Culture and the Kitchen: A Taste of Cooking Past

 

Sunday August 10 at 2:00pm - 4:00pm

Please join Suzanne DeWitt at the opening reception for her exhibit at the Buttonwoods Museum. As the museum's first guest curator, Suzanne has created a nostalgic collection inspired by gastronomic ephemera from the 1920s to the 1960.

Cookbooks are time capsules and anthropological windows into life and culture. The making of a Sunday dinner in 1895 was very different from it's making in 1954, and another thing entirely in 2014. The procurement process for a chicken alone is vastly different, as are the styles of meal taking, our calorie requirements, and many other things. Suzanne's personal collection of cookbooks inspired this exhibit, featuring things like the "new mechanical iceboxes", war-time meals which accommodate rationing, entertaining without servants, psychedelic Jell-O preparations, and how to achieve better living through the use of the best brand of shortening. Each book is a snapshot into an era and a way of life that we have left behind. Each one illustrates the concerns and limitations of the day, while focusing on the vast improvements in ease of preparation and quality which arrive with each new generation.

Suzanne's exhibit presents a pivotal shift for each decade from the 1920s through the 1960s to highlight how the culture impacted the American kitchen.

Materials presented include period recipe collections, cookware, product advertisements, aprons, and many other items.

Come prepared to reminisce and maybe even giggle a little.

Buttonwoods Museum / Haverhill Historical Society
240 Water St,
Haverhill, Massachusetts 01830