|
Food Historians Serve Up A Feast for the Ages
by T.W. Barritt
Dr. Alice Ross designed her custom-built
kitchen without an immersion blender or non-stick pan in sight. Measuring cups and thermometers are absent and there are no
designer cabinets. Instead, visitors to her Hearth Studios in Smithtown, Long Island notice a faint, sweet aroma of smoke.
Dozens of cast iron pots hang from the vaulted ceiling and a massive wooden beam frames the 10-foot open hearth where charcoal
gray ashes are neatly swept into billowy mounds.
While names like Boulud and Jean-Georges often dictate what is
“au courant” in the world of food, Ross is one of a small but growing group of time travelers who are chronicling
social history one spoonful at a time. They are the David McCullough’s of the culinary world and include academics,
historians, collectors, researchers, chefs, authors and curators. Much like highly-skilled chefs, food historians use a variety
of techniques to teach us that what we eat is inextricably linked to key moments in history and fundamental to the human experience.
(More below)
© 2006 T.W. Barritt All Rights Reserved
|
