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 

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!

Libby's pumpkin pie is the iconic recipe that graces many American tables for Thanksgiving each year. Although pumpkin pie goes way back in American history (see my take on Lydia Maria Child's 1832 recipe), canned pumpkin does not. 

Libby's is perhaps most famous these days for their canned pumpkin, but they started out making canned corned beef in the 1870s (under the name Libby, McNeill, & Libby), using the spare cuts of Chicago's meatpacking district and a distinctive trapezoidal can. They quickly expanded into over a hundred different varieties of canned goods, including, in 1899, canned plum pudding. Although it's not clear exactly when they started canning pumpkin (a 1915 reference lists canned squash as part of their lineup), in 1929 they purchased the Dickinson family canning company, including their famous Dickinson squash, which Libby's still uses exclusively today. 

In the 1950s, Libby's started printing their famous pumpkin pie recipe on the label of their canned pumpkin. Although it is the recipe that Americans have come to know and love, it's not, in fact, the original recipe. Nor is a 1929 recipe the original.

The original Libby's pumpkin pie recipe was much, much earlier. In fact, it may have even predated Libby's canned pumpkin.

In 1912, in time for the holiday season, Libby's began publishing full-page ads using their pumpkin pie recipe in several national magazines, including Cosmopolitan, The Century Illustrated, and Sunset. But the key Libby's ingredient wasn't pumpkin at all - it was evaporated milk. 

​Sweetened condensed milk had been invented in the 1850s by Gail Borden in Texas, but unsweetened evaporated milk was invented in the 1880s by John B. Meyenberg and Louis Latzer in Chicago, Illinois. Wartime had made both products incredibly popular - the Civil War popularized condensed milk, and the Spanish American War popularized evaporated milk. Libby's got into both the condensed and evaporated milk markets in 1906. 

Perhaps competition from other brands like Borden's Eagle, Nestle's Carnation, and PET made Libby's make the pitch for pumpkin pie. ​

The ad features a smiling trio of White people, clearly upper-middle class, or even upper-class, seated around a table. An older gentleman and a smiling young boy dig into slices of pumpkin pie, cut at the table by a not-quite-matronly woman. A maid in uniform brings what appears to be tea service in the background. The advertisement reads:

"How did you make this pie so delicious?"
"Why it was easy enough. I tried the new way I found in my Libby's recipe booklet. Here it is - " 

"Pumpkin Pie: 1 ½ cups cooked and strained pumpkin, 2 eggs, ¾ cup sugar, ¼ cup molasses, ½ tablespoonful cinnamon, ½ tablespoonful ginger, 1/8 teaspoonful salt, 1 cup (1/2 can) Libby’s Evaporated Milk, with 1 cupful water. Mix pumpkin, molasses, sugar and spices together. Add the mixed milk and water, then add the eggs thoroughly beaten. Mix well and put into deep pie tins lined with pastry. Bake 45 minutes in a moderate oven.

"Libby’s Evaporated Milk
"For all pies and baking, for soups, coffee, tea or cocoa Libby’s milk gives an added richness and a delicious flavor. 
Libby’s milk is evaporate din clean, sanitary condenseries, located in the heart of the greatest dairy regions in the world. It is always pure and when open will keep sweet longer than raw milk.

"Buy Libby’s milk for convenience and satisfaction. It’s the brand you can trust. 
"Send for a copy of Libby’s Milk Recipe Booklet. Libby, McNeill & Libby, Chicago."

My research has not been exhaustive, but as far as I can tell, Libby's was the first to develop a recipe for pumpkin pie using evaporated milk. Sadly I have been unable to track down a copy of the 1912 edition of their Milk Recipes Booklet, but if anyone has one, please send a scan of the page featuring the pumpkin pie recipe!

