Cooking History

This project has two options: either find a historical recipe or contact a relative and use a family recipe.  For either option, you need to write up your experience in a 4-5-page paper that includes:

1. A brief explanation of the recipe and why you chose it.
2. A short (1-2 page) description of your attempt to reproduce that recipe that includes the text of the recipe and ideally one or two photos.
3. Devote the remaining 2-3 pages of your paper to an analysis of the experience.  To get started, you might consider one or more of the following questions.  (Note that you are not required to answer all or any of these questions: they are just to help get you started).

• How did you find ingredients?  Did you have to use substitutes?  Were there problems with the techniques,
• equipment, or measurements?
• Consider the physical experience of preparing the recipe: how did the process of actually preparing the recipe change your understanding of it?
• What did you learn about the era and setting that the recipe was from?  How did the dish you created differ
• from what they author of the recipe may have intended?

Instead of writing a sentence or two answering each of these prompts, let your experience preparing the food

shape your paper.  Please ask if you have any questions.

Be sure to include a thesis statement in your first paragraph that introduces the recipe you decided to prepare and explains what you learned by making it.

Here are a few websites:

http://menus.nypl.org/

https://nyheritage.org/collections/culinary-institute-america-menu-collection