From Cannonballs to Coffeepots

Benjamin Thompson, a/k/a Count Rumford

First, a digression. We Americans value niceness. In our culture, it is just as important to be nice as to be good. It is not enough to do the right thing, to simply be honest and charitable. We also should be really nice. In our books and movies, the good guy is nice and pleasant. The bad guy is rude and mean. 

It is not so in all cultures.  Some years back, I attended a seminar at the East West Center in Honolulu. Most of my fellow attendees were Asian, while the instructors were American. In private, my comrades grumbled that the instructors seemed cloying and insincere. "If they have something to say," one remarked after a round of class presentations, "They should just say it." The instructors were all-American. They smiled a lot when they spoke to the class and criticism was preceded with a compliment. The Asians hated it.

In another example, before a trip to France I read up on French culture, and was struck by the separation of helpfulness from niceness. This is a problem for the French when working with American tourists, because in the French view, it is not necessary to be nice in order to he helpful. But Americans often come away from encounters with tour guides, hotel clerks, train conductors and the like feeling like they've been assaulted. Although they might have been given good information and treated fairly, the tourists didn't get the smiley face and have-a-nice-day attitude that Americans expect. 

I guess that's why I'm so fascinated with the man who started the first school lunch program for poor children. He was an amazing person -- an inventor, an innovator, a man who did many things for the betterment of society. But he was not nice. His biographers use words like "despicable" to describe him. 

Benjamin Thompson Birthplace

Benjamin Thompson (1753-1814) was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, in a home that is now a museum listed on the National Registry of Historic Places. His father, a farmer, died before little Benjamin reached the age of two. The boy was educated in the village school and soon realized that farming was not for him. He had a mind for science and studied hard. He even walked to Cambridge to attend lectures at Harvard College by the distinguished mathematician and physicist, John Winthrop. He became a teacher, and moved to Concord, New Hampshire (formerly called Rumford) to accept a teaching position in 1772. There, he met and married a wealthy widow who was 14 years older than him -- and he instantly gained the wealth and status that he craved. 

When the Revolution started, he took the side of the British. The local populace suspected that he was a British spy (which he was) and when an angry mob came after him, he fled, abandoning his wife and child, forever. He moved to Boston, where he continued his spy activities and recruited people to the British cause, until he joined the British evacuation of Boston in 1776. 

In London, he conducted experiments on gunpowder and continued his scientific studies with guns and cannons.  For his service to the crown, he was knighted. He became famous within military circles for his work with gunpowder and munitions, and in 1783, accepted the position of Major-General and Privy Counselor to the Elector of Bavaria. He moved to Munich. 

Thompson's illustration of his cannon-boring experiments

During his travels in Europe, he met an elderly lady who had a strong influence on him. All that is known of her is in one line of a letter that he wrote, that this unnamed woman "opened my eyes to other kinds of glory than that of victory in battle."  

After meeting this woman, he devoted the rest of his life to the betterment of mankind.  He stayed in Bavaria for five years and became a pioneer in the Social Reform Movement. One of the many good things he did there was found the Poor People's Institute, which provided food and work for the poor. He also started a school for poor children, which included lunch. This place was not paradise. Everyone was expected to work. And the food was basically a soup made of potatoes, peas and barley (giving rise to the term "soup kitchen").  Funding was always an issue, and Thompson learned as much as was known about nutrition in order to provide healthful, but budget-conscious meals. 

Monument to Count Rmford in the English Garden, Munich

He became famous throughout Europe for his work, and the governments of England, Germany, France, Scotland, and Switzerland consulted with him to set up similar programs.

While in Bavaria, he also came up with work programs for idle soldiers, set up the English Garden in Munich, started a veterinary school, and convinced farmers to start growing nutritious foods, such as turnips and potatoes, which, up to that time, were suspected as poisonous.

In his quest for ever more efficient ways to prepare food, he invented such things as: the double boiler, the kitchen range, the fireless cooker, the percolator, and the pressure cooker. In recognition of his achievements, he was named a Count of the Holy Roman Empire. He took on the title Count Rumford, in honor of the town in New Hampshire where his fortunes changed. 

Where would we be without the percolator?

After five years in Munich, his patron died, and, having no other friends, probably on account of his abrasive personality, he returned to London. There, he ran another feeding program, serving 60,000 meals per day. He also continued inventing things that made people's lives better. The most famous of these is the Rumford Fireplace, which made him extremely wealthy in his own right. 

