Safer Than Water

Despite some of the more inebriating effects, for thousands of years people considered beer a healthier alternative to water. But prior to the 19th century, they did not understand why beer was safer. Many just held the belief that beer was not dangerous and water was harmful and could not be trusted, unaware that they were routinely polluting their own fresh water sources. Despite beer's "healthier" reputation, it could still go bad through bacterial contamination and/or poor sanitation and fermentation.

For many Early American and European brewers, beer went bad quite often. In a letter dated 1623, George Sandy of the Virginia colony wrote, "It would well please the country to hear he had taken revenge of Dupper for his Stinking [sic] beer, which hath been the death of 200." Like most food or beverage products, beer is not immune to bacterial growth or becoming rank from improper brewing practices. But through increased discoveries and understanding of the scientific study of microorganisms and biochemistry during the 19th century, brewing consistent quality beer became the norm by the 1880s.    

While Louis Pasteur is most famous for his discoveries in the causes and prevention of diseases, his lesser known research in fermentation was a giant leap forward for the brewing world. Pasteur began that work in 1857, examining distilling problems and eventually turning his attention to beer yeasts and their fermentation.   

Anheuser Busch advertisement, Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, ca. 1724-1977, Beer Series. Archives Center, National Museum of American History.  NMAH-AC0060-0002897-02.

After two decades, in 1876 Pasteur published his findings, "Études sur la Bière." He found that beer became foul not from "spontaneous generation," but when harmful bacteria were introduced at some point in the fermentation process, thus rendering the beer contaminated. Applying his discovery of bacterial effects on fermentation to his pasteurization process, he was able to produce bacteria-free brewer's yeast samples. But this was not the final step in improving the quality of beer or research in brewer's yeasts.         

Besides problems with bacterial infection, the accidental introduction of undesirable yeast strains also spoiled beer. Prior to the late 19th century, breweries struggled to control the type of yeast strains in the brewing process. Most batches of beer commonly contained more than one strain of yeast, each imparting its own characteristics. Multiple strains affected the fermentation, as well as the taste and smell of the beer; for many brewers, producing a consistent flavor and quality proved difficult at best.  Even modern brewing giant Carlsberg Brewery was no different than many other brewers in their struggle to produce beer of consistent quality.   

Soon after Pasteur published his research, Jacob Christian Jacobsen, founder of Carlsberg Brewery, read it. Motivated by the findings and his desire to brew high-quality beer, Jacobsen built a laboratory within his brewery.  But despite his financial ability to build a state-of-the-art lab, he needed a scientist to head the laboratory. Upon the recommendation of a friend, Jacobsen hired botanist Emil Christian Hansen for the position in 1877.   

Phillip Best Brewing advertisement, Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, ca. 1724-1977,
Beer Series, Archives Center, National Museum of American History. NMAH-AC0060-0002759-01.

Hansen's primary task was to investigate various issues that caused inconsistency. Through his research, Hansen had found that the yeast sample Carlsberg used had become contaminated with a second and different strain.  What he found was that not all yeast strains produced a positive effect in the fermentation process; some yeast strains were harmful to beer and fermentation.    

Utilizing Pasteur's research, Hansen developed a method to isolate and create individual-pure yeast strains.  By November 1883, Carlsberg brewed its first batch utilizing the pure strain, which Hansen named Saccharomyces Carlsbergensis.  The following year, all beer brewed by Carlsberg Brewery used this strain. But what do Pasteur's and Hansen's discoveries have to do with American beer?  

The same year Pasteur published his "Études sur la Bière," Anheuser-Busch's founder, Adolphus Busch, read the work and became the first American brewer to institute a pasteurization process in bottling his beer.  This insured Anheuser-Busch produced a bacteria-free product, resulting in a fresher tasting and better preserved beverage.  Pasteurization allowed Busch to ship his beer long distances, thus transforming Anheuser-Busch from a mostly local brewery to a national and even international prominence almost overnight. 

While Pasteur's discoveries in pasteurization caught immediate American attention, Hansen's contributions to brewing were not far behind.  The same year Carlsberg began using its pure strain, William Uihlein, owner of Schlitz Brewery in Milwaukee, reportedly bought a sample of Saccharomyces Carlsbergensis for his beer. Within a few years, additional American breweries, Pabst, Wahl-Henius, and Dewes, instituted the use of pure yeast strains, as well as employing chemists.   

Schlitz Brewing advertisement, Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, ca. 1724-1977,
Beer Series, Archives Center, National Museum of American History, NMAH-AC0060-0002775-01.

By the end of the 19th century, Pasteur's and Hansen's work played a significant role in transforming local American breweries into giants of American industry. The discoveries of these two European scientists brought new understanding to the roles of yeast and bacteria in brewing. And people finally knew why beer was safer than water to drink. 

