Spotlight on Sources

African Americans & Food

African Americans & Food Spotlight

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Barbecue

Barbecue Spotlight

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Bread

 Bread Spotlight

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Breakfast

Breakfast used to be very different from the meal we think of today. In the nineteenth century, Americans generally ate big, hearty breakfasts, at least when they could afford to do so. They ate familiar breakfast foods like pancakes, hot cereal, toasted bread, eggs, and coffee, but they also ate other things that Americans today wouldn't recognize as breakfast foods at all. They ate meats like mutton, chipped beef, fried chicken, and fish; they ate potatoes, beans, and all sorts of vegetables; they ate a huge variety of breads, preserves, and pie. But habits changed. Breakfast looked very different by the 1930s, as a result of developments like industrial food processing, expanding transportation networks, growing national brands, shrinking calorie needs, and new expectations about how long it should take to cook breakfast. Many Americans relied on industrial products like boxed cereals (served cold with milk from the icebox or refrigerator), mass-produced bread (grilled in modern electric toasters), and fruit juices that had been preserved in cans or bottles and shipped across the country. Yet not all Americans adopted these habits. The sources below capture breakfast in a moment of transition. </div> <div> </div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-2589 USEFULLRECORD164-590-2674 George W. Davey, "Bunnies In Wheatie-Land" (Minneapolis: Gold Medal Products Co., 1931),  p. 4, The Alan and Shirley Brocker Sliker Collection, MSS 314, Special Collections, Michigan State University Libraries.</div> <div> </div> <div>By the 1930s, many Americans were eating modern breakfasts consisting of things like factory-made boxed cereal with milk and toasted bread from a store or bakery. Why did the Gold Medal company create an illustrated story for children about Wheaties cereal?</div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-1748 USEFULLRECORD164-590-345 Excerpt, Si Stoddard, "When Dinner Was Dinner," essay from Montana America Eats, Library of Congress collection, 1941.</div> <div> </div> <div>Many Americans in the 1930s remembered older styles of breakfast, and they sometimes reminisced about a time when people had regularly eaten large hot breakfasts containing various meats, breads, vegetables, and leftovers from dinner the night before. </div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-1749 USEFULLRECORD164-590-1493 "New Mexico Breakfast," Essay from New Mexico America Eats, Library of Congress collection.</div> <div> </div> <div>Not all Americans in the 1930s had adopted modern breakfast habits based on processed, pre-made foods. How do the breakfast foods described in this essay from rural New Mexico differ from the kinds of breakfasts people were eating in American cities and suburbs?</div> <div><br />  </div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-2587 USEFULLRECORD164-590-2591 "All About Canned Foods," advertising pamphlet (Chicago, IL: Libby, McNeill & Libby Union Stockyards, 1938). The Alan and Shirley Brocker Sliker Collection, MSS 314, Special Collections, Michigan State University Libraries.</div> <div> </div> <div>Since the discovery of vitamins around 1910, fruit and fruit juices — increasingly available in cans and bottles around the country — played an important role in American breakfasts. </div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-2590 USEFULLRECORD164-590-1751 "New Fashion Plates For Your Menu," advertising pamphlet (Suffolk, VA and Wilkes-Barre, PA: Planters Edible Oil Co., 1932). The Alan and Shirley Brocker Sliker Collection, MSS 314, Special Collections, Michigan State University Libraries.</div> <div> </div> <div>Working to strengthen associations between peanut-growing and southern plantations, the Planters Peanut company created a recipe for "Southern Waffles" using Planters Hi-Hat peanut oil. Why would people at the time have thought of peanuts as a particularly southern food?</div> <div> </div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-2588 USEFULLRECORD164-590-1753 Herman N. Bunsen,"A Safe Reducing Diet," advertising pamphlet (Racine, WI: Horlick's Malted Milk Corp., 1933), p. 17, The Alan and Shirley Brocker Sliker Collection, MSS 314, Special Collections, Michigan State University Libraries.</div> <div> </div> <div>Very few Americans before the twentieth century ever dieted to lose weight. But by the 1930s weight-loss diets based on calorie restriction were common. What other modern elements do you see in this suggested breakfast menu from 1933?</div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-1750 USEFULLRECORD164-590-1441 Nebraska Writers' Project."Nebraska Pancakes," Recipes from Nebraska America Eats, Library of Congress collection.</div> <div> </div> <div>Some recipes in the 1930s included cooking instructions but lacked ingredient quantities. Others, like this pancake recipe from Nebraska, included ingredients but lacked cooking instructions. What do these different formats suggest about the kinds of kitchen experience recipe writers expected cooks to have?</div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div>

