Libraries and Library Guides
- Rubenstein Library Test Kitchen, Duke University Libraries One of the Duke Libraries’ most popular blog series is the Rubenstein Test Kitchen. For this series, we invite library staff and affiliated scholars to recreate historic recipes. Our contributors exercise a fair amount of creativity and patience as they replicate decades- or even centuries-old recipes. Their trials and tribulations at the stovetop are indicative of the culinary skills and know-how that can be lost in translation.
- Arthur & Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America The library holds more than 100,000 volumes, ranging from rare 16th-century texts to 21st-century titles. Approximately 20,000 of these volumes are cookbooks or food related.
Library Research Guides, Course Guides and Food-Related Assignments
- Culinary History Research Guide, New York Public Library The field of food and cookery has always held a strong interest for The New York Public Library. The retrospective collection on gastronomy and the history of foods is unusually extensive, and the cookbook collection alone numbers well over 16,000 volumes. From the beginning, the Library has sought out culinary materials from all regions of the country, and from all parts of the world, in all the languages in which it collects.
- Historic Cooking Resources, University of Delaware Library Includes hints on locating historic recipes and putting historic recipes in context.
- Food Studies Research Guide, University of Michigan Food Studies is an interdisciplinary field that takes a wide thin slice across the arts, humanities and sciences. Food Studies gathers together knowledge about food as it occurs anywhere in established disciplines, to understand relationships.
- Sow the Seeds of Victory National Archives guide to teaching with posters from the Food Administration during WWI.
Food-Related Museums and Exhibits
- Culinary Arts Museum, Johnson & Wales University As of February 27, 2017, the museum is permanently closed to the public. The university is digitizing the museum’s holdings for research and can be viewed on our Collections page.
- Southern Food and Beverage Museum The Southern Food & Beverage Museum (SoFAB) was founded in 2004 by Elizabeth Williams, who wanted a place where the intersection between culture and food could be studied. The museum began with pop-ups around the city of New Orleans, and the first official exhibit was on the history and influences of beverages in New Orleans, created with borrowed artifacts. After the first exhibit, individuals began donating family artifacts to the museum.
- The Food Museum Online Co-founders of The Potato Museum, a 501c3, and its offshoot, The FOOD Museum On-Line, Tom Hughes and Meredith Sayles Hughes are dedicated to discovering, exploring and promoting the world's foods, their histories, and relevance today. High on their list: the establishment of a national museum dedicated to food, possibly on the Mall in Washington, DC.
Exhibits
- AdViews, Duke University Libraries, Digital Collections The AdViews digital collection provides access to thousands of historic commercials created for clients or acquired by the D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles (DMB&B) advertising agency or its predecessor during the 1950s - 1980s. All of the commercials held in the DMB&B Archives will be digitized, allowing students and researchers
- Not by Bread Alone: America's Culinary Heritage "Not by Bread Alone" explores the influences and inventions that have shaped American food habits over the past two hundred years. On view in the Carl A. Kroch Library from June 6 to October 4, 2002, the exhibition highlights rare books, photographs, menus, and other early documents that trace the history of gastronomy in America.
- Key Ingredients; America by Food Key Ingredients: America by Food is a Museum on Main Street, Smithsonian Institution traveling exhibition.
- Harvest of Freedom: History of Kitchen Gardens in America Drawing from the special collections of Mann Library and the Ethel Zoe Bailey Horticultural Catalogue Collection of the Bailey Hortorium, this exhibit highlights the changing yet enduring history of kitchen gardening in America.
- The Sweet Lure of Chocolate This special online-only edition of Exploring takes a closer look at the sweet lure of chocolate. We'll examine the fascinating -- and often misreported -- history of chocolate, follow the chocolate-making process, and take an online visit to a chocolate factory. We'll also look at the science of chocolate, and find out about the latest research into the possible health effects of its consumption. Lastly, we'll explore the somewhat controversial question of why chocolate make us feel so good.
- History of Eating Utensils The Department of Anthropology at the California Academy of Sciences houses the Rietz Collection of Food Technology. Containing nearly 1,400 items, this collection was assembled by Carl Austin Rietz, an inventor and businessman in the food industry. His interest in the industry led him on travels around the world to collect objects used in the production, processing, storage, presentation, preparation, and serving of food. A large portion of this collection consists of eating utensils, including tableware and portable eating sets. The variety of forms displayed by many items in the Rietz Collection document the history and evolution of such common utensils as forks, knives, spoons, and chopsticks.
- Household Words: Women Write from and for the Kitchen An Exhibition from the Esther B. Aresty Collection of Rare Books in the Culinary Arts Department of Special Collections, Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania.
- A Chef & His Library, University of Pennsylvania Chef Fritz Blank's culinary library helps to illustrate how a homegrown Jersey boy became one of America's foremost French chefs. Since surviving a 1987 Dumpster fire that otherwise gutted Blank's original location of his restaurant, Deux Cheminées, his collection has grown to over 10,000 volumes of cookery books plus recipe pamphlets, menus and other culinary ephemera.
- The Edible Monument: The Art of Food for Festivals Ornate edible architecture and sculptures were often created for celebrations in the cities and courts of early modern Europe. The Edible Monument, an exhibition of the ephemeral art created for these festivals, drew from sixteenth to nineteenth century books and prints in the Getty Research Institute's Special Collections.