Curiously enough, the original 1912 recipe treats the evaporated milk like regular fluid milk, which was a common pumpkin pie ingredient at the time. Instead of just using the evaporated milk as-is, it calls for diluting it with water! The recipe also calls for molasses, and less cinnamon than the 1950s recipe, which also features cloves, which are missing from the 1912 version. Both versions, of course, call for using your own prepared pie crust. Nowadays Libby's recipe calls for using Nestle's Carnation brand evaporated milk - both companies are subsidiaries of ConAgra - and Libby's own canned pumpkin replaced the home-cooked pumpkin after it purchased the Dickinson canning company in 1929. 

Interestingly, this 1912 version (which presumably is also in Libby's milk recipe booklet) does not show up again in Libby's advertisements. Indeed, pumpkin pie is rarely mentioned at all again in Libby's ads until the 1930s - after it acquires Dickinson. And by the 1950s, the recipe wasn't even making the advertisements - Libby's wanted you to buy their canned pumpkin in order to access it - via the label. 

The 1950s recipe on the can persisted for decades. But in 2019, Libby's updated their pumpkin pie recipe again. This time, the evaporated milk and sugar have been switched out for sweetened condensed milk and less sugar. As many bakers know, the older recipe was very liquid, which made bringing it to the oven an exercise in balance and steady hands (although really the trick is to pull out the oven rack and then gently move the whole thing back into the oven). This newer recipe makes a thicker filling that is less prone to spillage.

Still - many folks prefer the older recipe, especially at Thanksgiving, which is all about nostalgia for so many Americans. 

I'll admit the original Libby's is hard to beat if you're using canned pumpkin, but Lydia Maria Child's recipe also turned out lovely - just a little more labor intensive. I've even made pumpkin custard without a crust. Are you a fan of pumpkin pie? Do you have a favorite pumpkin pie recipe? Share in the comments, and Happy Thanksgiving!

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It's that time of year when people all over the world are thinking about graduating, either from high school or college. The question in so many minds is, "What's next?" High school students are considering what they should major in, whether they should do a summer internship or get a job, what they want their adult lives to look like. College students are doing much the same - considering whether to attend graduate school, try for an internship, get an entry-level job. And many of them are considering food history as a career option. When you call yourself "THE" food historian, you get a lot of questions about how to break into the field. After answering lots of individual emails, I've decided to tackle the subject in this blog post.

I'll be breaking down what it takes to be a food historian, but first I want to emphasize that making a career out of history can be difficult, and it is not particularly lucrative. Even those with PhDs in their fields have trouble finding jobs. I myself work in the history museum field (more job opportunities, but the salaries are usually low) and do the work of a food historian as a passion project that occasionally pays me.

That being said, there are folks who are able to make a living through freelance writing, being history professors (food history and food studies programs are expanding in academia), working in museums, writing books, consulting on films, and even making YouTube videos and podcasts. It's not easy, and it's generally not lucrative, but if you have a passion for history and food, this may just be the route for you. 

​A few other folks have written on this subject, notably Rachel Laudan. But while I think she has some great advice on the work of doing food history, that's not quite the same thing as being a food historian. 

The Inclusive Historian's Handbook, which is a resource for public historians, has also written about food history, albeit in a forum meant for public historians and museum professionals. 

So I thought I'd tackle my own definitions and advice. I should note that this guide is going to be necessarily focused on the field of food history in the United States, because that is my lived experience, but most of the basic advice is applicable beyond the U.S. 

First, let's do a little defining. I use the term "food history" in the broadest sense. It encompasses:

• culinary history (the history of cooking and eating),
• agricultural history (crops themselves but also who is growing them),
• environmental history (how humans interact with the natural world),
• social history (including the history of race, gender, ethnicity, etc.),
• labor history (who is doing the work?),
• the history of technology (everything from the first clay pot to modern manufacturing),
• the history of science (especially chemistry and nutrition)
• corporate history (a huge impact on American food history, in particular), 
• political history and the history of government policies (regulations, subsidies, and political priorities),
• economic history (inflation, depressions & recessions, etc.),
• and yes, even war history (famine, military supply, rationing, victory gardens, food riots, price controls, etc.)

