Food

Part of a nation's history lies in what people eat. Artifacts at the Museum document the history of food in the United States from farm machinery to diet fads.

More than 1,300 pieces of stoneware and earthenware show how Americans have stored, prepared, and served food for centuries. Ovens, cookie cutters, kettles, aprons, and ice-cream-making machines are part of the collections, along with home canning jars and winemaking equipment. More than 1,000 objects recently came to the Museum when author and cooking show host Julia Child donated her entire kitchen, from appliances to cookbooks.

Advertising and business records of several food companies—such as Hills Brothers Coffee, Pepsi Cola, and Campbell's Soup—represent the commercial side of the subject

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1960
maker
Harbutt, Charles
ID Number
PG.72.14.006
referenced
Nixon, Richard M.
Associated Name
United Farm Workers
ID Number
1986.0666.127
accession number
1986.0666
catalog number
1986.0666.127
Olive green spice container. Appears to be handmade.The base of this spice container has the label "CHILES" hand painted on the center in brown. A green and blue leaf pattern stretches around the remainder of the base.
Description
Olive green spice container. Appears to be handmade.
The base of this spice container has the label "CHILES" hand painted on the center in brown. A green and blue leaf pattern stretches around the remainder of the base. Above and below the label and leaf pattern are two thin bands hand painted in brown. Bottom unmarked. Interior green.
The olive green lid of the spice container has three tiers with a round handle atop last tier. Thin blue or brown hand painted bands encircle the edge and inside tier. Underside of lid has a concave center.
This ceramic spice container was part of a set of containers that sat on the windowsill of Sandra Gutierrez’s home in North Carolina. Gutierrez acquired them in Guatemala. Each container was labeled with an ingredient commonly used or important in Guatemalan cuisine. This one is painted with the word chiles, or chilies.
Cook and author Sandra Gutierrez is at heart a culinary educator. Gutierrez was born in the U.S. in Philadelphia, but raised in Guatemala, where she attended an American school that brought Guatemalan and U.S. cultural practices together.
Gutierrez’ life was not defined by two distinct cultures, but by a single culture that shared the traditions of Guatemala and the U.S. “Food at home was also a reflection of my fused reality: we ate tamales for special occasions. . . . and Carolina hot dogs every chance we got,” she explains in her cookbook, “The New Southern Latino Table.”
As an adult, Gutierrez and her husband, Louis Gutierrez, moved to the U.S., eventually settling in Durham, North Carolina. There in the American South, Gutierrez learned about Southern food traditions from her neighbors and in turn taught them about diverse Latin cuisines. It was while living in the South that she began to take note of the culinary movement that combines regional Southern and Latin American foodways and which now lies at the center of her culinary career. She notes in her cookbook that the regional cuisines of Latin America and the Southern United States share many ingredients and cooking techniques in common: ingredients like tomatoes, corn, pork, beans, sugar, potatoes and key techniques like barbecuing, braising, roasting and deep frying.
Culinary writing is one of the many ways Gutierrez builds interpersonal relationships. Inviting people into her family’s inner sanctum, she also hosts cooking classes in her home. In her kitchen, where ceramics from Guatemala share counter space with antique Jell-O molds found in Southern antique shops, Gutierrez shares her migration story and passion for food cultures.
date made
ca. 1977
ID Number
2018.0039.04
catalog number
2018.0039.04
accession number
2018.0039
Concepción “Concha” Sanchez wore this cotton apron with embroidered images of birds while making tortillas in her small neighborhood business.