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Immigrants

During the 1930s, discriminatory restrictions combined with economic depression reduced immigration to the United States to its historic low point. Americans often expressed conflicted opinions about immigrants and their foods. Even as the country rejected Prohibition, it continued to negatively associate foreigners with drinking and with the brewing and wine industries. Food writers in both the federal and state offices of the America Eats project worried how to distinguish "American" from "foreign" foods. Americans often seemed curious about immigrant foods as attractively "exotic" but they were also selective in their attractions and preferred dishes made with familiar meats or immigrant sweets. While many immigrants operated food businesses, it was their children who first became food writers or authored cookbooks. Rapidly expanding corporate food producers played important roles in introducing long-time and more recently arrived Americans to each others’ foods. Eager to generate profits, food conglomerates advertised to immigrant and American consumers alike; by the 1930s they offered a growing array of mass-produced versions of dishes with roots in far-away lands.</div> <div> </div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-2592 USEFULLRECORD164-590-9 Choice Recipes, Fruit And Flower Mission Of Seattle (Seattle: Lowman & Hanford Co., 1930). Print. Special Collections, Michigan State University Libraries, p. 78.</div> <div>Why did the women in Seattle’s Fruit and Flower Mission (who had volunteered since 1907 in area hospitals) decide to write a cookbook in 1930? Do you think Mrs. W.P. Moody was herself Chinese? Why might an American woman want to eat or cook Chinese food?</div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-2593 USEFULLRECORD164-590-1961 "Creamettes Recipes," advertising pamphlet (Minneapolis, MN: Creamette Co., 1940). The Alan and Shirley Brocker Sliker Collection, MSS 314, Special Collections, Michigan State University Libraries, p. 3.</div> <div>How does this Creamettes recipe differ from the recipe for "Italian Meat Balls" below? Which cooks - American or Italian immigrant  - would be more likely to use the 1940 Creamettes recipe? Why?</div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-2594 USEFULLRECORD164-590-9 Choice Recipes, Fruit And Flower Mission Of Seattle (Seattle: Lowman & Hanford Co., 1930). Print. Special Collections, Michigan State University Libraries, p. 59</div> <div>Which meatball recipe - this one or the much simpler one produced by the Creamettes company above - most resembles the meatballs you may have cooked or eaten?</div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-2595 USEFULLRECORD164-590-2471 "What Shall I Serve? Famous Recipes For Jewish Housewives," advertising pamphlet (Rumford, RI: Rumford Co., 1931). The Alan and Shirley Brocker Sliker Collection, MSS 314, Special Collections, Michigan State University Libraries, p. 7.</div> <div>How might this recipe for kreplech have differed from the recipes Jewish housewives learned from their immigrant mothers or from the recipes their grandmothers used in the home country? How do you think a company like Rumford, founded by New England Protestants, had learned about kreplech and about their association with Shavuoth (a Jewish feast day)? </div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-2596 USEFULLRECORD164-590-2062 "F. W. Mcness' Cook Book," advertising pamphlet (Freeport, IL: Furst-McNess Co., Chemists and Manufacturing Pharmacists , 1933) The Alan and Shirley Brocker Sliker Collection, MSS 314, Special Collections, Michigan State University Libraries, pp. 13-15.</div> <div>Frank E. Furst, a chemist, and Frederick W. McNess, a pharmacist founded their company in 1908 to import and manufacture flavorings and extracts. Why do you suppose they created this advertising material with recipes in two languages in 1933? Can you identify any recipe ingredients that may have been difficult for American cooks to obtain or that Furst and McNess may have manufactured?</div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-218 USEFULLRECORD164-590-218 Stuart, Allis B. "The Stuart Party," Essay from Montana America Eats, Library of Congress collection. (1941)</div> <div>Sharing food can bring together people of differing backgrounds. Why did the Japanese neighbor of Mrs. Stuart choose not to participate in her party? How did Mrs. Stuart learn about Japanese recipes?</div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-1625 USEFULLRECORD164-590-1625 Tomasi, Mari. "Vermont Italian Feeds," Essay from Vermont America Eats, Library of Congress collection.</div> <div>In this rare example of a recent immigrant writing about the food of her home community, how does Mari Tomasi describe the motivation for women offering the "feeds?" How does the host,  Maria, justify providing diners with a glass of wine?</div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-388 USEFULLRECORD164-590-388 Miller, Gladys W. "The Lutheran Brotherhood Supper," Essay from Montana America Eats, Library of Congress collection. (1941)</div> <div>What is lutefisk and how is it prepared? Who organized this supper; who do you think purchased and ate the food prepared? Why do you think two menus were offered?</div> <div> </div> <div>

