CHAPTER

1

Food Heritage

“Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what your are.”

—JEAN ANTHELME BRILLAT-SAVARIN

The Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin quote at the beginning of this chapter is well-known to fans of the cable television show Iron Chef. Penned by a French lawyer and politician, these words hold a grain of truth for family historians. What we eat is a reflection of so many things—including regionalism, ethnicity, and religion—and we want to learn more about these aspects of our ancestors’ lives. What we eat can say a lot about us as individuals and as members of families.

This book explores the connection between family history, food history, and food tradition. What does food have to do with your genealogical research? Everything. Food plays a major role in social history. Adding a social history perspective to your family history will teach you more about who your ancestors really were. And when we pass on family food traditions to our children and grandchildren, we help them better understand their connection to their family history.

SOCIAL HISTORY AND YOUR ANCESTORS

Family history is sometimes pursued with a very narrow lens. Too often, research is done solely to gather facts like names, dates, and places. Family history presented this way can seem like a middle school history class, the one that you could barely stay awake for. Most genealogists lament the lack of interest that their family, especially children and grandchildren, shows in the family history they are working so hard to uncover. Is it any wonder that the younger generation would have little interest in looking exclusively at names and dates printed on a pedigree chart or a family group sheet? Those names, dates, and places tell us very little about the lives of our ancestors. They are random facts in a larger story that is begging to be told.

At its best, family history is the story of our ancestors’ tragedies, triumphs, sorrows, and happiness. Family history research and writings should include the everyday elements of our ancestors’ lives, like what they wore, what type of house they lived in, what they learned in school, and what foods they ate. This type of detail illustrates how their everyday lives were similar to, or very different from, our own.

Adding social history information to your genealogy takes your research to the next level, past the gathering of names and dates. While we could spend all our time gathering thousands of names to add to our family trees, a social history approach allows us to add depth and layers to our family histories. Traditional history is written on a macro level of governments, leaders, and battles. Social history brings these events down to the micro level, the level of the everyman and woman, showing us how our ancestors’ everyday lives were affected by the government, the leaders, and the wars of their times. Social history is concerned with ordinary people’s everyday lives. As genealogist Katherine Scott Sturdevant writes in her book, Bringing Your Family History to Life Through Social History, “Social history is the study of ordinary people’s extraordinary lives.”¹

Social history helps us connect the what and why with the who and where. It is only through the addition of social history, the so-called “putting the flesh on the bones” of our ancestors, that we learn who they were, what types of lives they lived, and what those lives have to say to us today.

Adding social history to an ancestor’s life can mean looking at an ancestor’s occupation and exploring the tools he used to make his living. Maybe you are interested in what education looked like for a seventeenth-century ancestor living in colonial America. Your ancestors’ religion is something you may want to explore, researching what they believed and how they put that belief into action. A social history perspective can also mean trying to better understand the everyday routine of an ancestor’s life. Today women with children spend their days multitasking as they cook meals, prepare children for the school day, run errands, work outside of the home, and complete household chores. Do you ever wonder what activities filled the days of your female ancestors? How did they do their shopping? What kind of houses did they live in? What did their clothes look like? How did they prepare for important events like weddings, childbirth, or even funerals? What kind of food did they eat and how did they procure and prepare it?

WHAT DID MY ANCESTORS EAT?

Food history and food traditions play a key role in social history. Remember the saying “You are what you eat.” It’s as applicable today as it was one hundred years ago. Understanding your family’s food history and food traditions can help you learn more about your family’s cultural identity, financial status, religious beliefs, and overall health. Some of your food history involves the happy times and celebrations and fond memories, while other aspects of your history may involve foods that helped people survive difficult times.

