Who Drank Milk First?

According to New Scientist, a new study published in the journal PLoS Computational Biology has traced Europe's earliest adult milk-drinkers to modern day northwest Hungary and southwest Slovakia.

The research team tracked selection for the gene for lactose tolerance to a tribe of cattle herders located between the central Balkans and Central Europe 7,500 years ago. They posit that lactose tolerance likely spread geographically in association with the dissemination of the Linearbandkeramik, a Neolithic farming culture (the illustration above shows the early (dark green) and late phase (light green) spread of the Linearbandkeramk culture across Europe).

The findings trump the more common understanding that sun-deprived Scandinavians were the first among Europeans to drink milk, as a form of dietary compensation for a lack of Vitamin D.

Image: PLoS Computational Biology.

Scottish Chef Seeks DOP Status for Tikka Masala

A Glasgow chef claiming to to have invented chicken tikka masala is seeking "Protected Designation of Origin" status for the dish from European Union.

More on Bagelgate, or What Would Rebecca Rubin Eat?

The LA Weekly food blog Squid Ink has more details on the historical mystery that is bagelgate.

Squid Ink blogger Jessica Ritz contacted the American Girl headquarters to get more information about the composition of Jewish American Girl doll Rebecca Rubin's school lunch. She turned up this new piece of information from a company spokesperson:

So, it's not American cheese as we may have suspected. And though cheddar cheese seems a little more palatable than Kraft singles (just a little), we still have questions.

Jewish American Girl Doll Eats Bagels Sans Schmear

To much fanfare, American Girl recently introduced its first Jewish doll, Rebecca Rubin, a 1914 New Yorker of Russian ancestry. While the dolls have a reputation for historical accuracy, I couldn't help but be surprised to discover what appears to be a striking anomaly among one of her accessories.

A "school set" (inset) includes a pretend lunch of a bagel, rugelach, and pickles. But, look closely at the bagel, and you will see that it's adorned with two suspect slices of orange cheese that look strangely like American cheese. A Shonda! I mean, really, where's the cream cheese?

What we now know as American cheese wasn't even patented until 1916, much less produced on a large scale until the 1950s. So, this has to be wrong. But, how were bagels eaten back then. Did Jews spread cream cheese on their bagels in the early 1900s, or something else?

I contacted Maria Balinska, author of The Bagel: The Surprising History of a Modest Bread, to get a historical perspective on bagel toppings.

TV Cooking, DBGB, and Offbeat Cheeses

FEATURED EVENT Watching What We Eat
How television cooking shows have "both reflected and shaped significant changes in American culture" will be the subject of a discussion presented by the Culinary Historians of New York. Researcher and librarian Kathleen Collins, author of the new book Watching What We Eat: The Evolution of Television Cooking Shows, will lead the audience through the evolution of TV cooking programs from the 1940s to contemporary shows.The event will take place on Wednesday, May 20, at Astor Center (details).

Remembering James Beard

I don't like gourmet cooking or "this" cooking or "that" cooking. I like good cooking. -- James Beard (1903-1985).

If James Beard were alive today, the celebrated chef, cookbook author, restaurateur, and culinary educator would have turned 102 on his birthday, May 5, last week.

While he died in 1985, James Beard's legacy lives on through his writings -- from his 22 cookbooks to his unpublished personal letters to and from luminaries in the food world. They transmit an immense passion for the pleasure of food, as captured, for example, in this passage by Beard about fresh picked gooseberries from a 1975 article on fruit (the article in its entirety is below):

They were so tempting that as I started to dress for the evening I grabbed a handful to take into the shower. With the water running over me, I bit into these luscious berries and the flood of juice was like an internal shower of goodness. On comparing notes with my friends I found that through some incredible piece of ESP they had done exactly the same thing. It’s rather amusing to contemplate three people all standing in their showers and munching gooseberries.

To explore the impact and influence of James Beard -- the driving force behind a mid-century revolution in American gastronomy -- independent producer Melissa Waldron Lehner has created a one-hour audio documentary on the "Dean of American Cuisine" entitled James Beard: A 20th Century Revolution in American Food. (Readers of The Food Section may recall Melissa from the post on International Pickle Day).