Food history can also encompass and build on other fields, including archaeology, anthropology, and sociology. 

Food is the one constant that connects all humans throughout human history. Which is part of why it is so appealing to so many people, including non-historians. 

Professor and food historian Dr. Steven Caplan of Cornell University has written on the history of the field, but here's my own summary. 

Although agricultural history has a long and storied past, until quite recently food history was considered an unserious topic of study in academia. Even after the social history revolution of the 1970s, which coincided with a groundswell of public interest in the past thanks to the American Bicentennial, food history was largely considered the purview of museum professionals, reenactors, and non-historians. Even trailblazing scholars like Dr. Jessica B. Harris approached food history from an oblique angle - she has a background as a journalist, her doctoral dissertation was on French language theatre in Senegal, and she was a professor in the English Department at Queens College in New York City for decades. And yet her groundbreaking books helped set the tone for subsequent historians.

In fact, many of the food history books published in the last fifty years have been written by non-historians - largely journalists and food writers. And while many fine works have come out of that technique, as someone who has a background in both cooking and academic history, there are often missed opportunities in food history books written by both non-historians and non-cooking academics alike. 

So why has food history been deemed so unserious? A couple of reasons. One was that gatekeepers in the ivory tower didn't consider food an important topic. It was such a ubiquitous, everyday thing. It seemed to have little importance in the grand scheme of big personalities and big events. But I think its very ubiquity is part of the reason why food history is so compelling and important.

Another reason was that the primary actors throughout food history were not generally wealthy White European men. They were (and often still are) primarily women and people of color - producing and growing food, preparing, cooking, preserving, and serving it. Racism and sexism influenced whose history got told, and whose didn't. You can still see some of this bias in modern food history, which often still focuses on rich White dudes with name recognition. 

Then, when people began studying social history in the 1960s and '70s, food history largely remained the work of museums, historical societies, and historical reconstructions like Old Sturbridge Village and Colonial Williamsburg. It was popular, and therefore not serious. 

Real food historians knew better. They persisted, but it was a long slog. Let's take a look at a brief (and very incomplete) timeline of food history in the United States since the Bicentennial: 

In 1973, British historian and novelist Reay Tannahill published Food in History, which was so popular it was reprinted multiple times over the following decades. 

In 1980, the Culinary Historians of Boston was founded. 

In 1985, the Culinary Historians of New York was founded. 

In 1989, museum professional Sandra (Sandy) Oliver began The Food History News, a print newsletter (a zine, if you will) dedicated to the study and recreation of historical foodways. Largely consumed by reenactors, museum professionals, and food history buffs, the publication of the newsletter sadly ceased in 2010. I am lucky enough to have been given a large portion of the print run by a friend, but Sandy's voice is missed in the food history publication sphere. 

In 1999, librarian Lynne Olver created the Food Timeline website, dedicated to busting myths and answering food history questions. Lynne sadly passed away in 2015, but in 2020 Virginia Tech adopted the Food Timeline and Lynne's enormous food history library. Lynne herself published some food history research recommendations as well. The Food Timeline is likely responsible for many a budding food historian, as it is incredibly fascinating to fall down the many rabbit holes contained therein. 

In 1994, Andrew F. Smith published The Tomato in American Early History, Culture, and Cookery. He joined the New School faculty in 1996, starting their Food Studies program. He has since gone on to publish dozens of food history books and is the managing editor of the Edible series, which began in 2008 under Reaktion Press, now published by the University of Chicago Press. 

In 1998, food and nutrition professor Amy Bentley published Eating for Victory - one of the first-ever history books to tackle food in the United States during World War II. 

In 2003, the University of California Press started its food history imprint with Harvey Levenstein's Revolution at the Table. Levenstein is an academically trained social historian and helped reinvent food history's brand as a serious topic for "real" historians to tackle. 