Joe Hursey, Reference Archivist, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

America's Pastime Saved by Beer

It is October and the World Series is on the minds of fans, especially here in Washington D.C. For many people baseball revives memories of sitting in the stands drinking an ice-cold beer on a hot Sunday and watching the game from the cheap seats. To the fans, this is paradise and a way to enjoy America’s national pastime. But as American as this seems, there was a time when Sunday baseball, beer, and the cheap seats not only did not exist, they were banned.

Rewind to the early 1870’s, a time when the future of baseball looked bleak. Stadium attendance was low and fans were leaving the game. Corrupt and drunken players on the field and gambling in the darkest corners of the stadiums were running off baseball’s fan base. It was not uncommon for players to throw games for gamblers or not show for games with teams refusing to finish tournaments or seasons. This behavior threatened the end of an American sport.

The game’s salvation came in the form of William Ambrose Hulbert, in 1875. Hulbert, owner of the Chicago White Stockings, had enough of the chaos, dysfunction and corruption of baseball. Desiring a change, Hulbert started a new league that we know today as the National League. Not only did he take his team with him, but he took some of the wealthiest teams for his league. From the start Hulbert used an iron fist to institute rules. Most notably, the league controlled the teams and the players, instead of the other way around as it had been. If teams or players failed to heed the rules, Hulbert showed no mercy expelling the violators for life.

Baseball Score Counter, Peter Doelger Brewing, Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, ca. 1724-1977, Beer Series, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Keeping in line with his crackdown, Hulbert banned alcohol at stadiums. The fans had to quench their thirst with something other than beer and whiskey. Today this seems unbelievable: who would ban beer at the ballpark? But times were different. The Temperance Movement during the 1870’s was in full swing throughout the United States, and banning alcohol fell within the societal norms.

Baseball Score Counter, Pfaff's Brewery, Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, ca. 1724-1977, Beer Series, Archives Center, National Museum of American History

Lastly, Hulbert wanted to clean up the sport’s riffraff fan base. He raised ticket prices to 50 cents, which at the time was a stiff price to pay. Hulbert believed this would prevent the lower classes from attending games, making games more inviting to women and families.

But then a German immigrant came along to throw a wrench, or actually a mug of beer, into Hulbert’s best-laid plans. Christian von der Ahe pictured baseball for the working man. He and several other team owners formed the American Association baseball league in 1881. Many of these owners were connected to alcohol in some form, whether by owning breweries or saloons, or being based in beer cities such as Milwaukee, St. Louis and Cincinnati.

This American Association presented an immediate challenge to the National League in that they allowed beer in the parks, sold tickets for 25 cents, and held games for the first time ever on Sundays. Sunday games were extremely important in that for the average American laborers, Sundays were their only day off. The effects of the American League’s changes were swift. In the beginning Hulbert did not view the new league as a threat to his more puritanical National League, but within the first year the wet American league saw more than four times the profits of Hulbert’s dry league. Von der Ahe’s league quickly was nicknamed the “Beer and Whiskey League.”

By the early 1890’s the National League began to see the errors of its ways. In 1891, as the American Association folded, the National League not only absorbed many of the American Association teams and players, but also the practices of Sunday games, 25 cent tickets and beer in the park.
         
In the end, the National League’s strict rules attempted to save the floundering sport, but it was the development of the American League that laid the founding traditions that truly saved baseball: cold beer. So while we cheer our favorite team this October, we cannot forget that these traditions we have known and loved were instituted by people who made and sold our beer.

Joe Hursey
Reference Archivist
Archives Center
National Museum of American History

In the Heart of the Storm: The Resilience of Culture

This post originally appeared on September 19, 2017 in the Smithsonian Folklife Festival's blog. In honor of October being American Archives Month, we republish it here as an example of how the archival record can help us focus on the importance of cultural resilience in times of catastrophe. The photographs and audio used in this piece are all a part of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival Records .

Young people of the U.S. Virgin Islands march along in a carnival parade, amid the destruction of Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

When news started coming in about the catastrophic damage Hurricane Irma brought to the Caribbean, I happened to be filing materials from the 1990 Smithsonian Folklife Festival’s program about the U.S. Virgin Islands. In my twenty-nine years at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, I’ve produced a healthy amount of research, but in going through those particular boxes, I felt odd reverberations.

