Culinary Historians of Chicago

First Catch Your Gingerbread! Plus UK Supper Clubs: What Are They? Sam Bilton, Food Historian and Restauranteur Food historian and writer Sam Bilton is encouraging bakers to immerse themselves in the joy of making gingerbread. Gingerbread is a lovely, squidgy treat which has played a part in almost everyone’s childhood. But do you know what gingerbread was made of when it first arrived on our plat...

How Ingredients Shaped a Chef with Chef Peter Hoffman Come join us as acclaimed New York chef Peter Hoffman, author of the recently published book “What’s Good?: A Memoir in Fourteen Ingredients”,reveals why he combined the story of his career with profiles of the favorite ingredients that he found at his favorite farmers market. Hoffman, founder of iconic Manhattan restaurants Savoy and Back Fort...

Beijing Duck and the Pandemic: The story of Chicago’s iconic Sun Wah BBQ with Kelly Cheng, General Manager Times certainly have been challenging for our nation’s restaurants during these pandemic times. Come join us as Kelly Cheng tells her savory story of her family’s iconic restaurant and its place in Chicago’s culinary history. Kelly will also regale us with the story of Chinese barbecue and th...

Cicada vs Fungi Matthew Kasson, PhD Chicago area is three years away from our next cicada invasion. Meanwhile, we can prepare to help scientists study cicada fungi! Matt Kasson and his lab at West Virginia University are studying the Massospora fungus that infects cicadas. Kasson will be givin us the full story of how this fungi is distributed and how it affects these cicadas. When you find one, s...

FOOD IN THE GILDED AGE: What Ordinary Americans Ate with ROBERT DIRKS Emeritus Professor of Anthropology Illinois State University America’s Gilded Age, the last quarter of the nineteenth century, is renowned for the excesses of robber barons and tycoons. The lavishness of their tables impressed contemporaries and historians alike. But what about the eating habits of ordinary people at the time? R...

About the genus Leccinum and other interesting boletes Presented by Beatriz Ortiz-Santana, PhD Beatriz Ortiz-Santana is a Research Scientist and fungarium curator at the Center for Forest Mycology Research (- USDA, Forest Service, Northern Research Station) in Madison, Wisconsin. Ortiz-Santana received her PhD in Biology from the University of Puerto Rico - Rio Piedras. Her research focus is on th...

Chicago Trib’s New Restaurant Critics Exposed! Meet Louisa Chu and Nick Kindelsperger Time was we could never get a Chicago food critic to speak to our group; they religiously refused to reveal their identities in public. That is until about three years ago when the Tribune’s esteemed food critic, Phil Vettel, published a story in the paper, complete with his photo, explaining that it was almost i...

Chicago Trib’s New Restaurant Critics Exposed! Meet Louisa Chu and Nick Kindelsperger Time was we could never get a Chicago food critic to speak to our group; they religiously refused to reveal their identities in public. That is until about three years ago when the Tribune’s esteemed food critic, Phil Vettel, published a story in the paper, complete with his photo, explaining that it was almost i...

Passion for Persia Showcasing a Dazzling Culinary History Presented by Naomi Duguid Traveler, writer, photographer, cook Here in the west, though we may know a little about the great Persian empires of times past, we have been cut off from an appreciation of Persian culture by complicated geopolitics. And we’re not familiar with the old deep-rooted connections between the various peoples in Iran a...

Viennese Cuisine Prior to 1938 Susanne Belovari, Archivist The famous Wiener Küche had long been a collective culinary tradition of Jews and non-Jews alike. It was perhaps the perfect example, in an imperfect and Anti-Semitic city, of two formerly distinct groups moving towards each other and integrating while daily creating, cooking, and eating one cuisine. This is to be expected of people who li...

Someone's in the Kitchen with Dinah (Shore) with Flo Selfman Having been a top singing star, Dinah Shore became a pioneer television personality with “The Dinah Shore Chevy Show,” which showcased her distinctive voice and relaxed Southern charm from 1951 to 1963. In 1970, she returned to television as host of “Dinah’s Place,” an NBC morning show that covered homemaking, crafts, child-rearing, heal...

The Biology and Evolution of Rust Fungi M. Catherine Aime, PhD In terms of species numbers the rust fungi (Pucciniales) are an incredibly successful lineage. Together, the more than 7000 described species form the largest known monophyletic group of plant pathogens. All are obligate parasites of vascular plants including agricultural, forest and ornamental crops resulting in billions of dollars of...