In the last 20 years, the study of food history has exploded. Dozens of books are published each year, and more and more people are choosing food as a lens to study all kinds of things, with history at the forefront. Food history has increasingly become a serious field of study, and more and more academically trained historians are bringing their skills to the field, helping shift the historiography.

Even so, issues persist. Until very recently, the broad focus of American food history was still very White, and very middle- and upper-class, in large part because those were the folks who published the most cookbooks and magazine articles, who owned and patronized restaurants, who built food processing companies, etc. Low hanging fruit, and all that. The field is diversifying, but the assumption that American food is White Anglo-Saxon persists. Like bias in general, it takes constant work to overcome. 

Because food history is so popular, and so many non-historians have contributed to the historiography, issues that plague all popular subjects persist.

First, food history is FULL of apocryphal stories and legends. Many of these continue because non-historians take primary and secondary sources at face value without critical thinking. Many food history books published by non-historians and/or in the popular press do not contain citations. Sometimes this is a design choice by the publisher and not a reflection on the scholarship of the historian. But sometimes this is because the writer is simply regurgitating legends they found somewhere questionable. Food historians need to delve deeply, think critically, and amass corroborating evidence when at all possible. Mythbusting is an important part of the field. 

Second, non-historians tend to take foods out of context and make assumptions about the people in the past. In the United States, the general public simultaneously romanticizes our food past (yes, there were pesticides before World War II, no, not everyone knew how to cook well) and vilifies difference. I'm sure you've seen all of the memes and comments making fun of foods of the past (I've tackled a few of them here and here). The idea that tastes or priorities might change boggles the minds of folks who are stuck in the mindset of the present. But historical peoples were diverse, circumstances (like central heating and air conditioning) changed frequently, and both had a big impact on how and why people ate what they did. While we can't excuse moral issues like racism, sexism, and xenophobia, it's important to note that there were always people in the past fighting against those isms, too. Rejection of those mindsets is not a uniquely modern idea. The idea that modern humans are somehow morally better, smarter, more sensitive, etc. than historical peoples is not only wrong, it is dangerous, because it implies that we are somehow so advanced that we do not need to self-critique. Nothing could be further from the truth. 

Third, many of the research questions I and many food historians get from journalists and students tend to focus on origin stories of certain foods. Some are provable, most are not, and most confoundingly for the folks who want to know who did it FIRST, sometimes certain types of foods crop up simultaneously in unrelated places. 

The real issue with these questions is, who cares who made the first eclair? I mean, maybe you do, but what does finding out who made the first eclair tell us about food history? Perhaps you might argue that it was a turning point in the history of French baking, and went on to influence global fashion for decades to come. You might be right. But if your question is "who did it first?" instead of "what are the wider implications of this event?" or "what does this tell us about the time and place in which it was created?" or "how did this influence how we do things today?" you're asking the wrong questions. 

We ask "who cares?" a lot in the museum field. To be a good educator and communicator of history, you must make it not only understandable, but relevant to your audience. The origin of the tomato is largely unimportant except as an exercise in research unless you can connect it somehow to our modern society and make people care. 

On the flip side of things, and finally, there is a lot of gatekeeping in academia about food history. I've actually seen academics bemoan the idea of using food as a lens to study broader historical ideas, instead of focusing only on the food. Which is ridiculous. That's like saying the history of clothing has to focus only on the physical clothes themselves, and not the people who wore them, the society that created them, or the political, economic, and/or religious meaning behind them. Food history is meant to illuminate the hows and whys behind what is probably the biggest and most pervasive driving force behind most of human history - the acquisition and consumption of food. Focusing only on individual dishes doesn't improve food history - it dilutes it. 

Thankfully, many of these problems can be solved by following two simple truths. To be a food historian, you must first be a historian, and you must also know food. 

This is a tough one for a lot of folks. The word "historian" conjures up old men with white beards and tweed jackets sitting in book-filled academic offices. But a historian is less a specific person and more a set of skills and experiences.

