Posts tagged with American Culinary History in Blog Beyond the Reading Room

Guest post by Nathalie Ross, Heid Fellow, on her research in the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive. Nathalie is a doctoral candidate in the History Department at the University of North Texas, specializing in Jewish Food Studies. 

Join us on Thursday, 11 May 3-5 pm for a panel honoring the impact of collector, donor, and adjunct curator Janice B. Longone (1933-2022) through her work building the renowned Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive (JBLCA). The JBLCA encompasses more than 25,000 items including 19th and early 20th century cookbooks, charity cookbooks, immigrant cookbooks, food-related advertising ephemera, and restaurant menus.

Cookbooks can reveal so much about the time in which they were written through their recipes and their authors. For instance, many cookbooks were written for a particular audience, most often women because historically they were the ones cooking or keeping up in the kitchen. In the 20th century, more and more cookbooks were published that sought to bring cuisines of the world to American housewives. The Chinese-Japanese cookbook (1914) is an early example of one.

We are excited to announce a special collaboration between the Special Collections Research Center, the William L. Clements Library, and the students of ALA 264 Much Depends on Dinner. From April 17 to May 8th, you will be able to find culinary history across campus on Diag Boards and Campus Bus Signs. To see all five selected items together, scroll through this blog post or visit the Shapiro Screens (April 16-May 7) on the first floor of the Shapiro Library.

Culinary historian and Adjunct Curator Janice Bluestein Longone passed away on August 3, 2022 at the age of 89. Jan was the principal donor and driving force behind the formation of the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive, the culmination of a life-long interest in culinary history that she shared with her husband Dan Longone, University of Michigan Chemistry Professor Emeritus.

A new exhibit pairs a dozen selections from the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive (Special Collections Research Center) with dishes from the International Museum of Dinnerware Design. Enjoy this display in the Audubon Room from Thursday, July 7 to Thursday, September 29.

On Friday, February 12th, the U-M Library hosted its third annual Douglass Day celebration in honor of Frederick Douglass, 19th century American abolitionist, author, and orator. This year the event highlighted the life, legacy and work of Mary Church Terrell with a lecture from Dr. Shelley Haley followed by transcription, digital art-making, and socializing over baked goods!

Due to newfound free time exclusively spent at home, bread baking has become massively popular as of late. Americans collectively baked enough bread to cause a national yeast shortage. For me, remote work at home led to research on Special Collection’s culinary archive; and, desperate to preserve my last packet of instant dry yeast, I decided to find out how bakers before us made non-yeast bread.

Earlier this month, Special Collections was pleased to host WEMU news reporter Jorge Avellan as he researched a story for their "Hidden in Plain Sight" program, featuring Malinda Russell's A Domestic Cook Book. This unpreposessing little 39-page booklet in faded paper wrappers is one of the greatest treasures of the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive. Published in Paw Paw, Michigan in 1866, A Domestic Cook Book is the only known copy of the oldest known cookbook published by an African American.

Join us at 4pm on Sept. 20 in the Hatcher Gallery. Dr. Camille Bégin, author of Taste of the Nation: The New Deal Search for America’s Food, will shape a cultural and sensory history of New Deal-era eating, illustrating how nostalgia, prescriptive gender ideals, and racial stereotypes shaped how the FWP was able to frame regional food cultures as “American.”