The peripatetic count moved one more time – to Paris, where he lived out his life still conducting research into the nature of heat and light. In physics circles, he is remembered as the Father of Thermodynamics. Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, died in Paris in 1814. He left the bulk of his estate to Harvard College.

This article, although way too long by blogging standards, barely scratches the surface of the story of Count Rumford. Saint or sinner? You decide.

You're Invited - August 22

Victims of a hostile takeover

You are invited to the next meeting of the 

Culinary Historians of Atlanta

The Ice Man Goeth

In 1923 an ice refrigerator, known today as an icebox, cost less than $30.  Ice was plentiful and cheap.  In contrast, the least expensive electric refrigerator was $450, and was made with flammable refrigerants.  Electricity was costly and scarce, especially in rural areas.  So, why in the world did the ice men and the icebox disappear?  What were the public and backroom deals that led to the downfall of ice refrigeration?  Who promoted the switch?  Was the public duped?  Did people really need a new Frigidaire refrigerator (and color matching electric range)?

Millie Coleman will tell this tale. Millie doesn't just lecture. She creates a series of characters from a particular era to to create a new genre -- part performance art, part informational.  Playing the part of one Mary Engle Pennington, a 1920s chemist and director of the ice industry's Household Refrigeration Bureau, she will explain how refrigeration, sanitation and nutrition science, along with the Irish potato famine, propelled American society's craze for appetizer aspics, gelatin salads, jiggly Jell-O desserts and ice box pies -- all of which which paved the way for the institutionalized foods we eat today.

Open to the public. $5 per person Free to CHA members (CHA dues are $15 per year). 

Date: Sunday, August 22, 2010

Time: 2-4 pm

Location:

Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts

1937 Lakeside Parkway, Tucker, GA     30084

 Please RSVP by sending a comment or through our Facebook page: 

              Facebook address is Culinary Historians of Atlanta 

Upcoming events: 

September 26 - The Herbs of Shakespeare - herbs that were used in Elizabethan times

October 17 - Relishing History - the history of three condiments - make your own mustard!

A Brief History of the National School Lunch Program

School lunch in Tokyo includes rice, soup, fish, pickled cucumbers and milk

The National School Lunch Program is getting a bad rap these days. A free lunch for low-income children? Is it a communist conspirancy? A muddle-headed liberal give-away program? Why are school lunches so high in calories and low in quality? A recent study found that school lunches in the US are nutritionally lacking. Unfortunately, the study was published in Canada. It was also published in California - click here for more info. 

Sometimes, in a case like this, it's instructive to look at the reason such a large and dysfunctional program ever came to be. The reasons are, to say the least, enlightening.  

The National School Lunch Program began in 1946 in the interest of national security. It was also a sort of "give-away" program for farmers, mainly as a way to distribute excess commodity foods, such as cheese. 

During both World Wars One and Two, an astounding 40% of military inductees  of both sexes were rejected for service because of poor health, much of which was related to poor childhood nutrition. Twenty percent alone were rejected for poor dental health. Other medical conditions included rickets, pellagra, and goiter. Also, there were a large number of inductees who lacked basic academic skills. The link between eating and learning was well understood. as it has been for hundreds of years. As an example, an iodine deficiency results in both goiters and mental insufficiency.

Ironically, during the same time period, farmers were unable to sell all the food they produced. One of the tragedies of the Great Depression was that people starved while farmers produced an abundance of food. But people had no money to buy food -- and the farmers needed money to keep producing food. The farmers were forced to destroy tons and tons of good food in the name of economics.

Dairymen dumping milk during the Great Depression

Now, Congress had been supplying funds to the U.S. Department of Agriculture for a school lunches since 1932, but funding was spotty. For instance, the first grant went to a few counties in southern Missouri to pay people to cook school lunches. This was actually as part of a jobs program, not out of concern for child nutrition. Most of the grants were year-to-year rather than long-term. School districts were wary of investing in proper lunchroom equipment if they weren't sure they would be able to pay people to operate it or purchase foodstuffs in future years.

So in 1946, the National School Lunch Act was enacted. Section 2 of the Act defines its dual purpose:

 "It is hereby declared to be the policy of Congress, as a measure of national security, to safeguard the health and well-being of the Nation's children and to encourage the domestic consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities and other food, by assisting the States, through grants-in aid and other means, in providing an adequate supply of food and other facilities for the establishment, maintenance, operation and expansion of nonprofit school lunch programs.”

