CHAPTER

4

Food Throughtout Time

“We suffered greatly for the want of salt; but,
by burning the outside of our mule steaks,
and sprinkling a little gunpowder upon them,
it did not require a very extensive stretch of
the imagination to fancy the presence of
both salt and pepper.” —RANDOLPH BARNES MARCY, 1859

Today it’s trendy to eat locally grown and locally produced foods, but our ancestors had little choice but to eat what they could grow and produce in their communities. It’s only thanks to modern transportation methods and food preservation techniques that we are able to enjoy fresh ingredients from all over the world. This chapter explores how diets have been affected by technology, location, and social and political events such as depression and war.

TECHNOLOGY CHANGED How WE EAT

American diets have evolved greatly since the country was founded, thanks to a number of advances in technology. While this book cannot go into an entire food history, we’ll look at a few key inventions that significantly changed the way we eat.

CAST IRON STOVES

Developed in the eighteenth century, cast iron stoves completely changed the way food was cooked and prepared. By the end of the Civil War, most American homes had a cast iron stove.¹ This was a significant upgrade from cooking over an open fire. Cooking could be done both inside the stove and on the cooking range on top of the stove. It allowed women to cook more elaborate meals with more than one hot course. While these were clearly advantages over previous cooking methods—a pot suspended in the fireplace—these stoves were wood-burning, so regulating the temperature was a challenge.

REFRIGERATION

Prior to iceboxes, the gathering and preserving of food was a full-time job. Starting in the early 1800s, the advent of iceboxes for the home helped women keep food fresher longer and reduced the need for preservation methods like salting or drying. This was a huge time-saver because food could be collected in bulk and kept fresh without labor-intensive preservation methods.

Susan Strasser, the author of Never Done: A History of American Housework, describes the process of sending the ice to customers for their iceboxes. It was harvested in huge blocks from frozen lakes in the north and then stored in icehouses until it was shipped for either local delivery (available in cities from ice carts making regular rounds by the 1850s) or long-
distance transport.² While the wealthy started purchasing iceboxes in the early 1800s, iceboxes were still fairly rare for most families until the latter part of the 1800s. Iceboxes gave way to the refrigerator in the early 1900s. Some of the first refrigerators were as expensive as a new car. By the end of World War II, iceboxes were a thing of the past.³

RAILROAD

The transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869 and linked the entire United States. Prior to that, railroads were local and regional ventures with limited range because of ownership and gauge discrepancies. Invented in the late 1850s and patented in the 1860s, refrigerator cars, also known as reefers, used ice to transport perishables. These cars allowed meat to be transported safely, doing away with driving cattle from places like Texas to the East. With refrigerated cars, food perishables like meat, dairy, fruit, and beer could be transported and sold anywhere in the country. Regional foods could now spread easily across the country. A lobster caught on the East Coast could be shipped to the Midwest and enjoyed by diners there.

AGRICULTURE

Innovations in agricultural technology made it easier to plant, harvest, and send produce to market. Innovations such as crop rotation helped preserve the fertility of the land and maximize crop yield. George Washington Carver used crop rotation to help the South after decades of over-planting tobacco and cotton. Mechanical innovations, such as the tractor, grain elevator, hay baler, and combine, allowed more land to be cleared, planted, and harvested in time and with a smaller workforce.

CANNED FOOD

Not everyone would see canned food as an important contribution to our ancestors’ lives. But what we take for granted today gave our ancestors easy access to a variety of foods, regardless of growing season or location. Canning allows food to be stored for longer periods of time, up to five years for most foods, a vast improvement over other preserving methods. Canning was first developed in 1810 to help Napoleon feed his troops. Considering that canning was developed during a war, it’s no surprise that it was heavily relied on during times of war in the United States when food shortages were looming. During World War II, canned goods were rationed. Consider this news story in the February 20, 1943, issue of the Eugene, Oregon, Register-Guard: “Don’t hoard, but buy today all the canned fruits and vegetables you’ll need next week because none may be sold legally from midnight tonight until the morning of March 1.” It adds, “Canned meat and canned fish, whose sale was stopped Wednesday night, will be rationed along with fresh meat.”

PRESERVATION

While canning is one way to preserve foods, historically people have used other ways to keep food fresher longer out of necessity. Other methods include drying, salting, pickling, smoking, and chemicals.

