Author Archives: Sarah Lohman

About Sarah Lohman

Sarah Lohman is a historic gastronomist who lives on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. She is author of the book Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine.

Video: Inside the Kitchens of Little Germany

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Video streaming by Ustream

A century ago, the Lower East Side of Manhattan was known as Kleindeutschland, or Little Germany.  New York was so populated by German immigrants that is was the third largest German-speaking city on the planet.

The Lower East Tenement Museum’s newest tour, Shop Life, looks at commercial spaces that were once in the historic structure, 97 Orchard street.  The new exhibit will feature a fully restored, German beer hall, run by two of 97 Orchard’s residents, John and Caroline Schneider.

On April 3rd, visitors got a behind the scenes look at the upcoming restoration, which opens in fall of 2012.  I gave a talk with Dr. Annie Polland, Director of Education for the museum, about the ins and outs of tavern life in 1860’s New York.  We spoke from the perspective of Caroline, tenement housewife, mother, and business partner to her husband: as the saloon owner’s wife, what was her day like?  And how did she accomplish the monumental task of preparing food for her family, and the saloon’s patrons, in her tenement kitchen?

For more on German food and life in 1860s New York, watch the video above, a live recording of the talk.  It begins with Dr. Polland and you’ll see me presenting foodways in the second half.  My section starts at 28 minutes in, and turn up you audio because it’s quite low in the recording.

Handmade, Chicken-Flavored, Marshmallow Peeps

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A pretty miserable Peep.

As a teenager, I was obsessed with Marshmallow Peeps.  I would wait until after Easter and then descend upon Target to buy box after box of marked-down peeps, just pennies apiece.  As an adult, I can no longer devour peeps with quite the same enthusiasm, but they still fascinate me.  They represent some aspect of my personal history: a yearly spring awakening, marked by yellow and pink confections appearing faithfully on the store shelves.  The peeps eagerly peeked out from cellophane wrapped boxes, promising to be lovable and delicious.

Peep History

Marshmallows were originally made from “Marsh Mallow,” a plant whose roots produce a sticky, white, mucilaginous substance that can be whipped with egg whites and sweetened.  This treat was popular in France in the early 18th century.  By the end of the 19th century, the marsh mallow had been replace with gelatin. I have never been able to find fresh marsh mallow, but if I ever do, I’m going to make “original” marshmallows.

Sam Born, the founder of “Just Born,” the company that makes marshmallow peeps, arrived in New York via Russia in 1910.  Like many other Jewish immigrants, Born went in to the candy business.  Candy was cheap to make and easy to sell, the perfect start-up for a new immigrant looking for work.  In fact, many American candy companies were founded by Eastern European Jewish immigrants, in including Tootsie Roll and Double Bubble.

Born opened his first retail location in Brooklyn in 1932, and in the 1950s, acquired a candy company called Rodda that produced a line of marshmallow Easter peeps.  Despite the fact that the company’s owners are still observant Jews, they are copacetic with the decidedly non-Kosher peeps.  “We see no conflict in offering a non-kosher brand or one that is so associated with Easter. We are a candy company for everyone,” said Ross Born,  Bob Born’s son (source).

Making a Hand-Made Peep

When marshmallow peeps were first produced, they were entirely handmade.  Each peep was squeezed out of a pastry bag one at a time; they were sugared and the eyes were hand-painted, and then the marshmallow chicks were left to dry.  Each peep took 27 hours to produce from start to finish.   Now, automated peep-making machines churn out several thousand peeps a day–each one takes about six minutes to make.  Watch this video–it’s awesome when the shoot the eyes on.

After I read about the original, labor-intensive Peeps, I wanted to try making a Peep on my own.  I just took a marshmallow making class at the Brooklyn Brainery, so I was inspired to creatively flavor my Peeps.  But what flavor should a chicken shaped marshmallow be??

I used Alton Brown’s marshmallow recipe, and replaced the water with–you guessed it–chicken bouillon!  I wanted a delicious, sweet and savoury, chicken-flavored Peep!  I followed Brown’s recipe, but something went wrong: I don’t know whether I cooked the sugar too long, or it’s because I used chicken bouillon instead of water, but my end result was less like marshmallow fluff and more like taffy.

I tried to squeeze it out of a pastry tube, and this is what I ended up with:

My second try was slightly better, and I formed it into one misshapen Peep.  I sprinkled him with yellow sugar and dotted his eyes on with a toothpick covered in vanilla extract.

He tasted just like ramen noodles.

 

The History Dish: Lebkuchen with How-to Video!

