November 11, 1918, a date familiar to all students of history, as The Great War (to end all wars) was finally at an end. But for students of culinary history, that date has additional significance: it is the birth day of Karen Hess, who would become one of the earliest American culinary historians and mentor […]
CHNY Scholar’s Grant recipient, Professor Elizabeth Zanoni, opened our 2018-19 season with a fascinating talk about the origins and evolution of airline food service. Although nowadays we may think of airplane food of something to be endured at best (assuming today’s airlines even offer a hot meal, rather than a processed cheese sandwich on cold, […]
The archives at Mount Vernon hold a trove of records relating to the day-to-day operation of George Washington’s plantation. While many of these rich documents have been examined for details of the culinary life at Mount Vernon, such as the cookery manuscript owned by Martha Washington, already an antique when she inherited it, with recipes […]
Garum, the fish-based saucy condiment ubiquitous in ancient Roman cookery, shows up in many places, such as the epigrams of Martial, the scientific treatises of Pliny, and the medicinal writings of Galen. Astute students of ancient culinary history will have noticed, however, that the cookery book attributed to Apicius tends to use the term liquamen […]
In 1989, David Rosengarten and Joshua Wesson published the provocatively titled, Red Wine with Fish: The New Art of Matching Wine with Food. Designed to ease the stress of pairing wines and foods to a generation of Americans proudly describing themselves as “foodies” (and, without the least bit of self-conscious awkwardness, “Yuppies”), the title slyly […]
“Chocolate Making in New York: A Colonial History” ~Michael Laiskonis ~ Institute for Culinary Education, New York, February 12, 2018 On chocolate: “If you’re not enjoying yourself, there’s something wrong.” Ed Seguine, President, Seguine Cacao Cocoa & Chocolate Advisors Former Executive Pastry Chef at Le Bernardin and IACP’s 2014 Culinary Professional of the Year, Michael Laiskonis is […]
Sacred Sweet Tooth: The Symbolism and Function of Candy and Sweets in Religious Traditions With Constance Kirker, January 15, 2018 How does the concept of sweets function in the rituals of religion? This was the question posed by speaker Constance Kirker to the audience after they tasted an abundant array of international sweets associated with […]
By Michelle Zimmer In What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women & the Food that Tells Their Stories, James Beard award winning author and historian Laura Shapiro examines the eating habits and quirks of six notable women: Dorothy Wordsworth, Eva Braun, Eleanor Roosevelt, Helen Gurley Brown, Barbara Pym, and Rosa Lewis. By analyzing their journals, archives, and letters, Shapiro […]
Program review by Ellen Schnepel Who would think butter, a kitchen staple so often taken for granted, would be a culinary topic of study? Even Elaine Khosrova, a former pastry chef and the founding editor of Culture (in 2008), the first magazine devoted to specialty cheeses, was skeptical when she was assigned an editorial project to taste, […]
CHNY’s “Celebration of Our Members,” opening reception (Joanna Press’s Devilish Deviled Eggs were an especial hit), and annual business meeting were held on September 19th at the Anthroposophical Society of America. After brief business reports and elections for the board of directors, we heard from four members about recent work: Samantha Presnal, Charity Robey, Cathy […]