On September 17, 1989, in the midst of ongoing research for the U.S. Virgin Islands program, Hurricane Hugo struck the islands, with the greatest damage occurring in St. Croix. As described in a Washington Post special report, “Not only was Christiansted strewn with uprooted trees, broken utility poles, shattered cars and tons of debris from buildings that looked bombed, but the verdant tropical island suddenly had turned brown. So strong were Hugo’s winds that most trees still standing were shorn of leaves.” While St. Croix suffered the brunt of the storm, St. Thomas and St. John were also significantly damaged.

We wondered if we should cancel or defer the Festival program to let the region recuperate, physically and financially. But our partners in the Virgin Islands responded with one voice: now, more than ever, the people of the Virgin Islands needed a cultural event to raise their spirits, remind them of their resilience, and tell the world they were recovering. It is particularly in times of disaster that people turn to culture not only for solace but for survival.

“The recent disaster of Hurricane Hugo made fieldwork a little more difficult than usual,” reported Mary Jane Soule, who was doing research on musicians in St. Croix. “I was unable to rent a car for the first five days I was there, which limited my mobility. Many phones were still not working, so getting in touch with informants was harder than usual. However, once I actually located the individuals I wanted to see, I found most of them willing to talk.”

Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

A local press announced that, regardless of the circumstances, the Three Kings Day Parade would not be canceled: “Neither rain or hurricane nor winds nor controversy will stop the Crucian Christmas Fiesta.” In her field research tape log, Soule lists the role of Hugo in the fiesta, adding that calypso bands had recorded songs about it.

“Eve’s Garden troop is depicting Hugo,” she wrote. “The No Nonsense (music and dance) troop is doing ‘The Hugo Family’ depicting the looting and tourists on the run. Mighty Pat’s song ‘Hurricane Hugo’ played from speakers on one of the numerous trucks. Sound Effex (band) can be heard playing ‘Hugo Gi Yo’ (Hugo Gives You).”

Several months later when staff returned to the islands, “Hugo Gi Yo” was still very popular, as were the black, monographed sailors’ caps that proclaimed “Stress Free Recovery for 1990, St. Thomas, V.I.” 

Songs about Hugo relieved anxiety. Many people had lost everything. But like all good calypso tunes, they comically contributed to the oral history of the islands. Look at the verses of “Hugo Gi Yo”:

It was the seventeenth of September 1989 Hugo take over.
Hey, that hurricane was a big surprise,
When it hit St. Croix from the southeast side.
Hey rantanantantan man the roof fall down.
Rantanantantan galvanize around…
No water, no power, no telephone a ring.
We people we dead; there’s nothing to drink….

The band Sound Effex plays for bystanders in a carnival parade in St. Croix, Virgin Islands. Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

Listen to "Hugo Gi Yo", played by Sound Effex at Children’s Parade in Christiansted, St. Croix, January 5, 1990:

Calypso songs are noted for their social commentary on events as well as on responses from mainstream society. The Washington Post reported on St. Croix following the hurricane: “The plunder started on the day after the Sunday night storm, as panicky islanders sought to stock up on food. It quickly degenerated into a free-for-all grab of all sorts of consumer goods that some witnesses likened to a ‘feeding frenzy.’ Three days of near-anarchy followed Hugo’s terrible passage during the night of Sept. 17-18 and prompted President Bush to dispatch about 1,100 Army military police and 170 federal law-enforcement officers, including 75 FBI and a ‘special operations group’ of U.S. Marshalls Service.”

In turn, “Hugo Gi Yo” responds:

You no broke nothing.
You no thief nothing.
You no take nothing.
Hugo give you. 

As program research advisor Gilbert Sprauve explained, calypsonians “lend themselves heartily to expressing the underclass’s frustrations and cynicism. They make their mark with lyrics that strike at the heart of the system’s dual standards.”

A parade goer prepares her sign, jokingly addressing the post-hurricane looting that plagued the island of St. Croix. Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

Another resident readies her sarcastic sign for the parade. Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

Mighty Pat’s parade float encourages fellow residents to “stay positive.” Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

Soule transcribed existing racial and economic tensions in St. Croix expressed in Mighty Pat’s “Hurricane Hugo”:

After the hurricane pass, people telling me to sing a song quickly.
Sing about the looting, sing about the thiefing, black and white people doing.
Sing about them Arabs, up on the Plaza rooftop
With grenade and gun, threaten to shoot the old and the young.
Curfew a big problem, impose on only a few, poor people like me and you.
Rich man roaming nightly, poor man stop by army, getting bust__________
Brutality by marshal, send some to hospital,
Some break down you door, shoot down and plenty more.
When I looked around and saw the condition
of our Virgin Island.
I tell myself advantage can’t done.
One day you rich. Next day you poor.
One day you up the ladder. Next day you
crawling on the floor.
Beauty is skin deep; material things is for a time.
A corrupted soul will find no peace of mind
I think that is all our gale Hugo was trying to say
to all mankind.
Don’t blame me. Hugo did that.