And food history differs from food studies in that it has a primary focus on history. Food studies is an increasingly popular field, especially for colleges and universities that want to attract students with diverse interests. But in my personal opinion, a lot of the work coming out of food studies programs lacks the rigor of history training. I base this judgement on some of the work I've seen presented at conferences. Doesn't mean there aren't fine folks in food studies, and mediocre folks in food history, but the broadness of the food studies umbrella seems to allow for a looser interpretation of the subject than I'd prefer.

History is evidence-based, and the best history not only requires corroborating evidence, but also an examination of what is not present in the historical record, and why. Historians also produce original research, which is the primary difference between a history buff and a historian. History buffs can be subject experts and have read all the secondary sources on a topic, and even primary sources. But you're not a historian until you're producing original research. The medium for that research can take many forms. The most common are articles, conference papers, and books. But original research can also be presented in documentary films, podcasts, museum exhibits, etc. 

Public historians are the same as academic historians with one distinct difference: audience. A public historian's audience is the general public, and they must adjust their communications accordingly. Public historians use less jargon and give more context because their audience tends to have less foreknowledge of the subject. Although many academic historians are starting to see the public history light, many still have other academics as their primary audience, which leads to dry, jargon-y work that that is often purposely difficult to read and comprehend, designed so that only a few of their colleagues can fully understand it.

I mentioned earlier that a lot of food history books have been written by journalists and food writers. On the one hand, this is a great thing. The writing quality is better and more approachable, and journalists in particular can be dogged about tracking down primary sources and following leads. But there are issues with non-historians writing history. Mainly, they miss stuff. Many journalists write food histories as one-offs, moving onto the next, usually unrelated topic. And food writers tend to focus more on what they know - cooking and eating - rather than what's happening more broadly in the time period they're examining, and how their research fits into that. Because neither group tends to have a breadth of knowledge about the time period or culture they are examining, they often overlook connections, make assumptions that aren't necessarily supported by the evidence, and generally miss a lot of cues that historians trained in that time period would pick up on. 

That stuff is usually called context. Context is the background knowledge of what is influencing a moment in history. It's the foreknowledge of the history that leads up to a moment, the understanding of the culture in which the moment is taking place, grasping the relationships between the historical actors involved in the moment, etc. 

I'll give you an example. Promontory, Utah, 1869. If you know your history, you'll know that's the date and place where the two sections of the transcontinental railroad were joined. If you didn't know the context around that event, you might consider it a rather unimportant local celebration of the completion of a section of railroad track. But the context that surrounds it - the technology history of railroads, the political history of the United States emerging from the Civil War, the backdrop of the Indian Wars and the federal government's land grabs and attempted genocide, the economic history of railroad barons and pioneers - this context is all incredibly important to fully understanding the Promontory Summit event and its significance in American history. 

Journalists are great at the who, what, where, when, and even how. They're less great at the context. History is more than reciting facts. It is more than discovering new things and rebutting the arguments of historians who came before you. History, especially food history, is about the why. 

When I was in undergrad, it was the why that drove me. My first introduction was via agricultural history. I was interested in history, but also in the environment, and sustainable agriculture was my gateway into the world of agricultural history. I wanted to know not only how our modern food system came into being, but also why it was the way it was. I was also deeply interested in eating, and therefore in learning how to cook, although it would take until my senior year in college to actually do much of it. A burgeoning interest in collecting vintage cookbooks helped. From there I researched rural sociology and the Progressive Era in graduate school, and that sparked my Master's thesis on food in World War I, and the rest is history (pun intended). I'm now obsessed. 

Thankfully, being a historian is a lot less difficult than a lot of people assume. Like most skills, it just takes practice and time. If you like to read and write, you're curious, you are good at remembering and synthesizing information, and you're a good communicator, history might be your perfect field. It requires a lot of close reading, critical thinking, and the ability to organize information into coherent arguments and compelling stories. 