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I’ve got a talk coming up on Tuesday, April 2nd at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum.  It’s FREE and there will be cookies–Lebkuchen, to be precise. (rsvp HERE)

Lebkuchen are tradition German spice cookies and I made them because the talk on Tuesday will focus on the Tenement Museum’s new tour Shop Life, which features a recreation of an 1860s German beer hall and the tenement kitchen of the family who ran it.

If you would like to find out more about the talk, and see how lebkuchen are made (hint: kirschwasser, candied citron, 2 oz of cinnamon…and more) watch the video belo!  The video is introduced by Dr. Annie Polland, VP of Education at the Museum, and my bit starts at two minutes in.

Lebkkuchen

From The Practical Cook Book by Henriette Davidis, 1897 (American Edition. Original German version was printed in the 1840s)

2 cups honey
1 1/3 pounds brown sugar
1/2 pound slivered almonds
1/2 pound candied citron (or candied lemon)
1/2 pound candied orange peel
Zest of two lemons
2 ounces ground cinnamon
1/4 ounce ground  cloves
2 teaspoons ground mace
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 cup kirschwasser
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 3/4 lbs flour

1. In a large saucepan, combine honey and brown sugar.  Heat over medium, stirring occasionally, until it begins to bubble and rise to the top of the pan.  Add almonds and allow to cook for five minutes.

2. Remove from heat.  Add candied fruits, lemon zest and spices, stirring to combine after each addition.  Add kirschwasser, then baking powder, and mix to combine thoroughly.  Gradually add flour until the dough is thick but not crumbly.  You won’t use all of the flour.

3.  At this stage, the dough should still be slightly warm.  Either press dough into a shallow baking pan, or roll out on a heavily floured board 1/4 inch think.  Cut into long strips, about as wide as a biscotti, and place on a baking sheet.  Allow to sit out overnight.

4.  If you are baking the lebkuchen in a pan, bake for one hour at 350 degrees.  If you have rolled them thin, then 30 minutes at the same temperature will do.  Cut into sqaures immediately after they are removed from the oven.

***

Good lebkuchen are supposed to sit around for a couple months after you make them.  Even in modern recipes, there are often family traditions of letting them get stale before consumption.  These lebkuchen are not only great fresh, but perfect with a cup of coffee.

Events: Masters of Social Gastronomy: The Flavor Battles!

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Masters of Social Gastronomy: The Flavor Battles!
Where: Public Assembly, 70 North 6th Street in Williamsburg
When: TOMORROW Tuesday, March 27th.  Doors at 7
FREE with FREE SAMPLES
RSVP now!

Our next MSG lecture is on Tuesday, March 27, and it’s going to be themost epic yet, as we take on the history and science of imitation ingredients. There’ll even be a sample-heavy showdown where you get to definitively decide if there’s any difference between artifical and natural flavorings.

As for the lectures, Sarah will explore the history of artificial food, starting with medieval feasts obsessed with disgusting foods like “meat pitchers.” After a trip to the 19th century to explore theearliest artificial flavorings, we’ll visit the “Poison Squad,” a team of early 20th-century chemists who tested the safety of food additives by ingesting them in large quantities.

Soma will open up the science behind artificial flavorings, tracking the back-room work of flavor chemists. Find out what notebook paper has in common with vanilla ice cream, and uncover the secrets of Juicy Fruit gum. We’ll bring it all back home by examining the NYC’s very own maple-syrup-scent mystery, and Soma’s attempts to recreate it in his kitchen.

Then, during the Storytime interlude, natural and artificial flavors will square off.  Sarah and Soma will state the case for two sets of flavorings, and the audience will do a blind taste test to decide which ones reign supreme.

You have to be there.  RSVPing helps us know how many free samples to bring.  RSVP HERE.

When Betty Draper Ate at Schrafft’s

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Note the Schrafft’s bag in her hands.

What to Serve at Your Madmen Watching Party

In anticipation of the premiere of Mad Men on Sunday, I’ve been re-watching the series from the beginning.  Mad Men is full of delightful details of day-to-day life in the 1960s.  One of these period touches caught my eye in the season two finale: Betty Draper clutched a bag from Schrafft’s.

Schrafft’s was probably the most popular chain restaurant in mid-20th century New York.  Geared towards women, it offered a space where it was considered appropriate and acceptable for ladies to dine together without the company of men.  It offered luscious desserts and boxes of chocolates (I bet Betty’s got some sweets in her bag), as well as waist-conscious salads and practical sandwiches.

Digression: For a deeper level of food nerdery, I noticed that one of the production managers for the show is named Dwayne Shattuck.  Frank Shattuck was the founder of Schrafft’s.  It’s not a common name, so I wonder if they’re related, and the careful placement of that Scrafft’s bag was a nod to Dwayne’s heritage?  Dwayne, if you’re out there, tell me if I’m right!