DRYING

Beef jerky is probably one of most familiar dried foods. Modern technology has made drying a less popular form of food preservation, but this ancient food preservation method was important to our ancestors.

Drying works by removing all the water in a food item, and that moisture removal prevents spoiling. Drying food can be accomplished by hanging food in direct sunlight, heating it, or exposing it to dry air.

SALTING

Today, we are advised to avoid salt, but that wasn’t the case for our ancestors. Salt was used for everything from tanning leather and keeping work animals healthy to preserving food. In fact, using salt to preserve food is pretty much universal practice throughout the world.⁴ Salt preserves food in two ways: It draws water out of the food, and it destroys bacterial and fungal cells. “Salt controls fermentation, wherein the safe, ‘good’ bacteria already existing in the food breaks apart sugars to create an acid. The acid helps preserve the food for extended periods…”⁵.

A passage in the John Steinbeck novel The Grapes of Wrath describes the process of salting meat: “Noah carried the slabs of meat into the kitchen and cut it into small salting blocks, and Ma patted the coarse salt in, laid it piece by piece in the kegs, careful that no two pieces touched each other. She laid the slabs like bricks, and pounded salt in the spaces.”

Today we still eat food preserved in salt, including corned beef, pastrami, ham, cod, and dried beef.

PICKLING

The word pickle instantly conjures up the image of cucumbers stuffed in a jar. Pickling also brings to mind other products that are sold pickled, like eggs, hot peppers, okra, green beans, onions, hot dogs, and even pigs’ feet. Pickling is a historical preservation method that involves soaking food in vinegar to kill and keep out bacteria.⁶

Pickling has been popular in all parts of the world including Asian and Middle Eastern countries. Pickling became popular in sixteenth-century England when salted food was losing favor with the upper classes; salted food soon became associated with the poor.

Pickling all kinds of vegetables allowed harvests to last longer in a household. Most early cookbooks had a pickle and relish section that included much more than just cucumber pickles. An 1876 cookbook includes pickling recipes for fruits and vegetables—green tomatoes, onions, green
peppers, cabbage, cauliflower, cherries, currants, grapes, apples, plums, and peaches.⁷ During World Wars I and II, Americans pickled food they grew in their victory gardens to help make food available year-round instead of only in season.⁸

SMOKING

Smoking meats, poultry, and fish originated in prehistoric times.⁹ It employs the same principle as drying, removing moisture to reduce spoilage. Meats that were not drying in a timely manner were hung by a fire. Food was also hung over the chimney to be smoked. Smoke has many chemicals, including formaldehyde, that act as inhibitors to the growth of microbes.¹⁰

CHEMICALS

Today we are concerned about chemicals in our foods, and most grocery stores and markets carry a selection of organic foods free of pesticides and chemicals. But, chemicals have been used to preserve and cure food—lutefisk, for example—since long before the advent of modern convenience food.

Lutefisk is cod preserved in lye, a corrosive alkaline substance that in the past was made from hardwood ashes. The lye used in curing foods such as green olives is a food-grade lye. How this method of curing fish originated is surrounded in legend, but the fish is now eaten by those with Swedish and Norwegian ancestry. In the United States, lutefisk is served at church dinners in states like Wisconsin and Minnesota. Lutefisk takes fifteen days to prepare: Dried codfish is soaked in water for a week, with the water being changed each day. Then the lye solution is added, and the fish soaks in that for four days. The lye solution is poured off, and the fish is soaked in water for four more days, the water being changed each morning. Once ready, the fish is boiled before serving.¹¹

WESTWARD EXPANSION

As Americans answered the call of manifest destiny and pushed toward the West, their diets shifted from local and homegrown food to shelf-stable food that could sustain them as they traveled for months across the Oregon or Mormon trails. While some provisions could be acquired along the way at trading posts or by hunting, most of the food had to be packed, and they had to make sure their supplies would not run out. Lots of advice was given to those wanting to make the trek west. In 1845, author Lansford W. Hastings wrote The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California. In it he recommended that the emigrants take “two hundred pounds of flour, or meal; one hundred and fifty pounds of bacon; ten pounds of coffee; twenty pounds of sugar; and ten pounds of salt, with such other provisions as he may prefer, and can conveniently take; the provisions above enumerated, are considered ample, both as to quantity and variety.” He also pointed out that pistols were useful when you saw buffalo because you could “gollop [sic] your horse, side by side, with them, and having pistols, you may shoot them down at your pleasure.” ¹²