Description
Concepción “Concha” Sanchez wore this cotton apron with embroidered images of birds while making tortillas in her small neighborhood business. Her grandson, Adrian Sanchez, fondly recalls the machine and working with her to make tortillas and tamales:
I recall helping my Grandmother Concepcion Sanchez make corn tortillas for her to sell….[in] 1948 in Fillmore, California. …My uncle Arnulfo [bought] his mother a molino, a machine that grinds corn for masa to make tortillas…a comal, a griddle to cook the…tortillas, and a machine [tortilladora] that actually made the tortillas…the dry corn was cooked [and limed]…The cooked corn was then ready to be ground in the molino…The ground masa was then gathered into large balls to be placed on the machine…when the handle was turned, a tortilla would fall on an attached conveyor belt which…would drop the uncooked tortilla onto the comal…After the tortillas cooked, they were stacked and counted into dozens… The…neighborhood came to buy their warm tortillas…A…batch was sent…to…Tio Nuco’s market …During…Christmas…Grandma [made] masa for tamales…[she]…was into her 80’s when she quit. (Smithsonian interview, 2006)
Concha Sanchez and her family followed the path of many Mexican immigrants who turned their traditional foodways into a staple of community life. Concha and Abundio Sanchez migrated from Mexico in 1912 at the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. Through the 1920s, they worked in Kansas, in Texas, and in the produce fields of California, eventually opening a grocery store. When that failed in the Great Depression, Concha supported her family by creating a tortilleria, making and selling tortillas in her Ventura County neighborhood. Instead of making them by hand, as Mexican women had done for centuries, she used the new electric and gas-fired equipment bought by her son to produce tortillas and tamales for sale.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1940
1935-1945
ID Number
2006.0236.04
catalog number
2006.0236.04
accession number
2006.0236
Concepción “Concha” Sanchez used this electric Molino (corn mill) to grind cooked corn, an important step in making masa (dough) for tortillas and tamales.
Description
Concepción “Concha” Sanchez used this electric Molino (corn mill) to grind cooked corn, an important step in making masa (dough) for tortillas and tamales. Her grandson, Adrian Sanchez, fondly recalls the machine and working with her to make tortillas and tamales:
I recall helping my Grandmother Concepcion Sanchez make corn tortillas for her to sell….[in] 1948 in Fillmore, California. …My uncle Arnulfo [bought] his mother a molino, a machine that grinds corn for masa to make tortillas…a comal, a griddle to cook the…tortillas, and a machine [tortilladora] that actually made the tortillas…the dry corn was cooked [and limed]…The cooked corn was then ready to be ground in the molino…The ground masa was then gathered into large balls to be placed on the machine…when the handle was turned, a tortilla would fall on an attached conveyor belt which…would drop the uncooked tortilla onto the comal…After the tortillas cooked, they were stacked and counted into dozens… The…neighborhood came to buy their warm tortillas…A…batch was sent…to…Tio Nuco’s market …During…Christmas…Grandma [made] masa for tamales…[she]…was into her 80’s when she quit. (Smithsonian interview, 2006)
Concha Sanchez and her family followed the path of many Mexican immigrants who turned their traditional foodways into a staple of community life. Concha and Abundio Sanchez migrated from Mexico in 1912 at the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. Through the 1920s, they worked in Kansas, in Texas, and in the produce fields of California, eventually opening a grocery store. When that failed in the Great Depression, Concha supported her family by creating a tortilleria, making and selling tortillas in her Ventura County neighborhood. Instead of making them by hand, as Mexican women had done for centuries, she used the new electric and gas-fired equipment bought by her son to produce tortillas and tamales for sale.
date made
ca 1920
maker
Tolteca
ID Number
2006.0236.01
accession number
2006.0236
catalog number
2006.0236.01
Sr.
Description
Sr. Reynaldo Robledo, now a landholder and winemaker in Sonoma, began his career in the industry through the bracero program, migrating to Napa from Michoacán in the 1960s.
The stool was made in Mexico about 2000 and is part of a larger set of furniture used in the Robledo Family Winery tasting room, a winery started in 1990 in Sonoma, CA. The Robledo Winery is one of only a handful of Mexican-American owned wineries in California. The back is carved with the Robledo Family Winery crest—a horseshoe and grape motif that blends the family’s cattle ranching beginnings in Mexico with its more recent identity as wine growers and producers. The winery setting evokes a hacienda from Mexico, a style unlike others in the area.
date made
ca 2000
ID Number
2012.0026.01
accession number
2012.0026
catalog number
2012.026.01
Salad for Boycotters features recipes for lettuce-free salads. This booklet with image of salad bowl with the United Farm Workers eagle was produced to support the boycott of non–union iceberg lettuce.
Description
Salad for Boycotters features recipes for lettuce-free salads. This booklet with image of salad bowl with the United Farm Workers eagle was produced to support the boycott of non–union iceberg lettuce. Inside, suggestions include what other types of lettuce and greens to use in meal preparations, nutritional information, how to grow organic, foraging info, and wage info. This booklet was prepared in cooperation between the United Methodist Church in Kansas City, Missouri and the U.F.W.