The ubiquitous coal pot depicted on the side of a snack shack in St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. Photo by Mary Jane Soule, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

Hurricane Hugo also came up in conversations about craft. Knowing the importance of charcoal making, especially in St. Croix, researcher Cassandra Dunn interviewed Gabriel Whitney St. Jules who had been making coal for at least forty years and was teaching his son the tradition. In Dunn’s summary report, thoughts of the hurricane are not far away.

“Cooking food by burning charcoal in a coal pot is a technique utilized in the West Indies and Caribbean from the mid-1800s,” she wrote. “Charcoal makers learned the techniques of using a wide variety of woods including that from mango, tibet, mahogany, and saman trees. After Hurricane Hugo, those in St. Croix who had lost access to gas or electricity reverted to charcoal and the coal pot.”

With similar stories from St. Thomas, it became clear that this quotidian cultural artifact that reconnected islanders with their heritage served as an essential item for survival with dignity. The image of the coal pot became central to the themes of the Festival program, both as a useful utensil and a symbol of resilience. To our surprise, the coal pot, which looks much like a cast iron Dutch oven, was identical to that used by participants in the Senegal program featured that same year and led to increased cultural interaction between the two groups. This prompted a re-staging of both programs in St. Croix a year later.

From St. Croix to Washington, D.C., Virgin Islanders bring their parade to the National Mall for the 1990 Folklife Festival. Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

The cultural responses to Hurricane Hugo and those I suspect we’ll see following the calamitous hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria remind us that when disaster strikes, whether natural, social, political, or economic, communities often turn to shared cultural resources. Stories, experiences, and traditional skills prove useful, inspiring us to overcome obstacles and help our communities regain their footing.

Olivia Cadaval was the program curator for the U.S. Virgin Islands program at the 1990 Folklife Festival and is currently a curator and chair of cultural research and education at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.

View the original post here.

Reference
Sprauve, Gilbert. “About Man Betta Man, fission and Fusion, and Creole, Calypso and Cultural Survival in the Virgin Islands, 1990 Festival of American Folklife, edited by Peter Seitel, Smithsonian, 1990.

Celebrate the Potato

September is National Potato Month. Almost all the potatoes grown in the United States are planted in the spring and gathered in the fall. It is the time of year that schools in northern Maine have “harvest break” when students work to dig and sort the season’s spud crop soon after summer vacation.

Maine’s custom is one small part of the very long and interwoven agricultural, economic, social, culinary, medical, and ritual histories of this humble staple. It is a story that stretches from ancient gardens in the Andean Mountains 10,000 to 8,000 years ago … to perhaps Mars in the future? In the recent movie, The Martian, the stranded astronaut-botanist (played by Matt Damon), bases his long-term survival strategy on the Red Planet, not completely unfeasibly, on planting potatoes. But is the potato relevant for us today?

A carbohydrate, the tubers have nutritional detractors who point out that Americans consume far too many calories from white starches, including processed potato products in the forms of French fries and chips (along with the harmful fats and salt that go with them). With dehydrated and other potato products, these foods account for fifty percent of the potato market. Meanwhile, the annual consumption of fresh potatoes in the United States has fallen from eighty-one pounds per person in 1960 to forty-two pounds recently (the official Government report here). Potatoes are a hot political issue: Congress has fought successfully to keep the white potato in food assistance programs, including those of school lunches and breakfasts, against recommendations from the Department of Agriculture.

Following rice, wheat, and corn, potatoes are among the most consumed food crop in the world. The tuber is easy to grow in a variety of climates and soils, and is not as thirsty for water as many other vegetables, producing a high yield from a small area. Able to be stored for long periods, the potato is a good source of vitamin C (surprisingly), potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, vitamin B₆, and some iron. Inexpensive, lacking only calcium and vitamins A and D, it is almost a complete food. Beginning with the ancient civilizations of Huari and Tiahuanacu located in parts of modern-day Peru and Bolivia, the spud has been insurance against famine, providing sustenance when other crops failed.

If there is a food stuff that deserves a commemorative month or day (May 30^th in Peru), it is the potato.

A selection of organic potatoes from both coasts: Idaho and Yukon Gold from California; Honey Gold Nibbles, Gold Marbled Fingerlings, Purple Peruvian, and Adirondack Red potatoes from the Mid-Atlantic area. There are over a hundred varieties available. The petite type are growing in popularity (quick to cook, creamy in texture) as a substitute for pasta (photo by the author)

Not surprisingly, the Smithsonian does not treat the subject as small potatoes. In most, if not all, of the twenty-one separate libraries in the Institution, information on some aspect on the history and culture of the potato can be found. So what better way to celebrate the potato (Solanum tuberosum) and find its relevancy than by digging into some of Smithsonian Libraries’ holdings that tell its rich story? From the Anthropology, American Indian, Natural History, Horticulture and Botany libraries, the trade literature and cookery collections of American History, and, of course, Special Collections, all have original and secondary sources for an (almost) complete picture of this highly significant plant.