The Nauvoo Neighbor newspaper suggested Mormons traveling in 1845 equip themselves with one thousand pounds of flour or other bread or bread stuffs, one pound tea, five pounds coffee, one hundred pounds sugar, one pound cayenne pepper, two pounds black pepper, half a pound of mustard, ten pounds rice, one pound cinnamon, half a pound of cloves, one dozen nutmegs, twenty-five pounds salt, five pounds saleratus (a precursor to baking soda), ten pounds dried apples, half a bushel of beans, a few pounds of dried beef or bacon, and five pounds dried peaches.¹³

ECONOMIC CRISIS

Mention the Great Depression and most people have images of the Dust Bowl and migrant workers living in shacks. They visualize the famous photograph by Dorothea Lange entitled Migrant Mother that shows a worried mother with two small children. For some, the Depression may have been a time when their family moved, looking for a better life, trying to escape extreme poverty. For others, the Depression may have felt no different because poverty was a fact of life. As families struggled to avoid homelessness and provide the necessities for their families, how and what did they eat? In Clara’s Kitchen: Wisdom, Memories, and Recipes From the Great Depression, Clara Cannucciari explained, “We just relied on what we did have—the ability to sacrifice and put our needs into perspective. To be resourceful about what we got. And by preparing and eating simple, filling foods.”¹⁴

Families of the Depression era relied on inexpensive foods and what could be grown at home or gathered. Foods procured from home or through other gathering methods are always cheaper than those in a store. Vegetables, rather than meat, became a staple. Eggs provided cheap protein for families with chickens. Families may have even gathered foods, from picking wild berries or nuts to picking what we would today call weeds to be eaten as vegetables. My maternal grandmother raised nine children and was used to living with very little. One day she took my dad on a tour in our backyard and explained what weeds could be used as food and how to prepare them. Eating weeds such as dandelion greens, stinging nettle, purslane, and ground ivy has a long history. Recipes featuring these plants appear in early cookbooks. While there is a movement now to incorporate weeds into cooking, I recommend extreme caution if you decide to harvest weeds today because of possible contamination from herbicides and pesticides.

AMERICA EATS

In the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration (WPA)—a part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal—paid writers and photographers to chronicle the foodways of average Americans. The goal of the project, titled “America Eats,” was to document food served at community events across the United States. It was not a cookbook, but instead the writers interviewed local cooks about ingredients, preparation, and the origins of their dishes. Imagine all the wonderful information this project provided future genealogists.

Unfortunately, due to budget cuts and politics, “America Eats” was never published. The writers were told to send all materials to the Library of Congress (LOC) for archiving, and many did, but many writers sent their material to state repositories, where they are still archived or were destroyed.

Search the Library of Congress card catalog at <catalog.loc.gov> for materials from the “America Eats” program. You can also find photographs from the “America Eats” project through the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog at <www.loc.gov/pictures/item/00649983>.

In some cases, manuscripts or copies of manuscripts were sent to other repositories. One example comes from the Montana State University Library’s collection of WPA records that includes manuscripts from the “America Eats” program <www.lib.montana.edu/collect/spcoll/findaid/2336.html>. These records contain documents created from the Montana division of the WPA as well as Nevada, Oregon, Idaho, Colorado, South Dakota, and Wyoming. The “America Eats” pages in this collection include recipes, correspondence, and research materials.

You can look through manuscript collections at state archives and libraries as well as university libraries. There are several ways to research a manuscript collection. One is to search through each repository’s individual catalog. Another is to search several catalogs through the National Union Catalog of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC) <www.loc.gov/coll/nucmc/index.html>. Click on the link List of Participating Repositories to see which libraries, museums, and archives participate in NUCMC. When searching a catalog for materials related to the “America Eats” project, try using keywords like WPA, Works Progress Administration, or America Eats.

In recent years, some of the pages from “America Eats” have been published as part of books on the history of the project. Three such books are America Eats by Pat Willard, The Food of a Younger Land edited by Mark Kurlansky, and America Eats by Nelson Algren.

“America Eats” was an important project spotlighting regional food differences in a different era. Today there are many ways to learn about regional food differences, whether on the internet or through a cookbook. During the time of the “America Eats” project and for years after, writers like Sheila Hibben wrote about regional foods. Writer Clementine Paddleford even learned how to pilot a plane just so she could taste and write about food found throughout the United States.