The program was successful. As a result, it was expanded to include breakfast and there was even special legislation enacted to improve access to milk. It spurred tons of research on childhood nutrition and the links between nutrition and learning.  The USDA has posted a very interesting History of the National School Lunch Program on its website. Check it out for the full history. 

Partly as a result of these programs, we understand more about good food for kids. It's a shame that the present state of child nutrition in America is in crisis. These days, the biggest reason that military enlistees are turned down is obesity.  Retired military officers are supporting the reform of school lunches, calling obesity a threat to national security. 

School lunch in Washington, D.C.  YUMMY!

This is a fascinating topic that has captured the public's attention. Jamie Oliver, a British celebrity chef,  did a reality series on school lunches that has the industry a-buzzing (he did the same thing last year in a British school lunch program). Top Chef had a special episode where the contestants were expected to cook a tasty, nutritious school lunch within the same budgetary constraints that school districts are forced to live with. It was hilarious. My pet peeve about this episode was that celebrity chef Sam Kass, who was a guest judge, stated categorically that the tomato is a fruit. Shortly after the segment aired, the Obama administration made this guy some kind of school lunch guru. He doesn't even know the difference between a fruit and a vegetable. Clearly, the cult of personality has seduced the liberal left of which I was once a part. 

A vegetable

Naturally, I want to get into the act, too. Over the next few months, this blog will examine the historic context for our national nutritional pickles. Stay tuned and comment often. 

Bitter/Sweet

They tantalize with seductive promises to taste like sugar but without the calories. Without the spike in blood sugar. Without the guilt. And they deliver, sort of, if you can stand the metallic flavor that dances on your tongue long after the tart sweetness fades away. They are, of course, artificial sweeteners. 

Now there's a new book (well, actually, it's due for release in September but you can order an advance copy now) with the title Empty Pleasures: the Story of Articifial Sweeteners from Saccharine to Splenda. 

According to the author, saccharine, the result of an accidental laboratory laboratory by-product, was first seen as an adulterant. But when its profit potential became apparent, it was introduced to the public at the 1893 World's Fair. From there the reader goes on to learn about the public reaction, and how the cause was taken up by women's magazine editors and public relations mavens. Nearly 300 pages long, the book offers a leisurely journey through the stories of the many sweeteners to follow, including NutraSweet, Equal, and Splenda.

Food producers and pharmaceutical companies have worked together for over a century to weave these products into our daily lives. We need to better understand what they actually are, how they work, and how they affect our health. We also need to raise our own awareness about how they are marketed to us and our families. It seems that this book might help.

Artificial sweeteners cost food companies less than natural sweeteners. It's no wonder then, that they push products that contain artificial sweeteners as "lite" or "low calorie". These products are highly profitable. In the past ten years more than 4,000 new food products containing artificial sweeteners were introduced in the American marketplace. In the meantime, even though most people purchase these products for purposes of weight loss, a 2004 study coming out of the University of Texas found that they actually contribute to obesity.

The author of this book is Carolyn de la Pena, a professor of American Studies at the University of California - Davis. This is one of the most important land grant schools in the US. She would have had access to tons of information normally not available to the average person. We owe her a big Thank You for sharing this important information.

Ordering information: Empty Pleasures is published by the University of North Carolina Press.  
 ISBN  978-0-8078-3409-1d. $32.50 cloth bound. 296 pages. 

Cooking as a Team Sport

     The ultimate drive-thru

Competitive cooking is big business. Professional teams travel the US entering competitions for glory and trophies. 

This week’s guest columnist is Mike “Gadgetgeek” Stock -- barbecue chef, radio personality, founder of  285foodies.com, and my friend.  He helps out as a sous-chef while providing color commentary for the radio show Chef and the Fatman when Team Bobby Q grills, smokes, and slathers ‘cue at competitions around the Southeast. Chef and the Fatman have a cooking show on Sunday from 3-5 p.m. on AM 1160 in Atlanta, 
Credit for all photos goes to Mike Stock. 

I didn’t know anything about this stuff until I met Mike. It’s a world unto itself with a cast of characters that reads like a Russian novel. Oh, and if you're wondering how this fits into culinary history -- well, this is culinary history of the future. 

  

Barbecue  Competitions

Mike "Gadgetgeek" Stock

 It takes all kinds.  BBQ competitions are a way to spend part of a weekend or a Saturday with your family or buddies, to cook, smoke, or grill your way into bragging rights, a trophy, and/or some money. I have been following around the ABA (American Bass Anglers) tour here in the Southeast. Being the observer has let me in on some of the local cooks and a few of the regional professional teams that compete weekly using the KCBS (Kansas City Barbecue Society) sanctioning umbrella and judging rules to keep the playing field level.  The ABA has combined some seemingly disparate competitions into a fun weekend. They have two divisions of BBQ competition with local cooks competing in Backyard Barbecue and professionals from the KCBS circuit.  To round out the day, they have a bass fishing tournament and a battle of the bands music fest.