The United Farm Workers lobbied to raise wages, improve working conditions, and compensation after some fields became mechanized. Through well publicized strikes and boycotts the U.F.W. helped change the face of agriculture labor unions, change consumers thinking, and increase moral awareness.
date made
ca 1971
ID Number
2012.0036.02
catalog number
2012.0036.02
accession number
2012.0036
Black ceramic napkin ring with a decorative red/orange monarch butterfly attached to the top. Butterfly has black forewings with white spots. Center of wings red and yellow. Thoranx of butterfly is red with a yellow oval with black dots.
Description
Black ceramic napkin ring with a decorative red/orange monarch butterfly attached to the top. Butterfly has black forewings with white spots. Center of wings red and yellow. Thoranx of butterfly is red with a yellow oval with black dots. Two wire antennae protrude from the top of the butterfly's head. The butterfly also has two yellow eyes. Appears hand painted. Sandra Gutierrez acquired the napkin ring in Guatemala.
Cook and author Sandra Gutierrez is at heart a culinary educator. Gutierrez was born in the U.S. in Philadelphia, but raised in Guatemala, where she attended an American school that brought Guatemalan and U.S. cultural practices together.
Gutierrez’ life was not defined by two distinct cultures, but by a single culture that shared the traditions of Guatemala and the U.S. “Food at home was also a reflection of my fused reality: we ate tamales for special occasions. . . . and Carolina hot dogs every chance we got,” she explains in her cookbook, “The New Southern Latino Table.”
As an adult, Gutierrez and her husband, Louis Gutierrez, moved to the U.S., eventually settling in Durham, North Carolina. There in the American South, Gutierrez learned about Southern food traditions from her neighbors and in turn taught them about diverse Latin cuisines. It was while living in the South that she began to take note of the culinary movement that combines regional Southern and Latin American foodways and which now lies at the center of her culinary career. She notes in her cookbook that the regional cuisines of Latin America and the Southern United States share many ingredients and cooking techniques in common: ingredients like tomatoes, corn, pork, beans, sugar, potatoes and key techniques like barbecuing, braising, roasting and deep frying.
Culinary writing is one of the many ways Gutierrez builds interpersonal relationships. Inviting people into her family’s inner sanctum, she also hosts cooking classes in her home. In her kitchen, where ceramics from Guatemala share counter space with antique Jell-O molds found in Southern antique shops, Gutierrez shares her migration story and passion for food cultures.
date made
ca. 1985
ID Number
2018.0039.08
accession number
2018.0039
catalog number
2018.0039.08
Concepción “Concha” Sanchez used this hand-cranked tortilladora to press masa into tortillas. Machines like this were invented in Mexico by 1911. This “La Rotative” press dates from about 1923 but was bought used by the Sanchez family in the 1940s.
Description
Concepción “Concha” Sanchez used this hand-cranked tortilladora to press masa into tortillas. Machines like this were invented in Mexico by 1911. This “La Rotative” press dates from about 1923 but was bought used by the Sanchez family in the 1940s. Her grandson, Adrian Sanchez, fondly recalls the machine and working with her to make tortillas and tamales:
I recall helping my Grandmother Concepcion Sanchez make corn tortillas for her to sell….[in] 1948 in Fillmore, California. …My uncle Arnulfo [bought] his mother a molino, a machine that grinds corn for masa to make tortillas…a comal, a griddle to cook the…tortillas, and a machine [tortilladora] that actually made the tortillas…the dry corn was cooked [and limed]…The cooked corn was then ready to be ground in the molino…The ground masa was then gathered into large balls to be placed on the machine…when the handle was turned, a tortilla would fall on an attached conveyor belt which…would drop the uncooked tortilla onto the comal…After the tortillas cooked, they were stacked and counted into dozens… The…neighborhood came to buy their warm tortillas…A…batch was sent…to…Tio Nuco’s market …During…Christmas…Grandma [made] masa for tamales…[she]…was into her 80’s when she quit. (Smithsonian interview, 2006)
Concha Sanchez and her family followed the path of many Mexican immigrants who turned their traditional foodways into a staple of community life. Concha and Abundio Sanchez migrated from Mexico in 1912 at the beginning of the Mexican Revolution. Through the 1920s, they worked in Kansas, in Texas, and in the produce fields of California, eventually opening a grocery store. When that failed in the Great Depression, Concha supported her family by creating a tortilleria, making and selling tortillas in her Ventura County neighborhood. Instead of making them by hand, as Mexican women had done for centuries, she used the new electric and gas-fired equipment bought by her son to produce tortillas and tamales for sale.
date made
ca. 1920
ID Number
2006.0236.03
catalog number
2006.0236.03
accession number
2006.0236
Metal comal, or skillet, used for cooking tortillas and toasting nuts and seeds. Thin round silver colored skillet with two handles. Thin rectangular handles protrude out from two sides of the skillet.