How is the food you eat every day different from what you eat during holidays or celebrations? Holidays and celebrations may mean an abundance of different kinds of foods that you may not necessarily eat day to day because they are too elaborate or expensive for an everyday meal. People typically hold fond memories of the food they eat on holidays. We remember the traditional foods our families ate year after year, recipes that may have been prepared only once a year for that special occasion. Those are the recipes that get passed down through the generations, and they are the ones we most looked forward to eating.

Historically, studying what families ate informs our understanding of the families’ financial resources and how their daily lives were directly affected by events around them. In times of war, famine, or financial depression, food became scarce and diets looked radically different than the meals of more prosperous times. For example, in present-day America, meats we consider “acceptable” to eat include fish, beef, poultry, and pork. During war times, these meats were scarce and substitutions were made. In some cases vegetables replaced the protein found in meat, but in other instances, many animals now considered pets were used for meat. This idea is fully explored in chapter four.

Your family may have taken these hard-times food substitutions and incorporated them into its diet. In some cases these foods may have been seen as comfort foods or even reminders of how the family did with what they had. Others may have grown leery of foods that they had to make do with, and after the hard times ended, they never ate them again. Eating the same thing repeatedly can cure a person of ever eating a particular dish again. Lessons learned from hard times may have carried over to our families’ everyday lives decades later. “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without” is a motto some families lived by and applied to everything from clothing and material goods to food.

Food traditions can also reveal personality traits and personal preferences in an ancestor, which adds a depth of humanity. This knowledge can make the ancestor seem more relatable to future generations. Family members might want to know more about the life of a great-aunt after they taste her favorite cookie recipe. That same cookie recipe would be a great addition to a narrative about that great-aunt’s life.

Your ancestors’ diets may have been influenced by the health movements and attitudes of their times. These health fads may have been part of a religious belief or simply the social mores of the day that dictated what was healthy and what was not. While some of these fads faded away as quickly as they were introduced, other food reformers brought about foods and ideas that are still a part of our modern diet. Nineteenth-
century diet reformer Sylvester Graham advocated that a vegetarian diet consisting largely of raw foods would increase health. The popular diet of his day, loaded with meat, potatoes and gravy, spicy foods, and alcohol, was one that he believed caused harm to those who partook of it. As an alternative, he developed a recipe for a cracker that was named for him and mass-marketed as the graham cracker, a food we still enjoy today, though not as he originally envisioned it. Physician John Harvey Kellogg popularized his ideas about vegetarianism at the turn of the twentieth century. (His views on vegetarianism are held by a contemporary religion, the Seventh-Day Adventists.) Kellogg’s work in the field of nutrition, along with that of his brother Will Kellogg, changed the way Americans ate breakfast. What initially was a fad has become a staple of the current American diet—breakfast cereal.

A CELEBRATION OF FEMALE ANCESTORS

The story of our food traditions is also largely the story of our female ancestors. Of course, men assisted in the gathering and preparation of food, but throughout history, this has been the work of women. Genealogy stresses the importance of gathering information that documents the lives of one’s ancestors. Gathering evidence of their births, marriages, and deaths is an important aspect in re-creating a family history. But in some cases, especially with female ancestors, documentation can be scarce.

Female ancestors often didn’t leave behind the same paper documentation as their male counterparts. While men left behind a paper trail rich with government and private-sector documents, women’s lives were often relegated to the home. The material artifacts that they did leave behind are often considered unimportant and not worthy of archival efforts, which often means many women in our family trees are marked as unknown. Fortunately, the social history of food and family tradition can help fill in the gaps. Documenting the story of a female ancestor’s life, including the work she contributed to her family, can help recount her story when other documents may not be available. The stories of women’s lives must be told by more than the government or institutional records they left behind. Their history is best expressed through the traditions, stories, and artifacts that were part of their lives.