Archaeological research finds that the potato was first domesticated from wild plants on the shores of Lake Titicaca in the Andes. With sophisticated agricultural technology, including raised field terraces and irrigation systems, Pre-Inca cultures came to thrive on huge yields of the crop. The Inca Empire relied on potato storehouses, including a freeze-dried product (chuña) that could hold for years, in times of crop failures. Pedro de Cieza de León, explorer and historian, described the cultivation and cooking in his Chronicles of Peru, in 1540. Spanish conquistadors, who largely destroyed the Inca civilization, brought the potato across the Atlantic. Early accounts are a bit murky with the confusion between white (papas) and sweet potatoes (batata), but they were cultivated on the Canary Islands from 1565 and then onto the mainland of Spain.

John Gerard, The Herball, or, Generall historie of plantes (Imprinted at London by John Norton, 1597). There had been an earlier written description (but with no illustration) of the plant in Gaspard Bauhin’s Phytopinax of 1596. The Dibner Library of the Smithsonian Libraries has this first edition of Gerard. The Biodiversity Heritage Library has digitized the copy in the Peter H. Raven Library, Missouri Botanical Garden (pictured here).

Potatoes were being grown in London not long afterwards. The first printed pictures of the potato plant appear in woodcut illustrations in John Gerard’s great Herball of 1597. Gerard, who grew the plants in his own garden, misidentifies the origin of the potato as Virginia. It was not introduced into North America until the 1620s when the British governor of the Bahamas sent the tuber, along with other vegetables, to the Jamestown colony in Virginia. However, Derry, New Hampshire claims the first potato patch in North America, planted in 1719 when Scot-Irish immigrants settled in the area.

The 1636 edition of Gerard's Herball. The author holds a spray of potato flowers in the illustrated title page of the book, seen in the bottom center, just above the imprint. The Cullman Library of the Smithsonian has two copies; this image is from the scanned copy in the Peter H. Raven Library of the Missouri Botanical Garden (from the catalog of the Biodiversity Heritage Library).

From England, the potato moved to France and then on to the Netherlands. Carolus Clusius (or Charles de l’Ecluse) introduced the potato to the Low Countries. Woodcut illustrations are in his Rariorum plantarum historia (The history of rare plants; Antwerp, 1601). Because potatoes were a good source for preventing scurvy on long voyages, they were distributed via shipboard provisions to the far reaches of the world in the age of exploration. Potatoes also lessened the effects of tuberculosis, measles and dysentery. But the tuber became stigmatized as it moved from the exclusive botanical gardens of the wealthy in the 17^th century, when it was thought to be poisonous and fit only for livestock or the truly indigent.

Clusius' Rariorum plantarum historia (Antwerp, 1601). Images of the white and the sweet potatoes (above and below) from the scanned copy in the Peter H. Raven Library of the Missouri Botanical Garden by the Biodiversity Heritage Library (link). The Smithsonian's Cullman Library also has the title.

Clusius also created the first European representation of the potato, a lovely watercolor of 1588 of a plant in his garden. The work of art, with a note written by Clusius, is now in the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp (link here).

In Europe and Russia during the second half of the 18^th century the potato was vigorously promoted to lessen the economic distress of successive disastrous harvests of corn and wheat. Various groups and individuals produced pamphlets and books to educate and extol the crop’s virtues, such as the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, and military pharmacist and agronomist Antoine Augustin Parmentier. An example is Memoria sopra I pomi di terra (Memoire on the potatoes) of 1767, an Italian translation of a French publication (Dibner Library) that discusses varieties and cooking methods.

In France, the tuber was particularly regarded as a poor person’s food. Sadly, the Smithsonian Libraries does not own a copy of the important Parmentier work, Examen chimique de la pomme de terre (Chemical examination of the potato, 1778). He was so successful in his efforts that some still believe he invented the potato, and there are many dishes named for him, such as the casserole of veal chops à la Parmentier.

By the 19^th century, the potato was common and so prevalent that historians debate its exact role in fueling the population explosion of the period. The food stuff also was being put to other uses, such as in alcoholic spirits. John Ham’s The theory and practice of brewing, from malted corn and from potatos (London, 1829), is one such treatise. There are many gardening manuals in the Smithsonian Libraries that discuss all the types then being developed and best methods of growing and storage. William Cobbett’s The American gardener (London, 1821) has this charming entry:

"Potatoe – Every body knows how to cultivate this plant; and, as to its preservation during winter, if you can ascertain the degree of warmth necessary to keep a baby from perishing, you know precisely the precautions required to preserve a potatoe. – As to sorts they are as numerous as the stones of a pavement in a large city."

