Culinary Historians of Chicago
Culinary Historians of Chicago studies the history of food and drink in human cultures. Why we procure, prepare and serve the food we do has cultural, sociological, geographical, financial and political influences. We encourage participation from all walks of life: from academics to home cooks, chefs to grill masters, farmers to heirloom gardeners, food scientists to students. Our programs, and those of our sister organization Chicago Foodways Roundtable, are supported by research, fieldwork and scholarship, though geared to an informed popular audience. We welcome everyone to gather at our table to share food, drink and their life’s culinary experiences. If you would like to contact us, please e-mail us at CulinaryHistorians@gmail.com
Episodes
June 1, 2023 • 61 mins
Colombian Exchange Hit World
Like Culinary Comet
Presented by Bill St. John
What we call the Colombian Exchange was that vast interchange of foodstuffs (and peoples, non-edible plants, technology, cultures, diseases and various animals) between the New World and the Old World that began in 1492 A.D. when Columbus “reunited” those two hemispheres.
Come join us as culinary historian Bill St. John serves us the story of the Exchan...
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May 2, 2023 • 55 mins
Fieldwork: A Forager’s Memoir
Presented by Iliana Regan
As Regan explores the ancient landscape of Michigan’s boreal forest, her stories of the land, its creatures, and its dazzling profusion of plant and vegetable life are interspersed with efforts to make a home and a business of an inn that’s suddenly, as of their first full season there in 2020, empty of guests due to the COVID-19 pandemic. She discovers where the wild blueber...
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April 9, 2023 • 71 mins
Made in Chicago: Stories Behind 30 Great Hometown Bites
Presented by Monica Eng and David Hammond
Chicago food shows its true depth in classic dishes conceived in the kitchens of immigrant innovators, neighborhood entrepreneurs, and mom-and-pop visionaries.
Monica Eng and David Hammond draw on decades of exploring the city’s food landscape to serve up thirty can’t-miss eats found in all corners of Chicago. From Mild Sauce to the...
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March 30, 2023 • 68 mins
What you probably didn’t know about Indian food
Presented by Colleen Sen
What ‘ethnic food” is universally popular among Indians?
Who is known as India’s Julia Child?
What Italian restaurateur opened a restaurant called “the Maxim’s of the East?”
How are lichens used in Indian cuisine?
How do Indian Jews celebrate Purim?
Chicago-based Indian food authority and author Colleen Sen will answer these and many more questions when she...
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March 14, 2023 • 87 mins
The Multiple Heritages of Irish Soda Bread
Presented by Lucy Long, PhD
Soda bread, a quick bread using baking soda as the primary rising agent, is closely associated in the U.S. with Ireland. Its history and meanings, however, are much more complicated—and tasty—than the sweet loaf with raisins that is usually found around St Patrick’s Day in March.
This talk discusses the various forms this bread takes in Northern Ireland, the R...
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March 7, 2023 • 73 mins
Advances in science and community science are positively impacting fungal conservation
Presented by Greg Mueller, PhD
Greg will discuss how advances in science and community science are positively impacting fungal conservation. This presentation is for all audiences, and no prior knowledge of mycology or biology will be needed to thoroughly enjoy it.
Gregory M. Mueller, Ph.D. is Negaunee Chief Scientist and Vice President of Scie...
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February 26, 2023 • 67 mins
History of American Pies and Illinois is Well Represented
Presented by Catherine Lambrecht
Pies are as American as pizza is American: we took a great idea, adapted it to our needs and ran with it. Our ancestors used what they had available locally and made the most from it. You might be thinking that pies are just for dessert, but for our American ancestors, they were often considered survival food. Sometimes, they ate pie for bre...
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February 16, 2023 • 74 mins
Bitter Sweet: A Wartime Journal and Heirloom Recipes from Occupied France
Kitty Morse
In our speaker’s own words: “I’d never come across another suitcase quite like it. But what was the tattered black leather valise doing there, hidden behind a crocheted comforter on the top shelf of my late mother’s closet? The tarnished brass locking mechanism had already been sprung.”
… Looking up at me from inside la petite valise was a photo...
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January 26, 2023 • 78 mins
Mooooving Day – Transhumance and the Impact on Dairy Cultures
Presented by Adam Centamore
Every spring, Swiss dairy farmer Béat Piller escorts his 56 cows up the slope of the 6,000-foot Alp Vounetz to a grazing pasture and hand-built stable. They will stay there for the next six months, making milk and cheese every single day. In late autumn, they will descend back down to the valley where his family lives year-round. It’s a routi...
