Food history open house to showcase fall flavors and culinary traditions
A collage of vintage cranberry recipe advertisements showcases festive holiday dishes and classic mid-century food styling.
University Libraries’ Special Collections and University Archives will host its third annual Food History Open House on Thursday, Oct. 23, from 5:15-6:45 p.m. on the first floor of Newman Library. The program is free and open to the public.
The Food History Open House is an opportunity for the community to explore the “History of Food and Drink” collection, one of the university’s most unique archival resources. This collection brings together thousands of cookbooks, recipe pamphlets, and food-related manuscripts that show the ways people have thought about, prepared, and enjoyed meals across the eras.
This year's event will focus on fall and seasonal foods. Visitors will see publications and manuscripts featuring autumn staples such as cranberries, squashes, poultry, ham, sweet potatoes, apples, and other traditional fall fare. The items on display will reflect the versatility of these foods, from the practical and comforting to the festive and extravagant.
Jess Spratley, a graduate assistant in Special Collections and University Archives, proposed the autumn theme and will continue to work on food-related projects throughout the year.
“When we started talking about the open house this year and I mentioned that we could have a theme, she started brainstorming,” said Kira Dietz, assistant director of Special Collections and University Archives. “Her idea was to focus on fall foods, and we’re looking forward to exploring how things we associate with the season are represented in our collection.”
While the final selections are still being curated, Dietz said the open house offers only a taste of what Special Collections and University Archives holds.
“What we can share at the open house is just an appetizer-sized taste of our larger food and drink collecting area,” she said. “It’s not a space where visitors can learn about everything we have, but it is a space where they can start to learn about what we have to offer. At the basic level, we hope that anyone who comes by learns something new about food or a recipe.”
The collection's value extends beyond culinary instructions. Cookbooks and recipes reveal how food practices have evolved over time, reflecting shifts in access to ingredients, cooking techniques, tastes, costs, and even social roles in the kitchen. When viewed alongside agriculture manuals, advertising materials, and household guides, these items tell layered stories about people’s relationships with food.
For Dietz, food is one of the most powerful entry points into history.
“Food is something everyone can relate to in one way or another,” she said. “We all have a favorite or least favorite food, a memory associated with a dish or a food-related space, or a recipe that might be intriguing or surprising when you see it in print. We’ve had attendees at previous events be excited to find a cookbook they remember from their grandmother’s kitchen or discover a topic they chose to come back and explore further.”
More information is available on the University Libraries event calendar.