Hosted by restaurant consultant Clark Wolf, a close friend of James Beard, and featuring Gourmet magazine Editor-in-Chief Ruth Reichl, historian Betty Fussell, cookbook editor Judith Jones, and Dr. Marion Nestle, author and Chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University (NYU), James Beard: A 20th Century Revolution in American Food provides a personal and professional portrait of James Beard through recollections of friends and colleagues and excerpts of letters and manuscripts from the James Beard Papers, collected at The NYU Fales Rare Book Collection at the Elmer Bobst Library. The correspondence includes letters written to and by James Beard from M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, and Elizabeth David.

Listen to James Beard: A 20th Century Revolution in American Food:

»Click for James Beard Part I (14.9 mb)
»Click for James Beard Part II (13.1 mb)
»Click for James Beard Part III (22.4 mb)

Click on the pages below to read the rough draft of a 1975 column by James Beard on “Fruitful Feasts,” including a recipe for Strawberries Teresa:

Photo: The NYU Fales Library & Special Collections.

History in Menus

The newly launched New York Public Library Digital Gallery contains over 275,000 images that have been digitized from the the library's collections. The wide spectrum of images range from New York cityscapes to 19th century portraits of inmates at Dublin's Mountjoy prison.

You could spend hours poring over this rich database of photographs, prints, and ephemera, but in the interest of gastronomy, I direct your attention the Miss Frank E. Buttolph American Menu Collection, which contains more than 5,000 menus dating from 1851 through 1908.

According to the New York Public Library Web site, Miss Frank E. Buttolph was "a somewhat mysterious and passionate figure" whose mission in life was collecting menus. She donated her massive personal collection to the library in 1899 and continued acquiring menus on behalf of the library until her death in 1924:

Her principal method of acquisition was to write to every restaurant she could think of, soliciting menus. When letters failed, she often marched into a restaurant and pleaded her case in person. She also placed advertisements in trade publications like The Caterer and The Hotel Gazette, but just as often, published news of her collection prompted outright contributions of specimens from around the world. Three times between 1904 and 1909, The New York Times wrote about her and the collection, noting once that "she frankly avers that she does not care two pins for the food lists on her menus, but their historic interest means everything."

Related:
» "Chop Suey Sundae, Anyone?" [The Food Section]

Image: Detail from "Dinner in Honor of Cornelius Fergueson [held by] Lobster Club [at] Fort Lowry Hotel, Bath Beach, NY" (1905), Miss Frank E. Buttolph American Menu Collection, New York Public Library.

Personal Fruit

A page of fruit illustration clippings in the Emma Saxton Pascoe Scrapbook, from the scrapbook collection at The Emergence of Advertising in America: 1850 - 1920, Duke University:

The Emma Louise Saxton Pascoe Scrapbook probably was created between about 1890 and 1908. Emma Louise Saxton was born in 1880 in Viroqua, Wisconsin. She taught for several years in Wisconsin before moving to Michigan in 1904. While teaching in Bessemer, Michigan, she met and married Edward George Pascoe. Names of several relatives appear on name cards and reward of merit cards: Erma Favor, Fannie Favor, and Clement Saxton.

Historic Recipes in Your Inbox

Every month, writer Laura Schenone, author of A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told through Food, Recipes, and Remembrances, sends out a historic recipe to subscribers to her mailing list, the Not To Be Forgotten Recipe Project. Previous emails have included a 150-year-old recipe for rhubarb jam, an 18th century recipe for "Bride Cake," and an 1824 recipe for Gazpacho. Each recipe arrives with details on the history of the dish, commentary, and instructions for preparation in a modern kitchen.

Ms. Schenone will be speaking about her book at an upcoming event presented by the Culinary Historians of New York, Tuesday, November 9, at the Park Avenue Methodist Church.

Photo: lauraschenone.com

This Is the Storekeeper

A poster produced by the Federal Art Project about retail food markets, merchants, and healthy eating (1936 or 1937). From the Work Projects Administration Poster Collection at the Library of Congress.