History is simultaneously wonderful and horrible because it is constantly expanding. Not only thanks to linear time, but also because new evidence is being discovered all the time and new research is being published daily. It's both an incredible opportunity and a daunting task. But with the right area of focus, it becomes not a boring task, but a lifelong passion.

This is one some academics sometimes struggle with. Like journalists, they have can also have an incomplete understanding of their subject matter.

I learned to cook not at my grandmother's knee, or even my mother's. I am self-taught, largely because I love to eat and eating mediocre food is a sad chore. But I did not start cooking for myself until late in college, and even then my first attempts were pretty disastrous. But while failure is a necessary component of learning any new skill, I dislike it enough to be highly motivated to avoid making the same mistake twice, and will take steps to avoid making subsequent mistakes. I'm pretty risk-averse. 

As an avid reader, I decided that books would be my salvation. I started collecting vintage cookbooks in high school thanks to a mother who passed on a love of both reading and thrifting. I read cookbooks like some people read novels - usually before bed. I got picky with my collecting. If a cookbook didn't have good headnotes, it was out. I wanted scratch cooking, but approachable, with modern measurements and equipment and not too many unfamiliar ingredients. Cookbooks published between 1920 and 1950 largely fit the bill, and I read lots of them. 

In grad school I expanded my cookbook reading, thanks in large part to Amazon's Kindle readers, which had hundreds of free public domain cookbooks, all published before the 1920s. Then I discovered the Internet Archive, and other historical cookbook repositories with digital collections. All the while I was learning to cook for myself, my roommates, and eventually my boyfriend (now husband). I worked in a French patisserie/coffee shop after college and honed my palate. I tried new recipes often and taught myself to be a good cook and a competent baker. I began to understand historical cooking through recipes. I mentally filed away hundreds of old-fashioned cooking tips. I thought about the best and most efficient ways to do things. I got confident enough to learn to adjust and alter recipes. I experimented. I made predictions and tested them. I learned from my failures and adjusted accordingly. In short - I learned to cook. 

But I still didn't consider myself a food historian. It seemed too big. I felt too inexperienced, despite all my research, both historical and culinary.

Then, I had an epiphany. I attended a food history program with a friend. It had a lecture and a meal component. The lecture was good, but the speaker (who was not an academic historian) mocked a historical foodway I knew to be common in the time period. When I tried to call her on it after her talk, she brushed me off. Then, during the delicious meal, the organizer apologized that one of the dishes didn't turn out quite right, despite following the historical recipe exactly. I knew immediately the step they had missed, which probably was not in the recipe and which wasn't common knowledge except to someone who had studied historic cooking extensively. It was then I realized that there I was, a "mere" graduate student, and I had more depth and breadth of knowledge in food history than these two professional presenters. It was then I decided I could officially call myself a food historian. And that led me to write my Master's thesis on food history and launch this website.

In the intervening years, I've often caught small (and occasionally not-so-small) food-related errors in academic history books. Assumptions, missed connections, misinterpretations of the primary sources, etc. It taught me that to be a food historian, you really have to know agriculture and food varieties, food preparation, how to read a recipe, and historical technologies to really understand the history you're studying. 

If that seems like a lot, it can be. But like learning to cook, doing the work of historical research is about building on the work that came before you. Both the work of other historians, and your own knowledge. We learn by doing, and through practice we improve.

​So now that we've got our terms straight, and we know we need to be well-versed in both history and food, what exactly do I mean by original research? Original research is based in primary sources and covers a topic or makes an argument that is not already present in the historiography (the published work of other historians). Some history topics are difficult to find original research to publish. The American Revolution and the American Civil War are two notable examples of this. There are few unexamined primary sources and the historiography is both wide and deep. Food history does not usually have this problem. In fact, several historians have recently focused on the food history of both the Revolutionary and Civil Wars. Because it has been so understudied, food is one of the few avenues left to explore in these otherwise crowded fields.

​World War I American home front history, however, is criminally under-studied, especially the field of food history (the Brits are better at it than us). Which is one of the reasons why I chose WWI as my area of focus. 