But such dependency on a single crop, relied on by a huge population, proved ripe for disaster. This came in the form of late blight disease in the 1840s, which struck hard in Europe and was particularly devastating in Ireland. These catastrophes led to the development of disease-resistant plants, in particular by American horticulturist Luther Burbank who worked to improve the Irish potato; he bred a type in 1872 that established the Idaho potato. These new varieties led to even more potato dominance in food production and plantings around the world. It is a story likely to play out again with climate change, as scientists work to develop cultivars even more resistant to heat, drought and disease. To lessen pollution and water use and help feed its exploding population, China is now by far the largest producer of the staple in the world. Will the potato once again save some parts the world? (see Zuckerman, Larry. The potato: how the humble spud rescued the western world. Boston, 1998 and this Wikipedia entry on the subject).

"Good seeds at fair prices": National Museum of American History Trade Catalogs of 1902 from Minneapolis, Minnesota (image from Wikimedia Commons of the copy in the National Agricultural Library)

The extensive agricultural trade literature collections in the Smithsonian illustrate the trends in the potato’s popularity and dominance into the 20^th century (one example linked here). The evolution of the vegetable as source of sustenance to a snack food is also traced in the Libraries’ culinary holdings. Thomas Jefferson had "potatoes served in the French manner" at a White House dinner in 1802 (not, strictly speaking, and contrary to the myth, the French fry). A relative of Jefferson’s, Mary Randolph, had seven recipes for potatoes, including one “to fry sliced potatoes” in her book, The Virginia house-wife, or, Methodical cook. The Dibner Library holds the fourth edition of this important cookbook, published in 1830. The Russet Burbank potato, developed in the 1920s, long, regular with a high sugar content, is the hybrid ideal for French fries. Speaking of which, France and Belgium are still arguing over who invented “French fries.”

An artist book in the collections: French fries : a new play, written by Dennis Bernstein, Warren Lehrer ; designed by Warren Lehrer, 1984.

This short history, centered on the Smithsonian Libraries collections, merely skims the surface of the potato. So even if you tend to avoid white potatoes in your diet, pick up one of the many, many accounts of the spud to read or raise a fork to the potato this month and celebrate this small vegetable’s big history in the world. In the words of Winnie-the-Pooh creator A. A. Milne: “What I say is that, if a fellow really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow” (“Lunch” in Not that it matters, 1919).

Julia Blakely
Special Collections Cataloger
Smithsonian Libraries 

An excellent dish for the month: Rainbow Potato Roast.

For further reading:

Chilies to chocolate: food the Americas gave the world. Tucson, 1992.
Hawkes, J. G. The potatoes of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay: a biosystematics study. Oxford, 1969.
Ochoa, Carlos M. Las papas de Sudamérica. Lima, Perú, 1999.
Salaman, Redcliffe N. The history and social influence of the potato. Cambridge, 1985.

Well, if you are going to have bacon with your potatoes, might as well have sour cream as well. Photo by the author but the  great recipe and story from the New York Times.

Renaissance of Craft Beer

Today’s beer list includes numerous types and styles such as saison, lambic, coffee, porter, dampf, kriek, stout, Irish, English, Scottish, or bitter; the list seems endless.  As a person who may have tried a beer or two before, I am excited about the infinite variations, styles, and flavors of beer produced today.  But choice wasn’t always an option for beer drinkers.  From 1920-1933, the United States banned the production, sale, and transport of alcoholic beverages under the Eighteenth Amendment, known as Prohibition.  After Prohibition was repealed in 1933, beer production renewed, and you basically had one choice in beer, the American Lager.  This style of beer is light in color and taste, made primarily from barley, rice, hops, water and yeast.

But in the last few decades, there have been drastic changes in state and federal law, allowing for the brewing of up to 200 gallons of beer in the home, expanding our choices in beer.  Today the varieties of beer and their ingredients is almost limitless; if you want a beer made with sriracha sauce, you can have it.  These modern alternatives to the American Lager are not new, but are a reemergence of styles of beer produced by American breweries before Prohibition as depicted in the advertisement below from the “Beer” series of the Warshaw Collection of Business Americana.

