Food

Photo of McCall's Cheese

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

Topic: Food

ladle

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1792 - 1793
ID Number
DL.66.0582B
catalog number
66.0582B
accession number
265238

Aluminum Pitcher

By the late 1950s, American manufacturers and retailers were promoting new tools, clothes, furniture, and serving ware to go along with grilled meals on the patio.
Description
By the late 1950s, American manufacturers and retailers were promoting new tools, clothes, furniture, and serving ware to go along with grilled meals on the patio. The set of serving ware, including an anodized aluminum tray, 9 tumblers, and pitcher, and 4 wicker holders, was a common fixture of the 1960s backyard or patio culture established in the U.S. in the 1950s. These “glasses” were among the most common and ubiquitous of the specialized tools for the new life in the outdoors. Many were giveaways given along with or filled with a desirable foodstuff or awarded for coupons in grocery store giveaways.
Anodized aluminum tumblers were commonly used for serving both alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks at backyard cookouts. The anodizing process increased the thickness of the oxide layer on metallic parts, making the popular serving ware unbreakable, rust-resistant, and colorful—perfect for outdoor gatherings.
Location
Currently not on view
ID Number
2012.0125.01
accession number
2012.0125
catalog number
2012.0125.01

Teaspoon

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1905 or later
patent date
1900-10-09
ID Number
DL.380491A
catalog number
380491A
accession number
153231

mold, gelatin

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
20th century
maker
Jell-O Company
ID Number
1987.0160.02A
accession number
1987.0160
catalog number
1987.0160.02A

Boys and produce in marketplace

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1890s
maker
Johnston, Frances B.
ID Number
2000.0007.183
catalog number
2000.0007.183
accession number
2000.0007

Oyster Plate

Porcelain factories responded to the American passion for oysters by designing special plates on which to serve the delicacy, accompanied by silver-plated forks also designed for the purpose.
Description
Porcelain factories responded to the American passion for oysters by designing special plates on which to serve the delicacy, accompanied by silver-plated forks also designed for the purpose. During the long and lavish dinners characteristic of evening entertainment among the wealthy on the East Coast in the 1870s and 1880s, guests were frequently served their first course on oyster plates such as these gilded examples produced by the Union Porcelain Works, in Greenpoint, New York, around 1881. American and European porcelain factories met increasing affluence and elaborate dining etiquette with an extensive range of items designed for specific foods and beverages. Oyster plates represent one such refinement in response to a newly acquired taste for the shellfish.
date made
About 1881
about 1881
maker
Union Porcelain Works
ID Number
CE.75.123E
catalog number
75.123E
accession number
317832

Wax Shipping Crate

This shipping crate side originally contained Parowax, made by the Standard Oil Company of New York during the early 20th century.
Description (Brief)
This shipping crate side originally contained Parowax, made by the Standard Oil Company of New York during the early 20th century. Parowax was Standard Oil’s proprietary name for paraffin wax that could be “used for sealing Jelly Glasses, Fruit Jars, Bottles, etc.”
Location
Currently not on view
referenced business
Standard Oil Company of New York
ID Number
1979.0441.305
catalog number
1979.0441.305
accession number
1979.0441

Chemical Shipping Crate

This shipping crate side originally contained embalming fluid manufactured by the Dodge Chemical Company of Boston, Massachusetts during the early 20th century. The Dodge Chemical Company was founded in 1893 by A.
Description (Brief)
This shipping crate side originally contained embalming fluid manufactured by the Dodge Chemical Company of Boston, Massachusetts during the early 20th century. The Dodge Chemical Company was founded in 1893 by A. Johnson Dodge, who also established a permanent embalming school called the New England Institute of Anatomy, Sanitary Science, and Embalming. The Dodge Chemical Company continues to this day as a manufacturer of embalming fluids.
Location
Currently not on view
referenced business
Dodge Chemical Company
ID Number
1979.0441.361
catalog number
1979.0441.361
accession number
1979.0441

Herb Vegetable Sauce

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1968-1970
author
Waters, Alice
ID Number
2016.0085.11
accession number
2016.0085
catalog number
2016.0085.11