WAR

War has greatly impacted diets throughout history. Blockades, occupied zones, disrupted transportation lines, and destruction of cropland and farm animals quickly create food shortages. If your ancestors lived through a war, that war likely affected how and what they ate.

CIVIL WAR SHORTAGES

Food shortages were a crippling reality in the South during the Civil War. Even in the beginning of the war, there was a risk of soldiers deserting due to lack of food. As the war progressed, it became worse. As the war continued, the South was literally starved into defeat. Shortages caused food prices to become so outrageous that all but the wealthy were starving. Even the soldiers were not given their rations. Confederate soldiers wrote home of having no rations or enduring half rations after battles. Starving soldiers were forced to eat mules and rats. One Confederate major wrote that a market in Vicksburg was selling both mule and rat meat and that rats were priced at $2.50 (roughly $44 today). At different times there were also reports of civilians and soldiers eating dogs and cats.¹⁵

Women were writing to their soldier husbands about the lack of food available to their families. In a letter from Confederate Captain John Bell (Company H, 32nd Alabama Infantry) to his wife Nancy (Robinson), he refers to some of the reports of starvation he has heard:

I am glad too, to hear that the crop looks so well. If we can only make enough to live on during the war, and enjoy good health I shall be satisfied. It would grieve me very much however, to receive such letters from you, as I saw some women write to their husbands, stating that they have neither meat nor bread and no means of procuring any. Some women have actually left their homes and came to the camps bringing their children with them, and are now engaged as laundresses. Each company is allowed to draw rations for four women when engaged as laundresses.

–CAPT. JOHN BELL, JUNE 15, 1862¹⁶

One of the most crippling shortages the South faced almost from the beginning of the war was salt. The versatility of salt made it a priceless substance. It was used to preserve meats, fish, and butter and to tan leather goods. Farmers needed it to provide electrolytes to their horses and cows. According to Starving the South, Southerners used 450 million pounds of salt each year at the outbreak of the Civil War.¹⁷ While there was limited salt production in the United States at this time (more in the North than in the South), most was shipped in from Europe. Days after the start of the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln ordered a blockade of all Southern ports, thus cutting off supplies of many goods, including salt.

Cavalry horses became ill, cows didn’t fatten up, and pork could not be processed.¹⁸ The South tried numerous ways to capture residue salt, including evaporating seawater, reusing crystals that fell off of salted meats, boiling down brine that had been used in pickling, and boiling planks of wood used in salt houses.¹⁹ Between the lack of salt and the speculators driving up prices for what little salt was available, salt became so precious that small packets of it were given as gifts.

As the food shortages continued, bread riots began breaking out in Confederate cities, and women were the main participants. Tales of the bread riots expanded and were sometimes embellished by Northern papers, perhaps to show how much better things were for the North and to prove how the South couldn’t win the war. Sometimes the retelling of these riots down played the real concern of starving women and children in the South. In its coverage of the bread riots in Richmond, Virginia, The New York Times reported that the woman in charge of the rioting was a “tall, daring, Amazonian-looking woman, who had a white feather standing erect from her hat, and who was evidently directing the movements of the plunderers.”²⁰ Bread riots occurred because, despite the pay their soldier husbands were due and the money they earned through their own work, women couldn’t afford food. Blockades and speculators caused food prices to rise dramatically. For example, bacon typically cost $1.25 a pound, but in February 1863 bacon cost $10 a pound.²¹ Women in various cities started rioting and yelling chants like “Bread or Blood.”

WORLD WARS I AND II

The Civil War is but one example of how food plays an integral part in war. While more of an extreme example, other wars have also affected access to food. While World War I did cause some changes in the way Americans ate (for example, food rationing was experimented with), World War II had a more recent and lasting impact on the way Americans eat. To conserve supplies for those fighting the war, civilians were encouraged to do their share by growing their own foods in victory gardens, taking part in rationing, and skipping meat on Meatless Tuesdays.

CHANGING ROLE OF WOMEN

Women played a large role in the war effort, even during the earlier years when their political voice was silenced by their disenfranchisement. One way British women assisted the effort was through the work of the Women’s Land Army.

