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Category: Cookbooks and Food

Photograph inside a factory with bottle and boxes of catsup being inspected by working. Photo take circa 1920

Playing Ketchup: A Condiment and the Pure Food Movement

Posted by: Jennifer Harbster

Today, our beloved bottles of ketchup are consistent and shelf-stable thanks to the work of Katherine and Arvill Bitting who examined over 1,600 bottles of ketchup, visited 40 canneries producing tomato pulp, and toured 20 ketchup factories to come up with a method to make a safe and preservative-free ketchup.

Cover illustration from The Ebony Cookbook: A Date with a Dish, 1962.

(Re)Discovering Freda De Knight and Her 1948 Cookbook, “A Date with a Dish”

Posted by: Nate Smith

Many Black home cooks may have on their bookcase, or have seen in their mother's collection, a copy of "The Ebony Cookbook: Date with a Dish." This cookbook was the creation of Freda De Knight, who was the first food editor for "Ebony," and author of the monthly food column “A Date with a Dish,” which premiered in Ebony in 1946.

Print showing a family preparing tamales in a large kitchen

Tamales and the Tamalada: a Christmas Tradition

Posted by: Jennifer Harbster

During the holiday season there are many diverse traditions.  One food that is traditional in many Latine households is tamales, prepared at a tamalada, or tamale making party.  Tamales are a Mesoamerican dish made with nixtimalized cornmeal dough—masa—steamed in a cornmeal husk, or banana leaf, and seasoned with cheese, beans, meats, and other flavors.