My family history includes stories of how my paternal great-
grandmother, who was a professional cook, loved to feed people. She worked alongside her grandson, my dad, preparing meals in restaurants. Her mother, my great-great-grandmother, opened her kitchen to homeless people. My family history also includes memories of my maternal grandmother’s kitchen, how the sink was low to the ground, giving the children no excuse to not help with the dishes while the women in the family talked and prepared meals. Her basement was full of shelf after shelf of home-canned fruits and vegetables. Thanksgiving meals, the kitchens, the smells of food—they all bring back memories of the family I have known and the family that I still share meals with. Although I may not continue to eat the foods prepared and presented by my grandmothers, great-grandmothers, and other female relatives, the stories of these women and the food that they prepared endure. I better understand their lives when I consider the everyday events of their lives—including feeding their families and helping others.

YOUR FAMILY’s FOOD TRADITIONS

Close your eyes for a second and think about your own food memories. What comes to mind when you think about your family and your food traditions? Many people’s memories revolve around special occasions like holidays and birthday celebrations. Families have their own unique ways of celebrating with food. Maybe your food memories revolve around the everyday foods your family ate. Perhaps those remembrances harken back to dishes that seemed to taste better when you were a child. Or maybe those memories include foods that you are happy never to eat again. When I think about what my family ate when I was younger, not only do the memories of the food fill my head but also the memories of who was there, who prepared the food, who helped, and the ways the food was served. My food-related memories are different than those of my children, even though we may eat the same dishes at every special occasion, because the memories are about more than the food. They are about the people we shared the food with.

For many, food is intrinsically connected to happy memories of family gatherings. I recently spoke at a meeting of an Italian genealogy society. I was struck by how joyfully and passionately the members described what their families prepared for Easter gatherings. Everyone was enjoying the mouth-watering descriptions of those foods remembered from long ago—antipasto plates with cheese and meats, lasagna made from old family recipes brought from Italy, and desserts piled high and drizzled with honey. But the memories contained more than just descriptions of meals. They contained memories of the people they shared the meal with. They remembered family members who had long passed away and family stories, and they were remembering their place in their own family history. Food has that effect. It not only feeds and nourishes our physical being, it also feeds our souls.

Your family food traditions might have been brought over from the old country, or maybe they are the result of a religious practice. Sometimes food traditions are intentionally handed down from generation to generation. And then there are food traditions with unknown origins, like the story I once heard of a woman who always cut off the end of her roast before placing it in the pan to cook. Pretty soon three generations of women were cutting off the end of the roast prior to cooking it. One day the grandmother was asked why she always cut the end off the roast. Her daughter was expecting an answer that would include tales from the
family’s history, the hardship they endured as immigrants, the lack of food, or something similar. The grandmother simply remarked that she had to cut off the roast’s end because her roasting pan was too small. Maybe your food traditions started because of a new recipe your own mother tried that became a favorite with the family. Or your dinnertime staples may be recipes borrowed from someone else’s family.

PRESERVING FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS

This book isn’t just about the food traditions of your ancestors. It’s also the story of the food you eat today. What you eat today may be influenced by what you grew up eating. In other cases, new traditions have replaced older ones. In either case, documenting and preserving what your family eats today is an important part of your family history archive. While this present-day record may not seem important to you now, it will be valuable to future generations. Family history should be not just the pursuit of the past but also the recording of the present for generations to come. One day in the not-too-distant future, your children or grandchildren will be wishing they had the recipe for their favorite special dish you made every holiday because it reminds them of you and their family history.

This book is a book of action. Use the information in it to learn more about your family food traditions and then find ways to preserve these traditions. There are numerous ways to pass on this information. Choose a style that reflects the uniqueness of your family.

Following are some suggestions to help you share the fruits of your food traditions research with your family. Whatever you decide to do, remember that what you preserve will allow future generations to better understand the distant ancestors you researched as well as your contemporary family.

SCRAPBOOK

A simple way to gather and share in a family’s heritage is through a scrapbook that includes recipes and photos of your family preparing food in the kitchen, eating meals, and celebrating. Be sure to journal descriptions and explanations of the photos and recipes. Find inspiration for a format and embellishments in layout books that focus on heritage scrapbooks such as Scrapbooking Your Family History by the editors of Creating Keepsakes Magazine.