The Taco Truck: How Mexican Street Food Is Transforming the American City Robert Lemon PhD Author, Geographer, Documentary Film Maker Icons of Mexican cultural identity and America’s melting pot ideal, taco trucks have transformed cityscapes from coast to coast. The taco truck radiates Mexican culture within non-Mexican spaces with a presence—sometimes desired, sometimes resented—that turns a publ...

The Fungi Involved with Devil's Stovepipes at Mt. Baldy, Indiana Dunes National Park Peter Avis, PhD from University of Maine In 2013, a young boy fell in a hole at Mt. Baldy. Fortunately, he survived and the pursuit to understand the formation of these holes (aka Devil's Stovepipes) ensued. This presentation will cover an overview of the research colleagues and I have conducted to understand the...

Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue Presented by Adrian Miller Food Writer, Attorney, Certified Barbecue Judge Join us as James Beard Award-winning author Adrian Miller discusses the history of African American barbecue culture from his book, Black Smoke: African Americans and the United States of Barbecue. Black Smoke describes how African Americans inherited a type o...

What's in a Name? Mycology Etymology Anna Henning Many scientific names for fungi (known as binomial nomenclature) are difficult enough to pronounce, let alone understand. Have you ever wondered what Craterellus means, or why turkey tails are in the genus Trametes? Knoweledge can be challenging to retain if we don't have a framework for understanding it, but this talk will make it fun and easy to...

Pizzeria Uno and the Mysterious Origins of Deep-Dish Pizza Peter Regas, PizzaHistoryBook.com Who invented deep-dish pizza? Is there a more controversial question in Chicago food history? There’s little doubt the pizzeria at 29 East Ohio Street in Chicago- originally named “The Pizzeria” later renamed “Pizzeria Uno”- served the original deep-dish pizza. But despite decades of debate and speculation...

Ravinia Music Under the Stars Around the World An Archives Access Project Courtesy of the Illinois Secretary of State Presented by Steve Gianni, Project Archivist for Ravinia Park Collections Nancy Webster, Archivist of the Highland Park Archives and Local History Collections at the library This project has been a journey of discovery through the basement, closets and file cabinets of an instituti...

Linking DNA to the microscope Timothy James PhD In the past twenty years the field of mycology has been revolutionized by studies that use DNA detected in the environment to reveal a hidden diversity that exceeds the diversity that has been formally described. In other words, what is present in the pages of journals and cabinets of herbaria is only the tip of the iceberg of a vast fungal species d...

The Making of James Beard, An American Legend Presented by John Birdsall, Author, The Man Who Ate Too Much Food of the past that comes to us through recipes and cookbooks can appear to be fixed evidence of what generations before us ate, their tastes and preferences. John Birdsall says that his research for The Man Who Ate Too Much: The Life of James Beard (Norton, 2020) challenged all his assumpt...

Shooting Spores: Understand the Physics of the Most Amazing Apparatuses on Earth Presented by Anne Pringle, PhD Fungi use spores to move between habitats and spore dispersal is critical to their success. Fungi use an astonishing array of apparatuses and strategies to move their progeny: sacs filled with fluid that explode like water balloons, collapsing drops of liquid, and winds created by the co...

How the Frugality of Rural Foodways Reshaped this Nationally Acclaimed Chef Presented by Vivian Howard Chef, Author, PBS Host Vivian Howard moved from New York back to her rural hometown to open a fine-dining restaurant that she hoped would reshape the palates of eastern North Carolina. But an encounter with collard kraut and a trip to “America’s largest pork display” ignited her interest in the t...

Illuminating Fungi: the Science of Fungal Bioluminescence with Brian Perry PhD Fungal bioluminescence was first described by Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.), and continues to fascinate and puzzle scientists today. While over 100 species of fungi are known to produce luminescent mushrooms or mycelium, the chemical and genetic basis of the light-producing reaction was only recently discovered, and the re...

Swedish Pancakes for Breakfast? Presented by B. Marcus L. Cederström Folklorist Why do we eat the things we eat? And how do those things change due to migration? This talk explores what the foods we eat can tell us about immigration, identity, and Nordic-American life in the Upper Midwest, by focusing on coffee, lutefisk, and, of course, Swedish pancakes. Marcus Cederström earned his B.A. from the...

The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food An interview with Chef Marcus Samuelsson Conducted by culinary historian and food writer Donna Pierce Black cooking has always been more than “soul food,” with flavors tracing to the African continent, to the Caribbean, all over the United States, and beyond. Join us as internationally acclaimed chef Marcus Samuelsson highlights the diverse delic...