BBQ Chef's Hat

After World War II, many newly affluent Americans flocked to the tropics, visiting Pacific islands, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia, as well as warm places closer to home, including Mexico, California, Hawaii, and Florida.
Description
After World War II, many newly affluent Americans flocked to the tropics, visiting Pacific islands, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia, as well as warm places closer to home, including Mexico, California, Hawaii, and Florida. People developed a taste for casual living and the distinctive local foods and drink. Returning home, they re-created these experiences in their new suburban backyards, with patios, tropical drinks, and the grill, where they cooked meals craved by a postwar meat-mad America.
By the late 1950s, American manufacturers and retailers were promoting new tools, clothes, furniture, and serving ware to go along with grilled meals on the patio. Just as the lust for the tropical life inspired experimentation in food and drink (in what we ate and who cooked it), clothing took a tropical turn in the 1950’s and 1960’s, especially in menswear. The aloha shirt, with its tropical motifs from Hawaii and the cool cotton guayabera from the Caribbean, topped the more casual shorts (Bermuda) that men had traded in from their long pants. Summer grillers, through the ‘60’s at least, even had barbecue/grilling shirts, hats, and aprons developed for them, outfits that often poked gentle fun at the aspiring backyard chefs. Aprons, in particular, often carried titles that boasted of the culinary accomplishments of these Daddios of the Patio, these Grill Masters. Others joked about the wearer’s presumed interests in both alcohol and women.
Others, like the hat pictured here, around 1965, which went with a shirt of the same design, pictured the new tools and possessions, even food and drinks of the new life on the patios, decks, and lanais. This chef’s hat, a modified version of the classic French chef’s toque blanche (white hat) and its matching shirt pictured watermelon, pickles, skewers of meat (shish kebabs/Shish-ka-bobs), grill racks with steaks and hot dogs, spatulas, flippers, and even corn on the cob on its decorative design.
Location
Currently not on view
ID Number
2011.0210.01
catalog number
2011.0210.01
accession number
2011.0210

Apple Crate Label

Labels are an important marketing device.
Description (Brief)
Labels are an important marketing device. They often go beyond merely identifying contents and are designed to help establish brand distinction and generate customer loyalty for a largely interchangeable product.
This Kershaw brand apple crate label was used by the Kershaw Fruit and Cold Storage Company of Yakima, Washington during the early 20th century. The lithographed label was produced by Stecher-Traung of San Francisco, California. The label has a blue background with a central representation of an apple.
Location
Currently not on view
referenced business
Kershaw Fruit and Cold Storage Inc.
ID Number
1979.0441.086
accession number
1979.0441
catalog number
1979.0441.086

Cheese Scoop

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
ca 1900
ID Number
DL.66.0568
catalog number
66.0568
accession number
265238

Microwave Egg Cooker

This red, egg-shaped cooker is made of microwave-safe plastic for use in microwave ovens. It takes no time at all to cook an egg in this device: a mere 30 seconds will cook a soft-boiled egg and 50 seconds will deliver the egg in hard-boiled form.
Description
This red, egg-shaped cooker is made of microwave-safe plastic for use in microwave ovens. It takes no time at all to cook an egg in this device: a mere 30 seconds will cook a soft-boiled egg and 50 seconds will deliver the egg in hard-boiled form. This egg cooker was among the gadgets in Julia Child’s home kitchen, collected by the National Museum of American History in 2001.
Julia Child, the beloved American cooking teacher, cookbook author, and television personality, was a self-described “gadget freak.” She collected kitchen tools throughout her long career and received many gadgets as gifts from friends and colleagues. The origin and actual use of this egg cooker is unknown, but, since Julia’s kitchen did not include a microwave oven in 2001, it is safe to assume she kept the microwave egg cooker for some reason other than to use it for cooking one egg at a time.
date made
ca 1990
maker
Precis Plastic
ID Number
2001.0253.0364
catalog number
2001.0253.0364
accession number
2001.0253

Luncheon Knife

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1881 - 1898
patent date
1881-05-03
maker
Simpson, Hall, Miller, and Co.
ID Number
DL.68.0464B
catalog number
68.0464B
accession number
274913