A digital scrapbook is an alternative to a traditional paper scrapbook. Just like genealogy, scrapbooking has come into the digital age. Digital scrapbooking uses images, graphics, and publishing software programs to manipulate and arrange photographs saved on your computer. You can use scans of old paper photos as well as new photos taken with a digital camera. After you finish your digital scrapbook, you can upload it to the internet, burn it to a CD or DVD, or print a hard copy either on your home printer or through a retailer that offers photo processing. A digital scrapbook is easier to share than a traditional paper scrapbook. You also have many options for archiving the material, such as using an automated backup system, uploading it to an online storage website, saving it to an external drive, or printing it out. Digital scrapbooks can also be less expensive to create than traditional scrapbooks.

Some traditional scrapbookers utilize a 12 × 12 format, whereas digital scrapbookers opt for an 8½ × 11 or smaller end result. Virtual embellishments, papers, and other scrapbook goodies are available to decorate digital pages just as you would a paper scrapbook album. Many different software programs and online sites, both fee-based and free, can assist you in creating a digital scrapbook to share with family members online or by printing it out. Some websites to check out are Scrap Girls
<www.scrapgirls.com>, Creative Memories <www.creativememories.com>, Heritage Makers <www.heritagemakers.com>, and Scrapbook Flair <scrapbookflair.com>. Consider stopping in your local scrapbook store for ideas and assistance in creating a one-of-a-kind family keepsake.

A FAMILY HISTORY BOOK

The problem with most family history books is that they can seem dry and boring to those who don’t enjoy genealogy. While loved by family historians, these books are very dense with pages of charts, dates, and numbering systems not understood by non-genealogists. These lists of name, dates, and locations can read like history textbooks. It’s only when we add information and images about our ancestors’ daily lives that these narratives come alive. Descendants want to read the story of their ancestors. They want to read about lives that they can relate to.

You may want to put together a short family history that is limited to only a generation or two and includes a few narratives of female ancestors. In addition to noting the dates and places important to their lives, add stories of their immediate family and their food traditions. You can also add interest by including photos of you re-creating an ancestor’s recipe with step-by-step instructions. Put the history together using a word processing program or a genealogy software program, most of which let you easily create family history books with images, charts, and text.

After you create a family history book, you can share it with family members by burning it to a CD or DVD or by printing it with a basic binding. Most office supply stores and photocopy stores offer options for printing small booklets with your choice of binding—coil, comb, or another type of binding. Family history books don’t need to be complex or costly.

If you are looking to create a book that will be professionally published, look for a printer that specializes in family history books. Do an online search for these publishing companies or find advertisements for them in genealogy magazines like Family Tree Magazine. Another printing option is to use a print-on-demand publisher who will print copies only when they are ordered by you or your family. This saves money over traditional publishing methods.

A FAMILY COOKBOOK

What better way to pass down family recipes and traditions than by creating a family cookbook that combines recipes used by earlier generations with the recipes of present-day family members? You can publish the book through a printing company that specializes in cookbooks, or you can create the book on your own and take it down to your local photocopy store to be printed. The benefit of using a specialized cookbook printing company is that they can assist you with adding sections, formatting recipes, adding recipes, uploading content online, and other considerations.

Family cookbooks don’t need to be limited to recipes alone. Include the name and photos of a recipe’s contributor, stories about the recipe, and other relevant family history photos. In a cookbook my cousin put together, each recipe included an introduction that identified the recipe’s creator and explained the significance the recipe had to the family. She also included information about when it was served, especially if a dish was a holiday favorite. I also have a family cookbook that is based around a common ancestor on my maternal side. Each recipe includes a sentence that explains the relationship of the contributor to the common ancestor. This helps to better understand how other family members are related.