Trade card, advertisement for Feigenspan's Breweries, Newark, N.J., ca. 1875-1900.
Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

Before Prohibition, due to limitations on refrigeration and transportation, most beer was produced by small local breweries and consumed immediately.  These small breweries numbered over a thousand throughout the United States, producing a variety of beer.  During the thirteen years of Prohibition, most of these local breweries went out of business and were either sold or merged with existing breweries and businesses.  The breweries that survived this period, endured by changing how or what they produced.  Some were re-purposed as storage warehouses, while others produced soda, ice cream, and other goods and services. 

Many breweries that remained in business during Prohibition marketed and sold their malt extract labeled as a healing tonic or sugar substitute, while the product’s intended purpose was to enable the customers to brew beer in the home.  Although it was illegal for breweries to make and sell beer, it was not illegal to sell the ingredients to consumers so they could illegally make beer at home.  Some even sold the extract in protest to Prohibition, as seen in this American Supply Company advertisement. Many legal cases were brought before the courts to prevent breweries from producing and selling malt, but most cases proved unsuccessful.

Advertisement for malt extract by American Products Co., Cincinnati, Ohio.
Warshaw Collection of Business Americana, Archives Center, National Museum of American History.

In 1933 Congress repealed the Eighteenth Amendment and the surviving breweries immediately began production. Brewers realized that the newly legalization of alcohol was a sensitive subject for many Americans. In order to sway negative opinion surrounding alcohol production and its consumption, breweries began advertising to an underrepresented segment of the American population…women. The older styles and darker beers produced before Prohibition were not seen as palatable for female consumers.

World War II also played a role in the development of the American Lager. Due to increased demands on traditional and expensive grains needed the war effort, American breweries began supplementing Lager beer recipes with rice. These beers, augmented with rice, produced a lighter and softer tasting beer, were more marketable to women, cheaper to produce, and less taxing on grain needed for the war effort. This style of lager became the dominant recipe for most American beers for nearly fifty years. Even though American breweries created this American beer, Americans sacrificed many other beer choices in the process, like dopplebock, weizen, and biere de garde. 

Amsdell Bros. advertisement.

Warshaw Collection of Business Americana,

Archives Center, NMAH

The American Lager remained king of American beers for nearly half a century until the passing of H.R. 1337 in 1979, which legalized the manufacture of beer in the home. Home brewers desiring something different sought out old styles and recipes of American and European of beer to brew. Soon after brewing these forgotten styles, they realized that not only could they brew something new, but that there was an American demand for these beer styles. In the process a new market was born, the micro/craft beer.

The micro and craft beer industry has thrived since. Between 1933 and 1979, there were less than 50 to 100 breweries in the United States. Today there are over 3,500 micro and craft breweries in the United States, and this number is growing. So if you are looking for an old ale, extra stout or even a pumpkin spiced beer, you need look no further than your local micro and craft brewery.

Joe Hursey, Reference Archivist, NMAH Archives Center
National Museum of American History

From Sambusas to Pupusas: Washington, D.C. Foodways at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival

This October, the Smithsonian Collections Blog is celebrating American Archives Month with a month-long blogathon! We will be posting new content almost every weekday with the theme Discover and Connect. See additional posts from our other participating blogs, as well as related events and resources, on the Smithsonian’s Archives Month website.

In the Foodways and Home Life area of the African Immigrant Culture in Metropolitan Washington, D.C., program, African cooks prepare traditional meals and talk about how food plays an important role in affirming ethnic identities at the 1997 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Smithsonian Folklife Festival Records, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

When I travel, the first thing on my mind is what I'm going to eat. The minute breakfast is over, I'm thinking about lunch, and then I'm onto answering the eternal question, "How many snacks can I physically manage without getting too full for dinner?" (I truly live life on the edge). I probably have a list of foods to check off in my pocket--I shudder to think of missing out on anything delicious that I can't get anywhere else. That might make me very grumpy.

Unfortunately, I'm no jetsetter, so I get my kicks in my own Washington, D.C. Fortunately, I work at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the unit that puts on the Smithsonian Folklife Festival every summer on the National Mall, and for two beautiful and scorching weeks every year I make my way down to the foodways tents to learn how to make something new. As an archivist, I can easily look through extensive documentation of these demonstrations from past Festivals: from the very beginning, the organizers of the Folklife Festival knew that food is one of the most meaningful ways humans can connect to each other.

Jodie Kassorla, presented by Michael Twitty, demonstrates Sephardic Jewish food traditions in the program Washington, D.C.: It’s Our Home at the 2000 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Photograph by Christine Parker, Smithsonian Folklife Festival Records, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

In his introduction to the Smithsonian Folklife Cookbook, Ralph Rinzler, the namesake of our archives, says,

The fact is, food is still one of the important ways in which people indicate that a guest is welcome in their home. In the Appalachians, Ozarks, Cajun country, Native American communities, and inner-city cultural enclaves, carefully prepared food invariably reaffirms the other assurances that you are welcome.