Apple Crate Label

Labels are an important marketing device.
Description (Brief)
Labels are an important marketing device. They often go beyond merely identifying contents and are designed to help establish brand distinction and generate customer loyalty for a largely interchangeable product.
This apple crate label was used by Spark’s Orchards during the beginning of the 20th century. Spark’s Orchards was based in Wenatchee, Washington, a region that was well known for its apple production, especially in the early 1900s.
Location
Currently not on view
referenced business
Sparks Orchards
ID Number
1979.0441.010
accession number
1979.0441
catalog number
1979.0441.010

shirt

ID Number
2012.0059.12
accession number
2012.0059
catalog number
2012.0059.12

Golden North Salmon Derby 1975 Juneau, Alaska

This button is from the Golden North Salmon Derby, which has been held in Juneau, Alaska every August since 1947. It is a fishing competition which raises money for a college scholarship program.Currently not on view
Description
This button is from the Golden North Salmon Derby, which has been held in Juneau, Alaska every August since 1947. It is a fishing competition which raises money for a college scholarship program.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1975
ID Number
2003.0014.0679
accession number
2003.0014
catalog number
2003.0014.0679

McDonald's Brown Bag

This large brown paper bag with McDonald’s® golden arches advertising was copyrighted in 1995 by McDonald’s® Corporation. “Proud partner of [the Olympics]” appears on one side of the bag.
Description
This large brown paper bag with McDonald’s® golden arches advertising was copyrighted in 1995 by McDonald’s® Corporation. “Proud partner of [the Olympics]” appears on one side of the bag. The bag does not say “the Olympics” but rather has the 5 rings logo of the Olympics in its place. This bag was used to distribute McDonald’s® food products.
The McDonald’s Corporation is one of the most recognizable hamburger restaurants in the United States. As of 2011, the McDonald’s Corporation and franchisees were operating in 119 countries with 1.9 million employees, making it the 4th largest employer in the world.
In 1940, Richard (Dick) and Maurice (Mac) McDonald opened the first McDonald’s Bar-B-Q drive-in restaurant in San Bernardino, California. In 1948, the brothers redesigned their menu, centering on the 15 cent hamburger. In 1954, Ray Kroc, a Multimixer (milkshake machine) salesman, became interested in the McDonalds brothers’ high volume restaurant. He worked out a deal with the brothers to be their franchising agent and opened the first franchise location in Illinois the following year. Under Kroc’s direction, the company grew to become the giant we know today.
Location
Currently not on view
date made
2002-06-18
ID Number
2012.3045.10
catalog number
2012.3045.10
nonaccession number
2012.3045

Coffee Cup Lid, Sweetheart DTLX12

This is a Sweetheart DTLX12 peel and lock type coffee cup lid.
Description
This is a Sweetheart DTLX12 peel and lock type coffee cup lid. Peel and lock type lids give the drinker a place to snap the peeled back lid part into itself, preventing the need to tear off or throw away a little triangle of plastic.
Architects and collectors Louise Harpman and Scott Specht donated 56 plastic cup lids to the National Museum of American History in 2012. Their donation is a sample from their much larger collection of “independently patented drink-through plastic cup lids,” which they began in 1984 and discussed in a 2005 essay, “Inventory / Peel, Pucker, Pinch, Puncture,” in Cabinet Magazine: http://www.cabinetmagazine.org/issues/19/harpman.php. The collectors’ categorization scheme reflects the primary way the lid design functions, which helps differentiate between the varieties and styles of lids.
Plastic, disposable coffee cup lids and other single-use food packages reinforce the social acceptability of eating and drinking on the go in the United States and reflect increasing expectation for convenience products. Cup lids are also examples of how humble, and even disposable, objects are sometimes the result of meticulous engineering. Patents for lid innovations describe peel-back tabs and the pucker-type shapes that make room for mouths and noses, and describe the nuances of “heat retention,” “mouth comfort,” “splash reduction,” “friction fit,” and “one-handed activation.”
ID Number
2012.3047.36
catalog number
2012.3047.36
nonaccession number
2012.3047