As you put together your cookbook, consider including pedigree charts or family group sheets. If the cookbook is presented in some type of three-ring binder, recipes can be added to the volume at a later date, allowing for additions as they are discovered or written down.

Not sure how to edit a cookbook? Look through your own collection or those found at a library or friend’s home to get ideas about what you want your cookbook to look like. While not written with family cookbook editors in mind, the book Will Write for Food by Dianne Jacob does include a chapter on writing cookbooks. The book Creating an Heirloom: Writing Your Family’s Cookbook by Wendy A. Boughner Whipple can also assist you in putting together a cookbook. Use e-mail, social networking sites, or word of mouth at holiday gatherings, reunions, or celebrations to start soliciting recipes from family members.

BLOG

Technology has provided us with great ways to share information with others. Many family historians use websites to post their research and their family trees. Another way to share family food history is by writing a blog. A blog, short for web log, is like a website but doesn’t require any special internet programming knowledge. Anyone can create and maintain a blog. Within a matter of minutes, you can start a blog that shares family food memories, photos of family kitchens, dishes, linens, and other food-related items. Want to invite others to contribute to your blog? No problem; you can invite other relatives to be co-authors of your blog and share what they have found.

One benefit of a blog is that if the blog is made public, rather than private, search engines will include your blog in their hit results, making it easier for other family members to find you and share what they have as well.

Several blog programs provide everything you need to get started. Blog websites include Blogger <www.blogger.com>, WordPress <wordpress.com>, and TypePad <www.typepad.com>. You can get ideas for your blog by searching for other recipe, cookbook, genealogy, and family history blogs at Google Blog Search <google.com/blogsearch>.

WIKIS

The internet is changing. What once was a collection of static websites has grown to include websites that encourage sharing and collaboration. Web 2.0 is a term to describe this new internet generation that includes everything from social networking to cloud computing. Wikis are part of this next generation in websites. A wiki is a website that allows users to assist in the updating and posting of content. With wikis, unlike traditional websites, anyone can add information. Still not sure what a wiki is? One of the most popular wikis is the site Wikipedia <www.wikipedia.org>.

With a family wiki, you can create a website where family members can contribute recipes and images as well as comment on recipes, add family history information, and more. A wiki could be a wonderful family project that preserves family food traditions for generations of family members. The great thing about using a wiki is the format appeals to younger generations, so they are more likely to be interested in assisting with the project.

Various wiki websites exist that allow you to create a wiki for free, including Wikispaces <www.wikispaces.com>, Wikidot <www.wikidot.com>, and Zoho Wiki <www.zoho.com/wiki>. Check out the FamilySearch Research Wiki <wiki.familysearch.org> to get an idea of how a wiki might look. Specific cooking wikis include the Recipes Wiki <recipes.wikia.com>.

FAMILY FOOD HISTORY ARCHIVE

Catalog and preserve cookbooks, recipe cards, kitchen tools, linens, aprons, china, and silver to create a family food history archive. This archive can include photographs and written observations that document food traditions and food-related heirlooms and artifacts. Prepare a page for each item that includes the following information:

» the name of the item

» a physical description of the item (size, weight, color, markings, condition)

» where it came from (any story related to how it was obtained)

» provenance or the chain of ownership (who originally owned it, other owners, who owns it now)

» any special stories attached to the item (how it was/is used)

» where the item is located now (whose home it is stored in, how it is displayed)

» any condition concerns (holes, damage)

» photograph of the item

The final product can be a scrapbook (digital or physical), notebook, album, or electronic document sent to other family members. Include heirlooms that you own, but also interview family members to collect information on heirlooms they own. The final product will provide a nice history for family members as well as a practical guide to what family heirlooms exist along with descriptions should a disaster occur.