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January 11, 2023 • 66 mins
Truffles
Presented by Susi Gott Séguret
Nature’s most lauded culinary treasures—are subterranean fungi with magical properties which bring new dimensions to countless dishes.
Cooking with Truffles: A Chef’s Guide demystifies the truffle for the professional and the home chef, with over 150 unique and tantalizing recipes to suit every palate and occasion, featuring a variety of recipes, ranging from the simple to the sublime. And ...
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December 31, 2022 • 69 mins
Soul Food Restaurants & the Civil Rights Era
Presented by Dave Hoekstra and Paul Nathin
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. loved the fried catfish and lemon icebox pie at Memphis’s Four Way restaurant. Beloved nonagenarian chef Leah Chase introduced George W. Bush to baked cheese grits and scolded Barack Obama for putting Tabasco sauce on her gumbo at New Orleans’s Dooky Chase’s. When SNCC leader Stokely Carmichael asked Ben’s Chili Bowl ...
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December 30, 2022 • 19 mins
Last Kitchen Tour at the Butz House, March 22, 2015
Conducted by Leah Axelrod
Leah Axelord, charter member and ex-president of the Highland Park Historical Society, conducts the last tour of the period kitchen before the museum closed.
Recorded at the Highland Park Historical Society on March 22, 2015.
www.HighlandParkHistory.org
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December 14, 2022 • 40 mins
The Turkey, An American Story
Andrew F. Smith
“Talking turkey” about the bird you thought you knew.
Fondly remembered as the centerpiece of family Thanksgiving reunions, the turkey is a cultural symbol as well as a multi-billion dollar industry. As a bird, dinner, commodity, and as a national icon, the turkey has become as American as the bald eagle (with which it actually competed for supremacy on national insignias).
Food hi...
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December 13, 2022 • 82 mins
Rose Levy Beranbaum: The Cookie Bible
Her work can certainly be described as “biblical.” And Rose Levy Beranbaum is certainly one of the most sacred figures in all of cookbook publishing. Please join us as Rose delivers a sweet sermon about her latest scripture, The Cookie Bible. And she’ll do a lot more than tell us how a cookie crumbles. Just sit tight in your pew as Rose regales us with crisp comments about cookie history, her ...
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December 11, 2022 • 85 mins
Chinese Home Cooking with The Woks of Life
Sarah and Kaitlin Leung
For much of recent memory, Chinese food was largely the domain of restaurant kitchens or behind the closed doors of Chinese households—foreign at times even to younger generations wanting to recreate the tastes of home.
Today, Chinese home cooking in America is excitingly in flux. Never before has Chinese food been so present in our home kitchens. Along with their...
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December 1, 2022 • 94 mins
Naomi Duguid, A Salty Talk
“Salt”, as Naomi Duguid says, “is the only food we all need.” Come join us as this award-winning writer takes a deep dive into the miracle of salt and its essential role in preserving, fermenting, and transforming food. And she will dish out a generous serving of salt history, harvesting methods and recipes as she quotes from her just-published book, The Miracle of Salt.
“In pre-modern times, access to...
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November 30, 2022 • 79 mins
From ‘Peanut Weddings’ to ‘Beef Stands’:
The Socio-Culinary History of Chicago’s ‘Italian Beef’
Presented by Anthony F. Buccini, PhD
Italian Americans have contributed a considerable number of portable fast foods to regional and local cuisines around the United States, some of which have become extremely popular at the national level. One such food which, despite its frequent discussion in recent food-related media, has remained...
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November 15, 2022 • 59 mins
The Secret House
Fungi in the Built Environment
Presented by Keith Seifert
Department of Biology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1S 5B6
We often overlook the built environment as a biological system, partly because we design our shelters to protect us from the climate and competing organisms. Houses and other buildings contain several sub-environments, which vary from location to location. The outer walls and roof,...
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November 12, 2022 • 51 mins
Savoring Appalachia
Susi Gott Séguret
When asked which cuisine most typifies America, chefs are bound to tell you it stems from the South. From the luscious belly of our nation, the mountains where sweet corn is grown and the rivers where trout flashes its rainbow colors, all the way down to the Mississippi Delta, the South has a gift for capturing both our hearts and our taste buds.
If the South is the heart of America, Appalach...
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November 11, 2022 • 88 mins
Fool’s Gold: A History of British Saffron
Sam Bilton
Saffron has allured us with its golden hues throughout time. It was the darling of the Medieval kitchen, the saviour of the apothecary’s chest and gave cloth a regal glow. Unlike many spices, such as cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, saffron can be successfully grown in England. From the middle ages through to the eighteenth century there was a thriving saffron industry in this count...
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