BBQ competitions are all about the "run-what-you-brung" entrepreneurial approach to cooking in the backyard taken to a whole different level. The variety of smokers from inexpensive to full-blown motor home rigs with all of the kitchen equipment found in a commercial kitchen tells the story best.  Some of the folks competing are having a wonderful time for the weekend with the family, the dog and some friends and others have their race face on and are there to WIN the prize and the money.

The bass fishing side of the event takes off at sunrise. This time they are fishing on beautiful Lake Logan Martin just west of Talladega. Their bass will not be judged until mid afternoon freeing up a nice chunk of time for the BBQ event, a battle of the local bands and sometimes an ice-tea competition.

The BBQ competitors have been tending fires and smokers since after the Friday night campfire get-together. They have the option of entering pulled

pork, beef brisket, pork ribs and chicken.  The schedule needed to pull off properly cooking all four entries is intense. They put on their Boston butt roasts late Friday night for the pulled pork judging around noon on Saturday. Some sleep, some keep one person on watch and other contestants rely on electronic equipment to keep their smoker on just-the-right temperature for that long and low cooking that pork shoulder requires. Beef brisket takes less time than the pulled pork, but more than the ribs usually taking about 6 hours.  The pork ribs will be a 4 to 6 hour adventure starting in mid morning. The chicken will take less time than the beef or pork.

Attending one of these events gives a regular home griller/smoker/cook a chance to see how really good these meats can be prepared.  Sometimes samples are shared after the contestants have turned in their boxes to be judged.  A few of the competitors are very secretive and will barely talk to regular attendees as they walk by and others are very cordial and will chat on and on about how they cooked their meat and why.  I find lessons can always be learned in these events. Having attended several of the ABA showdowns this year, I am seeing familiar faces in both the pro ranks and backyard BBQ teams again and again.

photo: Mike Stock on location in Pell City, Alabama

More pics on Flickr.com-- http://www.flickr.com/photos/49637895@N00/sets/72157624209449301/

Competitive barbecuing falls under the auspices of the Kansas City Barbecue Society

http://www.kcbs.us/index.php

Perspectives in Olive Oil

 Photo courtesy of California Olive Oil Council

WASHINGTON, DC -  United States Department of Agriculture officials published new standards for olive oil in the April 28, 2010 edition of the Federal Register. The standards will go into effect on October 25, 2010. This is being touted as an historic achievement because up to now there have been no standards. All those extra-virgin, virgin, light, and other labels? Sheer marketing!  The new standards are meant to better inform consumers and also to weed out producers that mislabel their products and make misleading claims. The new regulations are a the result of the efforts of the California Olive Oil Council, which first filed a petition in 2005 requesting that standards be issued. Follow this link for the actual language from USDA http://www.cooc.com/docs/USDAstandard.pdf

This is big news and I'm sure you'll be hearing more about it in the coming months. Gone are the romanticized notions of extra-virgin coming from the first pressing and and virgin coming from the second pressing.  The USDA has scientifically quantified the standards.  For example, the oil labeled U.S. Extra Virgin Olive Oil will contain not more than .8 grams per 100 grams of oleic acid. And that's just the beginning.

I have suspected for some time that since olive oil became a culinary darling, with the myriad products available on the shelf, we consumers are being duped. I've paid a lot of money for disappointing olive oil on many occasions, and have eventually settled for a couple of brands I can count on. I hate settling. I'd rather be adventurous and try new things. But once (or twice) burnt, twice shy. The best olive oil I've ever had came from a small estate in Tuscany. They only produce enough to sell locally. I bought a few bottles to bring home but once they were gone, well, they were gone for good.

We take olive oil for granted, but it's important stuff. As usual, when I read the news, I got to  wondering. It comes from the Mediterranean area, but where did it originate? Are there still wild olive trees? What other interesting historic tidbits are there about  "liquid gold?" -- as Pliny the Elder was reputed to have called it.

