Featured Podcast
- Gastropod: Out of the Fire, Into the Frying Pan The invention of the pot was, after fire, one of the most important innovations in cooking. You'll want to hug your favorite skillet after coming along with us on this journey, which ranges from some of the earliest clay pots ever found in what's now the Sahara Desert, to the British round-bellied cast-iron number that kickstarted the Industrial Revolution, to a legal challenge in Ohio that raised the question of Teflon's health and environmental impact.
Featured Book
- Table Settings : The Material Culture and Social Context of Dining, AD 1700-1900 The unique contribution of this volume lies in the way in which a distinguished group of international historical archaeologists have combined the richness of primary archaeological evidence with a wealth of documentary evidence to create insightful new material histories of dining.
Related Guides
About Pots & Pans
This guide provides selected course-specific resources for MET ML612: Pots & Pans: The Material Culture of Cookery & Dining
Featured Article
- Hopson, Nathan. “‘Humans Bring Food to Their Mouths, Animals Bring Their Mouths to Food’-The Morality Politics of School-Lunch Sporks in 1970s Japan.” Food & Foodways, vol. 31, no. 1, 2023, pp. 1–21. (Taylor & Francis) We are not only what we eat, but how. This article examines the 1970s’ morality politics of spork usage that accompanied the rollout of rice in school lunches. I argue that these discourses about the material culture and etiquette of eating reflect the economic and political context of 1970s Japan and (re)emergent tensions about national identity and the role of children’s diet and table manners in determining Japan’s future.
Featured Resource
- Chocolate Pot (Artstor) Coney, John, 1655-1722.. 1701.. Chocolate Pot. Containers., Drinking vessels., Cups., Beakers (drinking vessels). Place: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
Featured Podcasts & Film
- Ox Tales: Why Kitchen Technology Matters Food writer Bee Wilson traces the genealogy of kitchen utensils and how they shape our lives– from vegetable peelers to paleolithic knives, chopsticks and even the mortar and pestle. She begs the question: why shouldn’t we consider kitchen tools to be just as important as military or industrial technology?
- A Taste of the Past: Evolution of the American Kitchen, from Workplace to Dreamscape,1940S-70S The prosperity of the 1950’s kicked off the revolution in technology and design that transformed the American kitchen from scullery to the central great room of the modern home. Modern pastel colored appliances and kitchen products made by companies whose names became household synonyms for convenience were representative of the era.
- Pots and Pans (streaming, Academic Video Online) On a cast-iron foundry in France making pots, the evolution of one-pot cooking, and more.
Librarian
This guide was originally authored by Chris Smith, April, 2023.