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Pioneer

The "Frontier" is an idea with enormous power in American culture. As an idea and a myth, it has been used to describe American history as an inevitable – if rugged – march westward. According to pioneer mythology, men and the pioneer families that followed them tamed the Great Plains wilderness to establish the bedrock of American culture and agrarian economic success.<br /> <br /> In reality, the frontier was a place where men and women of different races worked, lived, and ate. Historians have highlighted that settlers altered and destroyed local ecosystems, and in so doing they eliminated the food sources and traditional land uses of American Indians. Westward expansion was an uneven process that displaced and killed people already living in the Great Plains.<br /> <br /> Still, pioneer mythology was alive and well in the 1930s, and it affected how Americans thought about their eating habits. Indeed, pioneer mythology was only growing in that decade, reaching new audiences through the publication of Laura Ingalls Wilder's fictionalized <em>Little House</em> memoirs and through an emerging genre of Hollywood movies called "westerns," which offered viewers a welcome escape from the reality of the Great Depression.<br /> <br /> The sources below allow us to peak into both the myth and the reality of life in the American West in the nineteenth century, and they invite us to think about how Americans in the 1930s used this past for their own purposes, as they thought about themselves and how and what they ate.</div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-141 USEFULLRECORD164-590-141 Bartlett, W. A. “Food of the Frontier,” Essay from Montana America Eats, Library of Congress collection.</div> <div>The author contrasts food distribution systems in the 1930s with those in the nineteenth century. According to him, what are the advantages and drawbacks of each? How does he remember the food of his childhood, and why?</div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-1233 USEFULLRECORD164-590-1233 Shepherd, Rose. "Pine Barren Pioneer Settlers Picnic," Essay from Florida America Eats, Library of Congress collection.</div> <div>This essay describes an event in Florida, a state that was racially segregated in the 1930s. Why do you think the white community decided to establish a monument to its "founders" and to repeat the celebration every year with a picnic? What was at stake in this memorialization?</div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-530 USEFULLRECORD164-590-530 "Wyoming Eats," Essay from Wyoming America Eats, Library of Congress collection. (1941).</div> <div>This is a long essay with diverse material, which is quite typical of material from the America Eats project. What is the overall tone of the piece? The author describes a "dude ranch." What is this? Why do you think the dude ranch was successful in the 1930s? What do we learn from the first-person accounts included in the middle of the source that we do not get from the more redacted portions of the essay? For instance, how does the description of women's roles in food preparation differ?</div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-1452 USEFULLRECORD164-590-1452 "Scandinavian Recipes from Pioneer Housewives,:" Recipes from North Dakota America Eats, Library of Congress collection.</div> <div>Are you familiar with any of these dishes? Why or why not? How do you interpret the handwritten note in the margin of the last dish, "combination salad"? What did that mean, and how does this dish differ from the others?</div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-2037 USEFULLRECORD164-590-2037 "Famous Dishes From Every State," advertising pamphlet (Dayton, OH: Frigidaire Corp., 1936). The Alan and Shirley Brocker Sliker Collection, MSS 314, Special Collections, Michigan State University Libraries.</div> <div>What ideas do the first two images, the image of the boat and the image of the wagon, convey? Cooking before refrigeration relied on preservation techniques such as salting or preserving. By the 1930s, however, refrigeration in the form of both ice boxes and electric refrigeration was becoming widespread in middle-class American homes, and refrigeration was rapidly making older preservation technologies obsolete. Why, then, would an advertising pamphlet for Frigidaire – a company that made electric refrigerators – use these images to sell its goods?</div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div>