It turns out that olives are native to the Near East, especially in the area of present-day Syria and Israel. The wild form is actually a shrub and it still grows wild in its native range. The olive was one of the first trees ever domesticated, and has been cultivated for at least 6,000 years.  the oil was probably first used for lamps. Later on, its value as an unguent, especially when perfumed, came into vogue. It was later still that olive oil was cultivated for its culinary usage. By the time of ancient Greece, it was a valuable food, and an important product of Crete, as evidenced by large numbers of presses and jars that have been found by archeologists. Cretan oil was shipped to Egypt and elsewhere.

Pliny wrote "There are two liquids that are especially agreeable to the human body: wine inside and olive oil outside." In the 2nd Century, B.C., the Roman author, Cato wrote in his treatise on farming, about ripe olives being harvested by picking up from the ground after a "windfall" and the importance of washing off the leaves and manure before pressing for oil.

The Spaniards probably brought the first olive oil to North America, although English colonists were known to import it, as well, stimulating the Spanish olive oil industry. Franciscan monks planted the trees near their missions, and they soon realized that the trees did better in California than elsewhere in New Spain. Visitors to abandoned monasteries in California as late as the 1800's noted that the buildings were in ruins, but the olive trees were thriving.

These days, most US olives come from Northern California. Southern California is actually the prime climate, but land values from San Diego to north of Los Angeles have soared to the point that farmers were driven out of business.  In Northern California, olive tree farmers make much less than grape farmers, so the business is still endangered.

Personally, I think we should thank the California Olive Oil Council for their efforts to maintain high standards for such an important product. And I even think we should "Buy American" in this case, to help keep the California olive oil industry alive. We buy California wine - why not olive oil, too?

What's Your Beef?

Lascaux, France - Cave painting of wild aurochs, circa 15,000 BC

Yountville, CA - June 8, 2010

Milling around on the lawn of the Villagio Inn in this Napa Valley town, sampling healthy beef dishes created by local chefs, I got to thinking about how important cows are to human well-being.  I was there because I had the great good fortune to be a speaker at the Live Well 2010 conference, sponsored by the National Beef Cattlemen's Association.  Following the opening meeting, which included my address on food & culture, we repaired to the lawn for the opening reception, featuring beef and wonderful Napa Valley wines.  I got to talking with a woman who owns 3,000 head of cattle on a ranch in central Nebraska. She was there with her adorable 9-year-old daughter, and she told me that it truly is a family operation, and that they care about their animals. She was scheduled to speak the next day and was delighted for the opportunity.

But where do cows come from originally? How could these docile creatures survive in the wild? It's a complicated question with an even more complicated answer.  Whole books have been written on the subject. In the interest of brevity (after all, this is just a blog) here is the short answer.

Cows are the domesticated form of a now-extinct critter called the "aurochs," from which we derive the term "ox." The aurochs was larger and more aggressive than the present-day cow, with large, lyre-shaped horns on both males and females.  With a huge, shaggy mane covering its enormous shoulders, it was an impressive beast. The aurochs' naturally ranged throughout Eurasia and south into the Near East. It was killed off by humans - through hunting, loss of habitat, and, ironically, the disease that spread from domesticated herds. The last aurochs died in the 1600's.

By 8,000 years ago, humans in the Near East, or "Fertile Crescent" as it became known, had developed fields of high quality wheat and allied grains. They had domesticated sheep and goats, which were a good source of milk, meat, leather and muscle power. The aurochs were probably attracted to the grain fields, and humans started to see them as potentially better sources of milk, meat, leather and muscle power than sheep and goats.  They were probably captured and the most aggressive animals were quickly killed and eaten. The more docile individuals were allowed to breed. Their offspring were even more docile and the process of domestication began.

The first cows were probably kept by priests, as milk was seen as a ritual gift from the goddess, according to the findings from archeological excavations in Anatolia. But once someone figured out how to yoke cattle to a plow, the stage was set for agriculture on a scale never seen before. Cattle helped the ancient Egyptians gain dominance and used their power to domesticate even more plants and animals.

Thanks to the Egyptians, we enjoy onions, garlic, green peas and other foods. The Egyptians also domesticated cats (some say they domesticated themselves, which makes sense to a cat lover) because the huge stores of grain attracted rodents. Those huge stores of grain and other foods could not have been cultivated without large, strong draft animals.

Meat cows were brought to the New World by the Spanish. Milk cows came with the English. By the time settlers reached the territory of Texas, there were feral cows living free on the range, descendants of escapees from the Spanish stock. They were big and fierce, with large horns -- and the process of domestication began all over again.

If you want to read more about the history of beef, you might want to read Beef: the Untold Story of How Milk, Meat and Muscle Shaped the World, by Andrew Rimas and Evan Fraser.