Description
Metal comal, or skillet, used for cooking tortillas and toasting nuts and seeds. Thin round silver colored skillet with two handles. Thin rectangular handles protrude out from two sides of the skillet. Skillet scratched and silver plate missing in some areas due to use.
Cook and author Sandra Gutierrez is at heart a culinary educator. Gutierrez was born in the U.S. in Philadelphia, but raised in Guatemala, where she attended an American school that brought Guatemalan and U.S. cultural practices together.
Gutierrez’ life was not defined by two distinct cultures, but by a single culture that shared the traditions of Guatemala and the U.S. “Food at home was also a reflection of my fused reality: we ate tamales for special occasions. . . . and Carolina hot dogs every chance we got,” she explains in her cookbook, “The New Southern Latino Table.”
As an adult, Gutierrez and her husband, Louis Gutierrez, moved to the U.S., eventually settling in Durham, North Carolina. There in the American South, Gutierrez learned about Southern food traditions from her neighbors and in turn taught them about diverse Latin cuisines. It was while living in the South that she began to take note of the culinary movement that combines regional Southern and Latin American foodways and which now lies at the center of her culinary career. She notes in her cookbook that the regional cuisines of Latin America and the Southern United States share many ingredients and cooking techniques in common: ingredients like tomatoes, corn, pork, beans, sugar, potatoes and key techniques like barbecuing, braising, roasting and deep frying.
Culinary writing is one of the many ways Gutierrez builds interpersonal relationships. Inviting people into her family’s inner sanctum, she also hosts cooking classes in her home. In her kitchen, where ceramics from Guatemala share counter space with antique Jell-O molds found in Southern antique shops, Gutierrez shares her migration story and passion for food cultures.
date made
ca. 1970
ID Number
2018.0039.01
accession number
2018.0039
catalog number
2018.0039.01
Azteca Foods followed the health–conscious craze of the 1980’s by offering baked instead of fried shells along with providing healthy and innovative ways to use corn and flour tortillas.The traditional corn tortilla and the increasingly popular flour tortilla became a significant
Description
Azteca Foods followed the health–conscious craze of the 1980’s by offering baked instead of fried shells along with providing healthy and innovative ways to use corn and flour tortillas.
The traditional corn tortilla and the increasingly popular flour tortilla became a significant component in everyday American meals after 1950. As companies tapped into the growing Latino market by mass-producing Mexican as well as Central American and other Caribbean foods, they also produced taco shells, tortilla chips, and frozen burritos, which became staples in grocery chains and convenience stores. By the 1990s, salsa challenged ketchup for condiment supremacy in America.
Chicago entrepreneur Art Velasquez founded Azteca Foods in 1970, which sold Mexican and Central American foods in supermarkets across the country. The company enabled supermarkets to sell more flour and corn tortillas by adding a preservative into the masa (dough) to extend shelf life. He was one of the many entrepreneurs of the 1970’s to move tortillas from an ethnic based product to more of a popular everyday non ethnic product.
ID Number
2012.0032.01
catalog number
2012.0032.01
accession number
2012.0032
Savas Zahvala Castro wore this hat when he was a bracero working in California.The Emergency Farm Labor Program, or the Bracero Program (1942-1964), recruited two million Mexican nationals to come to the United States on short-term labor contracts.
Description
Savas Zahvala Castro wore this hat when he was a bracero working in California.
The Emergency Farm Labor Program, or the Bracero Program (1942-1964), recruited two million Mexican nationals to come to the United States on short-term labor contracts. Some returned to Mexico; others stayed in the U.S. to work, marry, or start new lives and advanced, using the knowledge they gained while in the U.S. These settlements of Mexican, Mexican American migrants eventually formed thriving communities in the U.S.
Location
Currently not on view
used date
1942-1945
user
Castro, Savas Zavala
ID Number
2005.0192.01
accession number
2005.0192
catalog number
2005.0192.01
Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1965-1970 circa
direct
United Farm Workers
ID Number
PL.296849.28
catalog number
296849.28
accession number
296849

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