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What's Cooking in Delaware, in Willingtown
Square Gallery, gives an introduction to how First Staters over the
years have answered the daily question, "What's for
dinner?"
The exhibit features manuscript and published cookbooks, banquet and restaurant menus, photographs of grocery stores, restaurants, and market house, and museum objects related to food and cooking, all dating from the early 1800s to the late 1900s. Perhaps the most significant item to be displayed is the manuscript cookbook compiled by George Read of the Read House in the 1830s. In that era, it was unusual for a man who was not a professional cook to take that sort of interest in food. We do not know why Read copied down recipes at this point in his life, but he probably never did any actual cooking. All of his recipes - from a variety of sources - were for cookies, cakes, and bread. Read apparently has a sweet tooth. Delawareans have published church and charity cookbooks since the late 1800s. The earliest one in our collections is the Trinity Parish Cook Book, published by the Ladies Parish Aid Society of Trinity Episcopal Church in Wilmington in 1892. Recent cookbooks issued in honor of the bicentennial of the U.S. Constitution and by the Daughters of the American Revolution attest to the continuing popularity of this genre. These cookbooks record recipes that people actually used and help preserve regional foods. But there's more to the topic than recipes. Our society currently has a high level of interest in food and cooking. Many people have become interested in the history of food, and a large number of books and articles based on sound scholarly research have been published in recent years. The complete story of food in Delaware has yet to be written, but come to see this exhibit to get a taste of our past. What we ate is part of who we are. |
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August 1 - November 5, 2005 Join us for a special related lecture on Wednesday, |
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What's Cooking in Delaware |
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© 2005 Historical Society of Delaware
(now Delaware Historical Society)
Send Comments, Questions, or Requests to
Delaware Historical Society