Small Molinillo

A molinillo is a whisk that was first produced by Spanish colonists in Mexico. They used the molinillo to stir and froth their chocolate drinks. Prior to Van Houten’s invention of the hydraulic press, chocolate contained a large amount of fat that was not soluble in water.
Description
A molinillo is a whisk that was first produced by Spanish colonists in Mexico. They used the molinillo to stir and froth their chocolate drinks. Prior to Van Houten’s invention of the hydraulic press, chocolate contained a large amount of fat that was not soluble in water. A chocolate drink had to be continuously stirred in order to stay mixed. A small molinillo, such as this, would have been used with an individual serving size cup.
Chocolate had been known and treasured by Native Americans in Central and South America for thousands of years prior to the arrival of the first Spanish explorers in the late 1400s and early 1500s. Cacao beans were so highly prized by Mayans and Aztecs that they were used as currency in many areas of the Americas. When first taken back to Europe by the Spanish, the chocolate drink continued to be produced exclusively for the enjoyment of royalty or the extremely wealthy. As the cacao bean gradually made its presence known throughout Europe, it still remained trapped in this exclusive section of society well into the 19th century.
The chocolate trade to North America began more than 300 years ago, primarily centered in or near major port cities of the time, such as New York City, Boston, Philadelphia and Newport, RI. Due to lower transportation costs, chocolate was often less expensive in the Americas than in Europe and therefore had a broader consumer base. The Industrial Revolution radically changed chocolate production and helped propel it into the hearts and stomachs of the working class. Instead of being a labor intensive product, it became entirely machine made reducing costs even further in the late 19th and early 20th century. During this time, chocolate went from being something a person drank to being something to eat, finally becoming a treat for the masses.
Location
Currently not on view
ID Number
AG.76-FT-04.0009A [dup1]
catalog number
76-FT-04.0009A
accession number
315132

Tugboat Ice Cream Mold

This tugboat-shaped mold is one of 14 pewter ice cream molds donated to the Museum in 1972 by the wholesale distribution company Foremost-McKesson, Inc., of San Francisco, California.
Description
This tugboat-shaped mold is one of 14 pewter ice cream molds donated to the Museum in 1972 by the wholesale distribution company Foremost-McKesson, Inc., of San Francisco, California. Other forms include a butterfly, a dolphin, a lion, and patriotic symbols such as an eagle, Uncle Sam, the Liberty Bell, and George Washington in profile.
Molded ice cream was a popular treat in the United States from the 1870s to 1950s, with a boom in ice cream consumption driving increases in mold manufacturing between 1921 and 1925. The Eighteenth Amendment, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages from 1920 until it was repealed in 1933, sparked an increase in consumer demand for such things as soft drinks, ice cream, and confections. Indeed, ice cream consumption increased by over 100 million gallons between 1921 and 1929.
Like the majority of the molds in the collection, the boat was manufactured by Eppelsheimer & Co. of New York, one of the three largest American ice cream mold manufacturers at the time. These hinged molds, dating from the 1920s and 30s, while still functional, can no longer be used due to the lead content in the pewter.
The exterior of the mold is stamped with the company’s initials “E & Co” and its product number in the Eppelsheimer & Co. catalog, number “986.” While the mold’s exterior is otherwise nondescript, the interior, where the ice cream was poured and frozen, depicts the boat’s siding and port holes as well as the swirling waves of sea in fine detail. Once frozen, ice cream makers could embellish their confections by painting on a layer of food coloring. These individual molded ice creams would then be served on special occasions or holidays. As American holidays became more commercialized in the early twentieth century, the demand for variety in ice cream molds increased, as is apparent in the collection. However, technological advancements in ice cream manufacturing, the development of ice cream novelties such as the Eskimo Pie and the Popsicle, and the advent of packaged ice creams available in groceries, transformed ice cream in the eye of the American public from a seasonal or specialty dish into an everyday treat. As such, molded ice creams fell out of fashion by the 1950s.
Location
Currently not on view
maker
Eppelsheimer & Co.
ID Number
AG.72A1.8
catalog number
72A1.8
accession number
298969

Cream Ladle

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
date made
1922
date received
1922
ID Number
1977.0729.04
accession number
1977.0729
catalog number
1977.0729.04

Floss Candy concession

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
ID Number
2018.0068.0032
catalog number
2018.0068.0032
accession number
2018.0068

Man walking into Pizza Shop

Currently not on view
Location
Currently not on view
maker
Zalesky, Roy Joseph
ID Number
2017.0306.0069
catalog number
2017.0306.0069
accession number
2017.0306

Our collection database is a work in progress. We may update this record based on further research and review. Learn more about our approach to sharing our collection online.

If you would like to know how you can use content on this page, see the Smithsonian's Terms of Use. If you need to request an image for publication or other use, please visit Rights and Reproductions.