I used to read Ernest “Papa” Hemingway’s novels. Clean, spare prose, mixed up with some keen observations about human nature, his writing – and his adventurous life – took me places I yearned to go. But, later on, even more enticing to me was his nonfiction. I can’t tell you how many times I read … More Being Ernest: On ” Writing One True Sentence”
Compiling bibliographies is a bit like blowing bubbles, for you never know how big the bubbles will be or how far away they’ll float through the air. Or where they’ll land. And that’s the exciting bit about bibliographies. You can’t know when you set out on the journey where you’ll end up. If you compile … More The Joy of Bibliographies
Cabbage soup and gruel are our food. (Shchi da kasha, pishche nashe.) ~~Russian peasant proverb Trying to ferret out tidbits about Russian food history can be tough going. Aside from the language barrier, anyone interested in Russian culinary history suffers from a major weakness: there is a terrible lack of written material contemporaneous with Forme … More From Mother Russia with Love: The Domostroi
Just a reminder that you will be able to see some 10 of the 28 sessions live and for free on Friday and Saturday, February 10 and 11, 2012. See schedule of free sessions below. To brighten up a dreary February in 2011, a group of food scholars and cookbook writers started a cookbook conference. … More The Roger Smith Cookbook Conference
If you scrutinize sixteenth-century Dutch artist Pieter Aertsen’s painting, “The Cook in Front of the Stove,” you will see a rather stereotypical image of servant cooks, one that persisted in popular memory in Europe until well into the nineteenth century. Sean Takats, assistant professor of history at George Mason University and codirector of Zotero, attempts … More The Expert (French) Cook in Enlightenment France: A Review
A little prickle of recognition, a sense of déjà vu — that’s what happened when I turned to page 86 of A Colonial Plantation Cookbook: The Receipt Book of Harriott Pinckney Horry, 1770 (1984, edited by historian Richard J. Hooker*). There it was: “Ats Jaar, or Pucholilla.” My first thought was, “What is an Indian … More Ats Jaar: Possible Origins of the Practice of Pickling in the Antebellum American South
Pigs and hams, barbecue and ice cream — all are foods associated with joy and love and celebration. In the United States, anyway. And writers take these foods and weave words around and around like so many carefully knitted stitches, creating new books, making this year an exciting time for food and history lovers. The … More What’s New in Culinary Books
Culinary researchers: The new, official Library of Congress subject heading for over 800 cooking and food-related subjects changed recently from “cookery” to “cooking.” Here’s the official document, “Cooking and Cookbooks H 1475.”