If you’re planning on serving a little gnosh at your Madmen watching party, why not serve some treats from Schrafft’s?  There is a great recipe book called When Everybody Ate at Schrafft’s.  It’s chocked full of tasty dishes from the iconic restaurant.   But the best Schrafft’s recipe I know is for their famous Cheese Bread, which was originally served stacked with slices of grilled ham.  I’m not a bread expert, but I’ve had great luck with the recipe and it is well worth making.  It’s warm, satisfyingly cheesey, and great in sandwiches or simply slathered in butter.  Get the cheese bread recipe here.

If you’d like to make a few more items from Schrafft’s, there are vintage menus available here, and here is a recipe for their butterscotch cookies.

Need a side-dish for your Mad Men feast?  How about Jell-O Vegetable Trio, a “…dazzling, delicious rainbow of fresh vegetables at you dinner table,” from 1962.   And for dessert, try a classic Baked Alaska.

Any ideas for your own 1960s Mad Men dinner?

Origin of a Dish: What Was So Great About Sliced Bread Anyway?

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We’ve got a guest blogger on FPF this week: Aaron Bobrow-Strain the author of the new book White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf.  Below, Aaron gives us a little teaser history of sliced bread and the reactions it garnered when it was first released.

***

When Frank Bench, the owner of a nearly bankrupt bakery, and his friend Otto Rohwedder, an equally down-at-the-heels inventor, successfully ran the world’s first automatic bread slicer in Chillicothe, Missouri, they accomplished something nearly every member of the American baking establishment thought impossible—and utterly stupid.

By July 1928, when Bench and Rohwedder’s surprising product debuted, retail bakers had used machines to slice loaves at the point of sale for years, but few in the industry believed that bread should be automatically sliced as it came off the assembly line. Bread was too unruly. What would hold the sliced loaves together? How would slicing affect the chemistry of taste? What would prevent sliced bread from rapidly molding or staling?

Rohwedder’s designs for the automatic slicer dated back to 1917, but he found no takers for the idea and had almost given up hope. For Bench, installing the machine was a favor to his friend and a last shot in the dark. What did he have to lose?

The results astounded all observers. Sales of sliced bread soared 2000 percent within weeks, and a beaming Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune reporter described housewives’ “thrill of pleasure” upon “first see[ing] a loaf of this bread with each slice the exact counterpart of its fellows…indefinitely better than anyone could possibly slice by hand.” News spread rapidly. Sliced bread took off first in Missouri,Iowa, and Illinois, then spread throughout the Midwest by late summer 1928. By fall 1928, mechanical slicing had hit New York, New Jersey, and the West Coast. By 1930, 90 percent of all store-bought bread in the country was automatically sliced.

Some bakers dismissed sliced bread as a fad, comparing it to other Roaring Twenties crazes like barnstorming and jazz dancing. Nevertheless, as bakers wrote in frantic trade magazine articles, anyone who resisted the new technology would be crushed by the competition.

An automatic bread slicer. source: www.todayifoundout.com

While awaiting deliveries of mechanical slicers from hopelessly backordered manufacturers, bakers asked themselves a logical question: What’s so great about sliced bread? “Why does anyone want sliced bread anyway?” one baker wrote. “The housewife is saved one operation in the preparation of a meal. Yet, try as one will,the reasons do not seem valid enough to make demand for the new product.”

He had a point. How much extra work is it really to slice your own bread? And what about housewives’ “thrill of pleasure”? A little saved labor couldn’t explain a reaction like that. Why did so many people care so much about perfectly neat slices? What had sliced bread come to symbolize?

***

Aaron tracks down the answers to these questions in his new book, and the answers will surprise you.  He says “…It may get you thinking twice about our own confident visions of what counts as ‘good food.'”  Ok, my interest is piqued.

But I want to throw this question out to you, readers: What do you think was/is so great about sliced bread?

 

Events: Brooklyn Buzzard Day March 18th

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Buzzard Sunday
When: Sunday, March 18th, 11 am-4 pm
Where:  Brooklyn Brainery, 515 Court St., Brooklyn, NY.
Tickets: $12, Get ’em Here

 

 

 

We’re having a pancake breakfast! With games and a craft fair and fancy-pants pancakes.You’re all invited to come on down to the Brooklyn Brainery for a good old fashioned craft fair and pancake breakfast. We’ll be cooking up pancakes, all you can eat style, from 11-3pm or so, with plenty of OJ and coffee to wash it all down. Admission includes breakfast, games (and prizes!), and the chance to hang out with some other really nice people.Get your tickets in advance,we likely won’t have any at the door.Why? Buzzards, obviously.

