Giving Season
Nineteenth-century food reform, and the possibilities of patronage
If the posts in the remainder of this year become noticeably shorter, it’s because I’m on a mad dash to finish drafting my dissertation before the new year. But, in the course of finalizing my introduction, I’ve been thinking a lot about power—who holds it, who wields it, and how it can be put to good use.
In the period I generally cover in my introduction (1865-1893), food and drink were topics of significant social and cultural interest, not just for the pleasures they facilitated, but for the efforts to reform their composition and consumption. Anxieties around the social and moral degradation of the Industrial age led to a call for a widespread rejection of alcohol. The Temperance Movement was far from a niche cause, promoted by some of the most prominent reform organizations of the era including the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, a group that raised significant funds to establish clean drinking fountains in public spaces to forestall the consumption of alcohol. Though immigrants were remaking regional cuisines across the country, upper- and middle-class reformers blamed immigrants for the poor urban living conditions which they were forced to endure, claiming that the new arrivals simply did not know how to keep their homes disease- and contamination-free. Many popular cookbooks, magazines, and pamphlets of the day functioned as culinary gatekeepers, with dietitians such as Ella Eaton Kellogg warning against “irritating condiments” such as peppers, garlic, and mustards, stating that “the sense of taste was given to us to distinguish between wholesome and unwholesome foods, and cannot be used for merely sensuous gratification, without debasing and making of it a gross thing.” Concerns about widespread consumer fraud and food adulteration in the late nineteenth century were voiced in the pages of Good Housekeeping, drawing explicit links between the quality of the nation’s food and the stability of American households. As Marian S. Devereux wrote in an 1885 column for the magazine, “The hygienic and moral reforms which women have so much at heart, must have one of their starting points in the cuisine. The best temperance lectures may be given through good, wholesome, nourishing food, served attractively at a happy family table.” Reforming food was not just a pet cause—to the women who cared about it most, such efforts were essential to ensuring the stability, social fabric, and moral character of the American household.
From a twenty-first century perspective, it’s difficult to see these initiatives as uniformly good, and a good number of them might be best described as good intentions gone wildly astray. Yet I have to admire the way that women of means were the people who pushed almost all of these initiatives forward into the public eye. It was women like Pauline Agassiz Shaw, who after marrying into an old Boston Brahmin family used her wealth to open some of the first public kindergartens and daycares in the country, and gave Ellen Richards and Mary Hinman Abel the funds to open the New England Kitchen. Annie Dewey, a skilled librarian and the wife of famed educator Melvil Dewey, offered significant financial and organizational support to the Lake Placid conferences on home economics, creating one of the first scholarly spaces in which to gather the leading figures on the scientific management of the household. And it was the patronage of wealthy women at the leading culinary schools of the day—including the New York Cooking School, run by the masterful instructor Juliet Corson—who made it possible for free or significantly discounted cooking classes to be offered to working-class women. As the historian Joan Marie Johnson wrote in her book Funding Feminism, “with little political power, philanthropy was perhaps the most potent tool that women had. Women philanthropists had to give money in order to bring about social change for women.” Such generosity was not without its caveats, and Corson acknowledged that she divided her course offerings based on her clientele, as affluent students received “artisan” instruction, whereas others were trained as “plain cooks”. Yet the patronage she received, and the support other culinary leaders of the day received from wealthy women, allowed them to extend their teachers and scope of influence in unprecedented ways.
This is all historical backdrop to say that, as 2024 approaches, I’ve been thinking about the strategic purpose of patronage: when to pursue it, when to reject it, and what it might enable me to do as a holder and communicator of food knowledge. Initially I began this newsletter as a means of getting out my own head—of writing freely as a way of thinking about my work across all parts of the food landscape. I’m so grateful that you’ve shown up week after week to share in my ruminations, and your likes, comments, and restacks have given me a new level of faith that I can actually keep my food writing going regardless of whether or not I’m on the scholarly side of the street.
But I’m also wondering about whether I can harness your power as the nineteenth-century food reformers did, creating an economic foundation for myself to do broader, more effective work that can reach more readers and engage more voices in food. I’d love to find new avenues for this content—podcasts, guest posts, community events, maybe even a cooking video or two—but to do that I need more resources to take me forward. However, I’m very aware of the to-subscribe-or-not-to-subscribe conundrum, especially in a media landscape where paywalled content feels so completely out of touch with the free dissemination of ideas. I’d never convert this to an entirely paid newsletter—yes, this cow will still give you milk for free—because I want it to be easy to share no matter who’s reading. But I’d also like to find a way to make the entire project a bit more generative—to make this side hustle more of a genuine hustle.
So rather than create a two-tiered system for what you get if you subscribe, separating the “artisans” from the “plain cooks”, I’d like to know—would you consider a paid subscription to this newsletter, just for the sake of patronage? Please add your thoughts in the comments below, and I’ll factor it in as I think about what that model might look like going forward.
As a closing thought, I’ll drop my favorite aphorism on money, from the playwright Thornton Wilder: “Money is like manure—it’s not worth a thing unless it’s spread around encouraging young things to grow.”
Recommendation: It’s hardly a light night at the movies, but if you haven’t yet watched Fair Play, you are missing out. While I have fallen way behind on my corporate tension entertainment fare (Industry, I miss you), this is a brilliant and very tense debut from writer-director Chloe Domont that explores the paired minefield of the world of finance and gender politics. (Think Adam’s Rib, but far less slapstick.) Not necessarily a great date night flick, but undoubtedly one that will keep you talking.
The Perfect Bite: Several in quick succession over the last two weeks: 1) some pizza ebraica brought back by my father-in-law from Pasticceria il Boccione in Rome. I first learned about this during my conversation with Leah Koenig about her book Portico, and I was a little skeptical about something that sounded like slightly burnt mandelbrot with a fruitcake filling. But after trying it, I haven’t been able to get it out of my mind—so the solution is either to fly to Rome for another taste, or to try out Koenig’s recipe for recreating the thing. 2) A few days after Thanksgiving, we put aside the home cooking and went to Yoma Boston for a sampling of Burmese cuisine. Everything was delicious, but my favorite was the salad known as lahpet thoke, made with various vegetables tossed with crunchy beans and nuts in a pickled tea leaf dressing. The flavors were perfectly balanced and its textural variety was great, especially when scooped up with pinches of freshly baked palata flatbread.
Cooked & Consumed: When I know something delicious is in order, I go with what works: roasted chicken, crunchy bread, and lots and lots of garlic. So I finally tried out a forty-cloves-of-garlic chicken, working with a template from Ina Garten’s Barefoot in Paris. That special alchemy of roasted garlic, rendered chicken fat, cognac, cream, and white wine blew me away, especially when soaked up by sourdough croutons and roasted cauliflower. This one went all the way to eleven.