One major pitfall budding historians stumble into is the idea that you do research to prove a theory. Nope. Not with history. You should formulate a question you want to answer to help guide you and get you started. But cherry picking evidence to support your pet theory is not history. Real historians go where the research takes them. Sometimes your question doesn't have an answer because the evidence doesn't exist, or hasn't been discovered yet. Sometimes your pet theory is wrong. And that's okay! It's all part of the process. Even when you hit a dead end, you don't really fail, because you learned a lot along the way, including that your theory was not correct. And sometimes the research leads you to discover something you weren't even looking for, and that's often where the magic happens. 

Secondary Sources

Food history research, like all history research, has a couple of levels. The first is secondary source material. This is your historiography - the works in and related to your area of study that other historians have already written and published. Books, journal articles, theses and dissertations are the best secondary sources because they generally use citations and can therefore be fact-checked. Secondary sources without footnotes should be taken with a large grain of salt. Any history that doesn't tell you where the evidence came from is suspect. I say this as someone who dislikes the work of footnoting intensely. But it's a necessary evil. 

But while secondary sources are usually written by experienced historians, they aren't always perfectly correct. Sometimes new research has been done since the book you're reading has been published, which is why it's important to read the recent research as well as the classics. Sometimes the historian writing the book makes a mistake (it happens). Sometimes the writer has biases they are blind to, which need to be taken into account when absorbing their research. 

Secondary sources can be both a blessing and a bane. A blessing, because you can build on their research instead of having to do everything from scratch. And a bane, because sometimes someone has already written on your beloved topic! Thankfully, there's almost always room for new interpretations. 

A good practice to truly understand a secondary source is to write an academic book review of it. Book reviews force you not only to closely analyze the text, but also to understand the author's primary arguments, evaluate their sources, and look at the book within the context of the wider historiography. 

Primary Sources

The second level of research is primary sources. This is the historical evidence created in the period you're studying: letters, diaries, newspaper articles, magazines and periodicals, ephemera, photographs, paintings and sketches, laws and lawsuits, wills and inventories, account books and receipts, census records and government reports, etc. Primary sources also include objects, audio recordings (along with oral histories), historic film, etc. Primary sources generally live in collections held in trust and managed by public entities like museums, historical societies, archives, universities, and public libraries. 

Some folks like to insist that some primary sources are not primary sources at all, notably oral histories and sometimes even newspaper articles, because the author's memory or understanding of an event may not be accurate.

But here's the deal, folks - pretty much no primary source is going to be a 100% accurate account of what is happening in history. The creators all have their biases, faulty memories, assumptions, etc. to contend with. Just because someone was present at a major event doesn't mean they're recording it correctly. It also doesn't mean they saw the whole thing, understood what they saw, or aren't completely lying about their presence there. Nobody has a time machine to go fact-check their accuracy, which is why corroborating evidence is important. ALL primary sources deserve some skepticism and an understanding of the culture that produced them. 

I should also note that primary sources only exist because someone saved them. And that "someone" historically was middle and upper-class White men. Which means a lot of historical documentation did NOT get saved. In particular, the work of women and especially people of color was not only not saved, sometimes it was actively destroyed. And even when those sources do exist, they can be hard to find, and are therefore often overlooked or ignored by the historians who have come before you. This is part of the skepticism of primary sources, too. Again, what is not present can be just as important as what is. 

Context

And that's the third, often-overlooked level of research: context. We've defined it before. It can be a major stumbling block for non-historians. Context is when you take all the stuff you've learned from your secondary sources, and the cumulative knowledge of the primary sources you're studying, and put it into action. It's reading between the lines, understanding cultural cues, realizing what your primary sources aren't saying, who's absent, and what topics are being avoided. Context is understanding why historical figures do what they do, not just how. 

