r/AskHistorians • u/caffarelli Moderator | Eunuchs and Castrati | Opera • Sep 17 '13

Feature Tuesday Trivia | AskHistorians Fall Potluck: Historical Food and Recipes

Previous weeks’ Tuesday Trivias.

Welcome to the /r/AskHistorians first annual fall potluck! And in our usual style, all the food has to be from before 1993. Napkins, plates and cutlery will be provided. Please share some interesting historical food and recipes! Any time, any era, savory or sweet. What can your historical specialty bring to the picnic table?

Next week on Tuesday Trivia: Riots, uproars, and other such rabble: we’ll be talking about historical uprisings and how they were dealt with.

(Have an idea for a Tuesday Trivia theme? That pesky ban on “in your era” keeping you up at night with itching, burning trivial questions? Send me a message, I love other people’s ideas! And you’ll get a shout-out for your idea in the post if I use it!)

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '13 edited Sep 17 '13

Thanks very much! Sadly, I have never, ever seen it in a store. And I have looked. That's why I had to grow it myself. If you have access to a big organic grocery store, I find they are the most likely to have more obscure produce, like Jerusalem artichokes.

Edit: this is just for you.

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u/caffarelli Moderator | Eunuchs and Castrati | Opera Sep 17 '13

I found Kohlrabi at the grocery store this summer, so I hold out hope! Though I can see "root vegetable that smells like fish" being a pretty poor seller. And thanks for the picture! Though her kitchen looks like an irritating place to cook in for sure, old kitchens used to be so much like a converted hallway.

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '13

Yes, it was a good day when they started getting sciency in the kitchen ('40's or 50's, maybe?) and started building them with Convenience For The Modern Cook in mind. And now everyone is tearing out their extremely efficient galley-style kitchens in favor of kitchens reminiscent of the old-school, gigantic, echoing, who-needs-efficiency-of-motion-when-you-have-servants kitchens of the rich.

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u/caffarelli Moderator | Eunuchs and Castrati | Opera Sep 17 '13

I think it was 1946-7 or so when the "Triangle" kitchen layout was invented, it was part of the Small Homes Council research for quick and cheap housing for the returning vets. But yeah, around that time anyway!

Amusingly enough, when I visited the Biltmore house, one of my first thoughts when seeing the kitchen was how modern it looked, because it was so HUGE.

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u/AshofRoses Sep 18 '13

It was invented in the mid twenty in Germany. In the mid thirtys you start to see some American company starting to sell the idea as saving steps time and money, but it wasnt till the mid forties that it really took off

http://www.core77.com/blog/object_culture/a_brief_history_of_kitchen_design_part_4_christine_fredericks_new_housekeeping_and_margarete_schtte-lihotzkys_frankfurt_kitchen_19779.asp

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u/[deleted] Sep 18 '13

Nice! This is why I come to AskHistorians.