Men far surpassed the number of women eating away from home through most of the 19th century. But, slowly more dining rooms reserved for women appeared. Usually on the second […]
Category: posts
The history of the refrigerator
William C. Durant started the Frigidaire Company in 1918 to mass-produce refrigerators based on the invention of a self-contained refrigerator, with a compressor on the bottom of the cabinet. In […]
How Armenian Immigrants Built an American Candy Empire
Turkish-born Peter Halajian set off for America in 1890, just as large-scale hostilities were increasing against the Ottoman Empire’s Armenian community. Settling in New Haven, Connecticut, he changed his last […]
Penny restaurants fed the hungry during the Depression
“Penny restaurants” began in the late 19th century in cities across the United States. Usually operated as charitable programs to provide inexpensive meals to the needy, these eateries became most […]
Ancient humans stored leftovers at least 200,000 years ago
Neanderthals or early Homo sapiens humans were storing bone marrow in a cave in modern-day Israel 200,000 to 300,000 years ago. Researchers have discovered deer bones with cut marks where […]
Food Conservation During WWI
The United States Food Administration, created in 1917 and headed by Herbert Hoover, campaigned to convince Americans to voluntarily change their eating habits in order to have enough food to […]
If war is hell, coffee is salvation
Civil War soldiers obsessed about coffee. The word coffee was more present in Civil War diaries than the words “war,” “bullet,” “cannon,” “slavery,” “mother” or even “Lincoln.” As soon as […]
Podcast: American Beef Economy of late 19th century
A 49 minute podcast interview with Joshua Specht, author of Red Meat Republic: A Hoof-to-Table History of How Beed Changed America. Specht describes the entire “beef economy” of the nineteenth […]
Why So Many Diners Look Like Train Cars
Diners started out on wheels. In the late 19th century, street carts selling snacks and lunches had morphed into roving lunch wagons. While some lunch wagons sported Gilded-Age decor, such […]
The Surprisingly Cool History of Ice
“In 1805, two wealthy brothers from Boston were at a family picnic, enjoying the rare luxuries of cold beverages and ice cream. They joked about how their chilled refreshments would […]