It can be easy to get wrapped up in the primary sources. I get it. They're fascinating! I've dived down many a primary source rabbit hole. But we have to think critically about them. Taking primary sources at face value has gotten a lot of historians into trouble, leading them to make assumptions about the past, to accept one perspective as gospel truth, and to overlook other avenues of research. No one source (or one person) ever has all the answers. 

Writing

And finally, the last step of research: the writing. Some folks never make it to this point, just amassing research endlessly. And for history buffs, that's okay. But historians have to leave their mark on the historiography. There are a few important things I've learned in the course of writing my own book.

First, get the words on the page. When it comes to writing history, get it on the page first, and then think about your argument, the organization of your article or chapter, the chronology, etc. You can't edit what isn't there, and editing is just as if not more important than writing. Everyone needs to be edited, and all works are strengthened by judicious paring and rewriting. You can always edit, cut, rearrange, rewrite, and/or add to anything you write. In fact, you probably should! I'll give an example. When I'm writing an academic book review, I'll usually write out my first reactions in a way-too-long Word document. Then, once I'm satisfied I've covered all the bases, I'll start a new Word doc and rewrite the whole thing, summarizing, examining my gut reactions, and modulating my tone for the audience I'm writing for. 

Second, practice makes perfect. The more you write (and read), the better you'll get at it. You'll get better at formulating arguments, explaining things, writing for a specific audience, and just better at communicating overall. So many writers feel shame about their early works. I get it! Sometimes I cringe when I see my early stuff. But sometimes I'm retroactively impressed, too. You've got to put out buds if you want to grow leaves and branches. So write the book reviews, write the blog posts, submit journal articles, etc. Everything you do gets you a step further down the historian road. 

Third, it's important to know when to stop researching. You need enough research to be well-versed enough to do the work. But perfection is the enemy of done. If you can afford to spend decades researching and refining a single book, by all means please do so. But if you want a career in food history, you're gonna have to be more efficient than that. 

Finally, and this is the hardest one. You have to learn to kill your darlings. I learned that phrase from a professional writer friend. Just because you're endlessly fascinated by the COOL THING! you found, doesn't mean it should go in your book. If it doesn't advance your argument or is otherwise superfluous information, cut it. I'm at that stage now with my own book, and while it's painful, killing your darlings doesn't meant deleting them! Save them for future projects, turn them into blog posts or podcasts or YouTube videos if you like. But getting rid of the extraneous stuff will make your work so much stronger.

Whew! You made it this far! You may be feeling daunted by now. That isn't my intent. Like learning to cook, doing the work of history takes practice.

​Start with a topic or time period you're interested in. Look to see if anyone else has already published anything on that topic, and read it. Expand your reading beyond your immediate topic to related topics. For instance, if you want to study food in the Civil War, read not only about food, but about war, politics, gender, agriculture, race, economics, etc. in the Civil War, too. See if your local public or university library has remote access to places like JSTOR, Newspapers.com, ProQuest, Project Muse. See if your local library or historical society has any archival records related to your topic. Scour places like the Internet Archive, the Library of Congress, HathiTrust, and the Digital Public Library of America for other primary sources. Many have been digitized and more are being digitized daily. Start looking, start reading, and start synthesizing what you've learned into writing of your own. 

If you're thinking of pursuing food history on the graduate level, look for universities with professors whose work you admire and respect, for places with rich food history collections, and for programs that excite you. I worked my way through graduate school, working in museums while getting my master's part-time. I also took two years off between undergrad and graduate school, trying to gain experience in my field before tackling the commitment of grad school. I heartily recommend trying the work of food history before you dive into academia. 

Finally, food history can be FUN! If this all seems like a lot of work, then maybe food history isn't for you, or perhaps you'd like to remain a food history buff, instead of a food historian. But if the idea of delving into primary sources, devouring secondary source material, learning everything you can about a topic, and then writing it all down to share with others excites you, congratulations! You're already well on your way to becoming a food historian, whether you want to make it your full-time career, or just a fun hobby. 

Whatever you decide - good luck and good hunting!

Your friend in food history,

​Sarah

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