He also spoke of foodways in the 1971 Festival of American Folklife program book as "the more persistent of cultural traits, lasting among the descendants of immigrants  long after language, song, dance, religious and secular rituals have been eradicated or thoroughly diluted." In his introduction to the 1992 Festival of American Folklife Cookbook, James Deutsch, a curator at the Center for Folklife of Cultural Heritage, expands upon this idea:

To be sure, this does not mean that foodways are forever fixed. Like other forms of traditional behavior, foodways adapt to modern technologies and changing environments as they are passed from generation to generation and from group to group. But their persistence and durability are remarkable.

A participant in the program Migration to Metropolitan Washington: Making a New Place Home grinds corn in a metate at the 1988 Festival of American Folklife. Photograph by Laurie Minor, Smithsonian Folklife Festival Records, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

The Smithsonian Folklife Festival has incorporated foodways into its programming since 1968. Every year since, the foodways programming has welcomed the public to discover and connect to food traditions from all over the world. In looking at the documentation and other materials created for the Festival over the years, I gravitated towards the times when the D.C. metropolitan area was celebrated for both its Mid Atlantic-flavored regional cuisine as well as its thriving immigrant cuisine. The Festival has presented DC-centric programming a handful of times over the years, as well as programming featuring locals with ties to the region or group being presented that year. As I've dug in to the program books, cook books, photographs, and audio recordings, I feel the need to dash out of the office and track down the nearest wat, pupusas, and pho or I'm going to  throw a tantrum.

Edith Ballou demonstrates how to make rolls in the program Washington, D.C.: It’s Our Home at the 2000 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Photograph by James Di Loreto, Smithsonian Folklife Festival Records, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

 
When researching foodways in the Rinzler Archives, the Festival documentation is our richest resource. Using the various forms of documentation of D.C.-centric foodways programming as an example, here are the ways in which you can use the Festival in your research.

The photographs in this post represent a small selection of the D.C.-flavored foodways at the Festival. These photographs, in addition to tens of thousands more, are accessible by appointment in the Rinzler Archives.

Many Festival program books are accessible in their entirety online via the Collections Search Center thanks to the efforts of Smithsonian Libraries. Program books provide context and perspective on some of the traditional foods demonstrated on the Mall. In the book for the 2000 Festival, which featured a program called "Washington, D.C.: It's Our Home,"  a college-aged Michael Twitty writes in his essay "Haroset and Hoecake: The African-American/Jewish Seder in D.C." about the joint Seder dinner held by Shiloh Baptist Church and the Adas Israel Congregation:

Matzo and hoecake sit side by side as breads of poverty and affliction. Parsley is wed with collard greens, symbolizing the bitterness of oppression. Salt water reminds us both of the tears of the Israelites and the waters of the Atlantic during the Middle Passage. Tasting haroset and hoecake, I am reminded that in both traditions food expresses the soul.

For the D.C.-centric 1988 program "African Immigrant Folklife," the essay "A Taste of Home: African Immigrant Foodways" by Nomvula Mashoai Cook and Betty J. Belanus highlights how the city's large African immigrant population has both maintained and adapted their culinary traditions:

Other types of celebrations bring communities together seasonally. one example is the braai, a South African cookout celebrated in the summer. Typically, the women congregate in the kitchen, cooking and singing. The men bond with each other and with their sons while preparing imbuzi ne mvu (goat and lamb) for the barbecue grill with such savory condiments as South African curry or cumin.

Beautiful examples of the art of Thai fruit carving by local Nit Malikul for the Asian Pacific Americans program at the 2010 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Photograph by Laraine Weschler, Smithsonian Folklife Festival Records, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.

Of course, there's nothing better than being physically present for the programming at the Festival, so audio and video documentation can be tremendously helpful if you find yourself without your time machine. Both are available by appointment in the Rinzler Archives, but since you've stuck with this post through to the end, here's a recording from the African Immigrant Folklife Program at the 1997 Festival of American Folklife. In this clip, Jane Musonye of Upper Marlboro, MD demonstrates how to make Kenyan chai tea and coconut mandasi, a kind of sweet fried donut. It's a bit long, but well worth a listen. Being from 1997, some questions like "Where can I find loose leaf tea?" and "Where can I find fresh ginger?" are adorably dated.



It just might convince you to come do research with us (and by "research" we do mean "cut out early and find the best mandasi in town."). If you're not able to come in person, you can still make  mandasi and chai at home, using recipes from the Kenyan program at the 2014 Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

Cecilia Peterson, Digitization Archivist
Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections