving than others, and these folks seem to think that a gate protects them. 

Having been raised in a more egalitarian, middle-class, Scandinavian-American household, I dislike gatekeeping. And jargon. And, frankly, anything or any action that seeks to exclude others and hide knowledge for a select few. To quote the great Steve Rogers, "I don't like bullies. I don't care where they're from." 

I realized today that I had been partially participating in that gatekeeping, albeit unwittingly. As with many online content creators, I was told that monetization was the way to go. And for folks who make their livings full-time at this sort of thing, that makes sense. But that won't be me until I retire, and I'm in a much better place financially now than I was ten years ago when I started this website. 

As of today, I will no longer charge a membership fee to access any part of my website, nor will I provide members-only content, nor will I ask for memberships at the bottom of every post. Existing Patreon patrons will have the option to continue their memberships to help pay for the upkeep of this website and my email service. Substack has always been free and I've been clear from the get-go that folks who become paid members won't be getting anything special in return. And folks can always leave a tip, if they're so inclined. But while my time is now much more limited than it was when I started this website nearly 10 years ago, my coffers are far less bare. So I've decided it's time to throw open the gates and share the metaphorical wealth. 

Thanks to some help from volunteer Elissia, you can now access dozens (hundreds?) of free public domain cookbooks, organized into a vintage cookbook bibliography. It's a work-in-progress, but there's quite a lot there to explore. You can also now read my thesis free of charge, along with other publications, and download printable themed newsletters previously only available to members. They're all listed under the "resource" tab on my website. Eventually, I'll update the bibliography with more recent publications. I'll also be recycling some previously members-only blog posts on the public blog in the coming weeks, months, and years.

I have a dozen or more brand new blog posts waiting in the wings, so I hope to be able to carve out more time to finish them sometime soon. I've also made some progress on the book, and I hope to be able to spend more time on it in the coming months. If I have time, I'll send periodic updates on that as well. 

When I started this website in 2015, I had just finished my Master's thesis and had realized the depths of my interest in food history more generally. This website has become a place for me to share primary sources, consolidate ideas, and even engage in the occasional rant from time to time. I've been inspired by reader and listener questions, internet memes, and my own exciting discoveries. The blog and this website aren't going anywhere anytime soon. I'm proud of how often thefoodhistorian.com shows up in search results - my tiny contribution to internet mythbusting in a sea of misinformation and badly researched history.

So whether you've had a paid membership via Substack or Patreon, you've attended one of my talks or read an article, or whether you subscribed to this website on a curious whim, thank you for your support. It's time to return the favor. 

Go forth and enjoy, dear readers, the gates are open. Happy food historying! 

 During the Second World War, food preservation became a national mandate. I've featured canning-related propaganda posters before, but I thought now would be a good time to feature a few of the lesser-known posters. 

The above poster is from fairly late in the war. It reads "Grow More, Can More... In '44 - Get your canning supplies now! Jars, Caps and Rings." A special seal featuring a hand (presumably Uncle Sam's) holds a basket containing the words, "Food Fights for Freedom" with "Produce and Conserve" and "Share and Play Square" above. It features a rosy-cheeked young woman in an overtly feminized take on the Women's Land Army overalls, a straw hat tilted fashionably far back on her head, and wearing spotless white work gloves. With a hoe tucked in one elbow and a thumb in her overall strap, she gestures with her free hand at an enormous set of glossy clear glass canning jars, expertly filled with whole tomatoes, halved peaches, green beans, sliced red beets, and what might be whole apricots, yellow plums, or yellow cherries, it's tough to tell. The jars feature a variety of lids, including the new aluminum screw-tops, a glass-topped wire bail with a rubber seal, and a zinc screw top with a rubber seal, illustrating the range of canning technologies still in use. 

The poster is photorealistic and is probably a literal cut-and-paste of actual photographs - a new technique in an era still dominated by illustrations. 

It's not clear exactly when this poster was released, but it's likely it was early in the season. The poster exhorts the reader to "grow more" in addition to canning more in 1944, which seems to indicate a spring release, despite the prominence of the large glass canning jars. In addition, the poster warns to stock up on canning supplies now, instead of later in the season. When aluminum was short and factories that made glass were used to produce war materiel, it was easier to make smaller quantities over a longer period of time. By planning ahead, home gardeners and canners could also make sure they had enough supplies on hand to handle an increase in garden produce. 

Things were getting a bit desperate in 1944 - the war was not going well and the prospect of another long year of war was troubling to ordinary Americans. Rationing had ramped up fully in 1943, and as the war dragged on home canned foods took on more importance in everyday nutrition. For many, especially children, the war must have seemed unending.

Little did they know that on June 6, 1944, the United States would launch Operation Overlord - also known as the invasion of Normandy - which would become known as D-Day. D-Day would turn the tide of the war in favor of the Allies, but it would still take another fifteen months for the war to end entirely.

Until then, rationing continued and Americans were urged to grow and preserve as much food as they could to supplement their rations. The war finally ended in September of 1945, and by December, rationing of every food except sugar had ended. Foods canned in 1944 would have been important support for rations, but foods canned in 1945 would have been less crucial. One wonders how many home canned foods made it to the end of 1946? We may never know.​