“A family history is not complete until it considers the
time and place in which each individual lived. Our
ancestors were affected by the events around them, just as
people are now; their relationship to their environment
is an important part of the family’s story.” —CARMEN J. FINLEY

RESEARCH HISTORICAL PRICES OF FOOD

One way to make family history more interesting is by providing information that family members can relate to, and one concept everyone can relate to is the price of food. The other day, my children asked me how much gasoline cost when I was a teenager, and they were shocked at the difference in price between then and now. Help your family get a glimpse into their ancestors’ lives by researching what food was available to your ancestors and the price of that food. You may be surprised to find that the prices of certain foods have remained almost the same for decades while others have changed dramatically. Use this information in a family history book, or cookbook, or on a blog or wiki. You can use these details to teach children about history and money by preparing a list of items with the prices as they were fifty or one hundred years ago and then taking them to a grocery store to record current food prices to make a comparison.

One place to find a history of grocery prices is the James Trager book, The Food Chronology: A Food Lover’s Compendium of Events and Anecdotes from Prehistory to the Present. The website Food Timeline <www.foodtimeline.org/foodfaq5.html> offers various food history facts including historical food prices. You can also check out timeline websites that list historical information for your or someone else’s birthdate including food prices. Time capsule websites include dMarie Time Capsule <dmarie.com/timecap>.

Also consider old newspapers. Advertisements for stores can be helpful for understanding what food was readily available and the prices as well as stores where your ancestor may have shopped. Newspapers for genealogical research can be found either at a repository like a library or archive or online. Some subscription websites with newspaper content include Godfrey Memorial Library <www.godfrey.org>, Ancestry.com <www.ancestry.com>, WorldVitalRecords <www.worldvitalrecords.com>, NewspaperArchive <www.newspaperarchive.com>, and GenealogyBank <www.genealogybank.com>. Be sure to search state, public, and university library online catalogs for newspapers available on microfilm.

A GENEALOGY DATABASE PROGRAM

Genealogy database software programs provide family historians many different ways to document and store their family history research. These software programs let you record facts and then include narrations or images to illustrate those facts, everything from a baptism to a marriage to military service. Find recipes from your family’s kitchen or from their era and locale, and include that information as a “fact” for each female ancestor in your genealogy database program. Including this type of social history information can help fill in the gaps of that ancestor’s life. This information will also be available if you choose to print out a report or book from your genealogy software program.

To find recipes from the past, consult cookbooks including those written by chefs and cooking school personnel, as well as those published by community groups, the government, and food and appliance manufacturers. You can find vintage cookbooks in libraries, archives, and digitized books as well as at online auctions websites, thrift stores, used bookstores (online and off), and antique stores. Chapter six is full of details to help you find old recipes.

GOING FROM HERE

This book is meant to be interactive. The first two parts of the book provide you the opportunity to learn more about food history and to reflect on your own family’s food traditions. Use these sections to learn more about the historical role of food and its role in your family history.

Part three is a recipe journal in which you can collect family recipes and write your thoughts about important traditions. Be sure to document recipes from interviews with family members in this section. Use this book as a scrapbook of sorts. Refer to it for more ideas.

As you think of ways to preserve your family’s food heritage, consider ways you can preserve your family’s current traditions. Vow today to record not only the past but also the present. Your lifetime will be something that your grandchildren and their children will be curious about. You can record the present the same way you record the past. Apply the ideas in this chapter to your own life. You may find it’s easier to record the present as you write down recipes, recall celebrations, and photograph your own kitchen necessities.

While genealogy has long been the pursuit of names and dates, the true study of a family’s history involves learning more about the lives your ancestors lived. Part of learning more about them is incorporating the “everyday” into the story of their lives. Family history has more meaning for descendants when they can liken their ancestors’ lives to their own. And in a rapidly changing world, one thing stays constant: families gathering around the table to share a meal.

NOTES

» ¹ Katherine Scott Sturdevant, Bringing Your Family History to Life Through Social History (Cincinnati: Betterway Books, 2000), 6.