The Food Section

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While he died in 1985, James Beard's legacy lives on through his writings -- from his 22 cookbooks to his unpublished personal letters to and from luminaries in the food world.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.

Over a Century of Diner History on Display

The Culinary Archives & Museum at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island, is featuring an exhibition entitled, Diners: Still Cookin' In the 21st Century. The interactive exhibition traces the history of diners from their origins in the 19th century as horse-drawn wagons to the modern "retro" diners of the 21st century. The exhibit is based on the collection of diner historian Richard J. S. Gutman, the author of American Diner and American Diner Then and Now. The artifacts on display include a life size replica of a classic lunch counter and the entire 15-stool Ever Ready Diner, a 1926 Worcester Lunch Car which formerly operated in Providence and is now awaiting restoration. The exhibit opened in June and runs through 2008. Photo: www.dinercity.com.

Chop Suey Sundae, Anyone?

The menu for The Chocolate Garden, a dessert parlor that was located in Venice, California, circa 1920s, is one of many historic restaurant menus that can be found at the Menu Collection at the Los Angeles Public Library. The collection is searchable online by keyword, restaurant name, cuisine, and year. Many of the menus contain fascinating cover artwork reflecting the graphic design sensibilities of the periods in which these restaurants once existed. They also offer a unique window on the palates of the past. On the menu at The Chocolate Garden: "Chop Suey Sundae," 20 cents. According to the following recipe from the National Soda Fountain Guide, the concoction included raisins, dates, vanilla ice cream, flaked coconut, and chow mein noodles. More historic soda fountain recipes from the 1920s.