Primary documents about food and drink are evocative sources that are relevant to nearly all historical disciplines. Despite this, the history of food and drink is often relegated to specific research on culinary trends or household experience. Inspired by this year’s “Serving It up!” theme, librarians and archivists from the University of Minnesota are joining to examine cookbooks and food in the archives to argue for the cross-disciplinary value of these texts. Together, we will discuss the materials we hold, how cookbooks can be used in historical research and pedagogy, and what they can teach us about the past, from gender and health, to incarceration, exploration, and cultural identity. We will examine recipes from the mundane to the bizarre - and perhaps even recreate a few! Collections represented will include the Doris S. Kirschner Cookbook Collection, the Wangensteen Historical Library of Biology and Medicine, the Social Welfare History Archives, the Upper Midwest Jewish Archives, the James Ford Bell Library, the Kautz Family YMCA Archives, and the Children’s Literature Research Collections.