The “farmerette” took over the farm work for men who were called to serve in the military during World War I. The farmerettes did everything from planting, plowing, and harvesting fields to hauling lumber. Fears of food shortages and high prices led these women to organize themselves and take over the work of men. While women had always worked on farms, this was the first time they were paid for their work. Women were organized in camps and participated in training, including physical training prior to working. Most men did not accept that women could do hard farm work at first, but over time and with equalizers like tractors, these women showed they were capable, and they helped Britain fend off an agriculture crisis. During World War II, the Women’s Land Army was resurrected in Britain, as well as the United States and Australia, to take over farms once again as the men marched off to war.

Women also filled factory jobs left vacant by men serving in the military. These “Rosie the Riveters” worked long hours outside the home, which left little time for them to prepare meals. By the time their husbands came home from the war, women were used to cooking with the time-saving conveniences of canned foods, frozen meals, and mixes.

RATIONING

On the home front, Americans made countless sacrifices to support the war effort. Rationing was common and affected all types of consumer goods, including gas, tires, and nylon stockings. But the most difficult rationing to deal with was food.

Imagine being told by the government the quantity and type of food you could buy. While food rationing was voluntary during World War I, it was mandatory for U.S. civilians during World War II. Several types of food staples were rationed, including sugar, meat, cheese, butter, coffee, and canned foods.

The United Kingdom also had food rationing during the war and, because of low food supplies, continued the practice until 1954. While rationing in the United States ended at the end of the war, after the war President Harry S. Truman introduced food conservation as a way Americans could help those in European countries who were going hungry.

Marketing campaigns used posters, magazines, and newsreels to sell rationing as a patriotic duty. Women were encouraged to do all they could to keep the soldiers fed, including rationing, growing their own food, reducing food waste, and preserving harvests.

COOKBOOKS ON RATIONING

Cookbooks produced during World War II show the effects of rationing. A recipe booklet published by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company reflects the sentiment of the war effort: “The scarcest foods are rationed so that all of us will have a fair share.” The book suggests making the most of meals by “using the same foods in a variety of ways, using leftovers, and cooking foods so that all of their original value will be preserved.”²²

Many cookbooks of this era were produced specifically to help women make the most of the limited variety and quantity of foods they had. They also offered substitutions for foods no longer available due to rationing. Recipe titles often used the word mock to indicate substitutions made in the dish. Meat was the most common ingredient that was substituted.

These cookbooks also provided ideas and techniques for preparing less expensive and less desirable cuts of meat. For example, recipes substituting beef suggested different meats, including those that most people were unaccustomed to eating. One wartime recipe flyer encouraged readers to eat pork hearts, feet, brains, knuckles, kidneys, liver, and backbone in place of more traditional cuts of pork. Less desirable cuts of meat not only saved consumers money but also cost fewer ration coupons.

The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company cookbook has this suggestion for making the most of limited quantities of meat: “meat extenders, like cereal, bread crumbs, soybeans and soybean grits, and vegetables, help to use leftovers and make low-cost cuts attractive.”²³ Housewives were reminded that “brains, sweetbreads, tripe, liver, heart, tongue, and oxtail are known as variety meats. They are high in food value …”

One example of a recipe created to help a housewife make the most of her leftovers is the following:

MINCED MEAT ON TOAST

Use any meat, put through a food grinder or chop fine in a chopping bowl. Heat in gravy, white sauce, or tomato sauce. Add butter, season well, and serve on hot toast.²⁴

VICTORY GARDENS

As a response to food rationing, civilians began to grow and preserve their own vegetables and fruits. Known as victory gardens, these home gardens were cultivated during both World War I and World War II. Gardens were planted in public and private places and were of varying sizes, everything from small planters to parks or rooftops. They gave families ready access to produce along with the option to can and preserve that produce for future use. It was one way to make up for shortages and preserve ration coupons for hard-to-come-by items. Both the government and private industry launched marketing campaigns to encourage victory gardens. During World War II there were as many as twenty million gardens in the United States.

THE ROLE OF BETTY CROCKER

The 1950s marked a time of many innovations in the kitchen. Women had worked outside the home during the war years, but when the war ended and the men returned, women were sent back home to be the “ultimate” housekeepers. Cooks in the 1950s demanded two things from foods—
convenience and presentation.