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Spanish-Speakers

Spanish, Hispanic, Indian, Mexican, or Latin? In the 1930s, writers from Arizona, Florida, New Mexico, Colorado, and California applied these labels equally to the foods and to people. In the 1930s, some Spanish-speaking Americans were descendants of Spaniards and Indians whose lands had been seized by the United States from Mexico in 1848. Others were recent immigrants from Spain, Cuba, and Mexico. Most still transmitted culinary knowledge orally – that is, they talked to each other about food and cooking, rather than relying on cookbooks or other written sources. By the 1930s in the southwest and west, both English-speaking Americans and recent immigrants from Europe had already adopted some of the foods of their Spanish-speaking neighbors. So emblematic of the region were Spanish and Mexican foods that tourists from the eastern United States actively sought them out and made them central to their experience of places they imagined as romantic and exotic. The mass production of chili powder by corporate food processors also made it possible for those who had never visited the southwest to gain a taste of “Spain” or “Mexico” without leaving home.</div> <div> </div> <div> </div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-1192 USEFULLRECORD164-590-1192 Del Castillo, J. “A Mexican Barbecue,” Essay from Arizona America Eats, Library of Congress collection. (1942)</div> <div>Why do you suppose the author, who has a Spanish last name but writes in English, used so many Spanish words to describe the making of the barbecue feast? Why might he have assumed that English-speakers would understand these words? How did the activities of men and women and of girls and boys differ at this community festival?</div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-403 USEFULLRECORD164-590-403 “Spanish Foods in Colorado,” Essay from Colorado America Eats, Library of Congress collection.</div> <div>If the foods prepared by Spanish-speaking women in Colorado were so different from what American families ate in the 1930s, why do you suppose tortillas, tamales, chili, and enchiladas had become so popular among the non-Spanish speakers?</div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-1208 USEFULLRECORD164-590-1208 Dolan, Don. “Southern California Sandwiches,” Essay from Southern California America Eats, Library of Congress collection. (1942)</div> <div>Do you agree with the author that tacos, tamales, and “French-dips” were all varieties of sandwiches? What if anything did all share in common? What defines a sandwich?</div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-1243 USEFULLRECORD164-590-1243 "Florida Eats," Essay from Florida America Eats, Library of Congress collection.</div> <div>Do you know when Spanish-speakers first arrived in Florida? Who are the Latins the author mentions living in Tampa?</div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-2675 USEFULLRECORD164-590-2629 “Gebhardt's Mexican Cookery For American Homes [1932],” advertising pamphlet (San Antonio, TX and San Luis Potosi, Mexico: Gebhardt Chili Powder Co., 1932). The Alan and Shirley Brocker Sliker Collection, MSS 314, Special Collections, Michigan State University Libraries.</div> <div>Who are the consumers that the Gebhardt Company imagines using their Chili Powder? How do they differ from the cooks and eaters described in Document 1?</div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-2597 USEFULLRECORD164-590-2597 Choice Recipes, Fruit And Flower Mission Of Seattle (Seattle: Lowman & Hanford Co., 1930). Print. Special Collections, Michigan State University Libraries, p. 18.</div> <div>Where was this recipe published? Do you think the woman contributing the recipe was Spanish? Why or why not? Compare this sandwich to the sandwiches described in Document 3. Do you think this sandwich has origins in Mexico? Why or why not?</div> <div>PUTIMAGEHERE164-590-2598 USEFULLRECORD164-590-2598 The Junior League of Dallas Cook Book (Dallas, TX: Junior League Of Dallas Inc., 1935). Print. Special Collections, Michigan State University Libraries, p. 105.</div> <div>If you made the avocado appetizer with this recipe, what would you call it? What ingredients in this recipe surprised you or were unfamiliar to you? This cookbook was published by socially prominent women in Dallas; what might this recipe reveal about their lives?</div> <div>

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