Hinckley, Ohio is a small town with a bizarre holiday: Buzzard Day.

The legend of this festival stretches back nearly 200 years, to the great Hinckley Hunt of 1818. Hinckley was a new settlement and the menfolk decided a massive extermination of any and all nearby predatory animals was necessary for their safety and survival.

Because of a sudden freeze, they were forced to leave behind piles of rotting bear, wolf, and bobcat carcasses all winter. But when those rotting corpses thawed in the spring, magic happened: flocks of turkey vultures descended upon the small town to devour the fetid flesh.

To this day, buzzards still return to Hinckley on March 15th. The following Sunday is affectionately known as “Buzzard Sunday” and draws a crowd of thousands to the local elementary school for all you can eat pancakes, games, and crafts.  I’m cooking historic pumpkin cornmeal pancakes!

The legend of Buzzard Day may not be true, but this festival is the real deal. And this year, we’re starting the tradition of Brooklyn Buzzard Day.

It will be the best.  Get your tickets here.

 

Ancient Candy

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At last night’s meeting of Masters of Social Gastronomy, we focused on CANDY, and I spoke on the origins of sweet treats.  Below, a few of the world’s oldest sugary snacks.

Sugar Cane

About 10,000 years ago, farmers in Papua New Guinea domesticated sugar cane.  It spread to the rest of Southeast Asia where, along with bananas, it was a staple food source.   Sugar Cane is about 17% sugar and is still eaten as a snack in the countries in which it is produced: there is something very satisfying about chomping down on a fibrous strip of sugar cane.  Sugarcane is sold, unprocessed, in many ethnic grocery stores.  I found these sugar cane strips at Kalustyan’s, a fantastic Middle Eastern and Indian food store in Manhattan.  You can also find them as “swizzle sticks” for cocktails; I first had a piece of sugar cane while enjoying Brazil’s national cocktail, the Caipirinha.

Jaggary / Gur

After sugar cane was domesticated in East Asia, it made its way to India.   The earliest method method of processing sugar was developed there: beating the cane to release the sweet liquid inside, then evaporating the water to produce crystallized sugar.  This primitive processing method produces jaggary, a brown sugar that still contain molasses.  It is still eaten in India, other parts of Asia, and the Caribbean.

It’s believed the some of the first desserts, which were largely milk-based, were developed in India.  Recorded references of sweets date back thousands of years; there are mentioned in the ancient epic the Ramayana as kheer, a type of rice pudding.

Rock Candy

From India, sugar traveled to the Middle East, where sugar production was refined.  Arab countries used sugar in both sweet and savory dishes and developed the first candy: rock candy.  To make it, sugar is dissolved in water, and then allowed to recrystallize.  It was flavored with rose or violet; above, is saffron rock candy from Kalustyan’s.

The word “candy” comes from the Arabic word for sugar, “qandi.”

Manus Christi

(source)
The Middle East was also the first place to develop candy syrups and confections, like Halvah.  After sugar spread to Europe, there was a greater understanding of the various properties of sugar cooked to different temperatures.  One of the candies developed at this time was called Manus Christi, which means Hand of Christ.  It was a stick or tablet of hard candy, flavored with rose or violet water, and blended with flecks of gold or ground up gemstones.  Rich people, like Henry the Eighth, took it like a vitamin.  Intense.

Much of my research came from the great book Sweets: A History of Candy.

Head over the Brooklyn Brainery’s blog to read some of my co-teacher Soma’s fascinating posts on candy science.

Events: MSG The Candy Lectures

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Masters of Social Gastronomy: Candy!
Where: Public Assembly, 70 North 6th Street in Williamsburg
When: Tuesday, February 28sth.  Doors at 7
FREE with FREE SAMPLES

We’re kicking off a new bar room lecture series all about food!  Each month, Sarah Lohman of Four Pounds Flour and Jonathan Soma of the Brooklyn Brainery will take on a curious food topic and break down the history, science, and stories behind it.

Sarah will talk about ancient candies with a connection to the present day: from the first sweet treats in Asia to the development of confections like Halvah, we’ll explore the story of candy from pre-history to Marshmallow Peeps.

Meanwhile, Soma will unravel the science behind all your favorite niche candy and show you how to whip up cunning imitations at home. From the explosive power of Pop Rocks and the spicy burn of Atomic Fireballs to the sour rush of Warheads and the soothing coolness of Orbit gum – it’s chemistry vs candy!

Help us help you by RSVPing on Facebook here.  It will ensure we bring enough candy.

If you have a candy-related question, leave it in the comments on this post.  Soma and I will answer them live on Tuesday.  If you live outside of New York, don’t fret: we’re going to begin podcasting these lectures, so you can listen from anywhere!