Women cooking in the 1950s had a lot of help—not help as in a maid, but help as in convenience foods. Betty Crocker, a 1920s brand persona for the Washington Grosby Company (the precursor to General Mills), answered women’s cooking questions. Betty Crocker was popular and often thought to be a real woman (although several women did act as Betty Crocker for promotional activities like answering letters and radio and television appearances). She was so popular that in 1945 she was voted the second-best-known woman, after Eleanor Roosevelt, by Fortune magazine.²⁵

Many families may have tasted dishes cooked from the Betty Crocker Picture Cook Book. First published in 1950, this cookbook quickly became a bestseller and included iconic dishes such as Chili Con Carne, Spaghetti, Snickerdoodles, Eggs Benedict, Pot Roast, and Apple Pie.

FOOD NOW AND IN THE FUTURE

Our more recent food history spans decades of television cooking shows, the increased availability of ethnic cuisines, the increasing access to prepared and convenience foods, the frequency of eating out, and the availability of a variety of organic and exotic ingredients. While earlier generations relied solely on either cookbooks or recipes from friends and family, today the internet makes it easier than ever to find a recipe and ingredients from any part of the world.

An important part of gathering and preserving family history is preserving our family traditions now. The foods we eat today and the celebrations that mean so much to our families can and will change over time. Foods your children eat today may be forgotten by their families twenty years from now. People die before we can ask them questions. Memories fade and we simply can’t find answers. We take everyday life for granted. Because it is so familiar, we fail to record it. Writing down your favorite family recipes and food traditions will help keep that information fresh for future generations. Make a commitment to take some time to preserve these present-day memories so they will be available for the future. Document the foods you eat at holiday celebrations. Include recipes for family favorites. Take photos of your kitchen, cooking tools, and favorite foods.

Notes

» ¹ Laura Schenone, The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken: A Search for Food and Family (New York: Norton & Co., 2008), 183.

» ² Susan Strasser, Never Done: A History of American Housework (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 19.

» ³ Andrew F. Smith, ed., The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 313.

» ⁴ Sue Shephard, Pickled, Potted, and Canned: How the Art and Science of Food Preserving Changed the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 75.

» ⁵ Andrew F. Smith, ed., The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 518.

» ⁶ Sue Shephard, Pickled, Potted, and Canned: How the Art and Science of Food Preserving Changed the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 95.

» ⁷ The Ladies of Plymouth Church (Des Moines, Iowa), eds., “76”: A Cook Book (Des Moines, Iowa: Mills, 1876), 225.

» ⁸ Andrew F. Smith, ed., The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 453.

» ⁹ Ibid., 543.

» ¹⁰ Sue Shephard, Pickled, Potted, and Canned: How the Art and Science of Food Preserving Changed the World (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000), 109.

» ¹¹ Mark Kurlansky, ed., The Food of a Younger Land, Large-print edition (New York: Riverhead Books, 2009), 265.

» ¹² Langsford W. Hastings, The Emigrants’ Guide to Oregon and California (Cincinnati: George Conclin, 1845), 143.

» ¹³ William W. Slaughter and Michael Landon, Trail of Hope: The Story of the Mormon Trail (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1997), 23.

» ¹⁴ Clara Cannucciari, Clara’s Kitchen: Wisdom, Memories, and Recipes From the Great Depression (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2009), 1.

» ¹⁵ Andrew F. Smith, ed., Starving the South: How the North Won the Civil War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011), 164.

» ¹⁶ John W. Bell Papers, MSS 771, 1862–1864. Louisiana Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, Hill Memorial Library, Louisiana State University.

» ¹⁷ Andrew F. Smith, ed., Starving the South: How the North Won the Civil War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011), 32.

» ¹⁸ Ibid., 38.

» ¹⁹ Mark Kurlansky, ed., The Food of a Younger Land (New York: Riverhead Books, 2009), 269.

» ²⁰ “Richmond’s Bread Riot Jefferson Davis Describes a War-Time Incident,” The New York Times, 30 April 1889.

» ²¹ Andrew F. Smith, ed., Starving the South: How the North Won the Civil War (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2011), 83.

» ²² Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., Metropolitan Cook Book, (New York: Metropolitan Life Insurance Co., 1942), 2.

» ²³ Ibid., 2.

» ²⁴ Ibid., 29.

» ²⁵ Susan Marks, Finding Betty Crocker: The Secret Life of America’s First Lady of Food (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005), 115.