Slices of Blue Sky

Sarah Hale’s Campaign for a National Thanksgiving Holiday

November 13, 2021 2 Comments

Portrait of Sarah Josepha Hale in Woman's record, or, Sketches of all distinguished women

Silhouette portrait of Sarah Josepha Hale by Auguste Edouart, National Portrait Gallery — Silhouette portrait of Sarah Josepha Hale by Auguste Edouart, 1842, National Portrait Gallery

If you love Thanksgiving, you should learn the name Sarah Josepha Hale.

Starting in 1846 and continuing until her retirement in 1877, Sarah Josepha Hale (1788-1879) used her position as editress¹ of Godey’s Lady’s Book and Magazine — one of the most popular and influential magazines of the time — to campaign for a national Thanksgiving holiday in November. For many years, she wrote two editorials each year in the magazine explaining the benefits of a national Thanksgiving holiday and encouraging her readers to pressure public officials to establish the holiday. She also wrote thousands of personal letters (by hand!) to elected officials, to the influencers of the day (other magazine editors, prominent preachers, etc.), and to her wide network of friends and family.

When Hale started her campaign, Thanksgiving wasn’t a new concept in America. Towns, villages and states held harvest festivals that included a late-morning trip to church for a special service, followed by a feast². But there was no national Thanksgiving Day.

Film and Television, Miscellany

San Francisco in the Movies: Taking Goldfish To The Ocean

October 24, 2021 No Comments

A escaped convict is on the run in San Francisco, one step ahead of the police, trying to prove he didn’t commit the crime that sent him to prison. The only person he trusts is a wealthy woman who lives in a lavish apartment on Telegraph Hill.

That’s a basic mostly spoiler-free summary of the plot of Dark Passage, one of the great “San Francisco films.” Released in 1947, Dark Passage is notable for its use of location, notably the apartment shown above, and for its unusual use of the film’s biggest star — Humphrey Bogart — for the first third of the film. And like other San Francisco films, it has quite a bit of geographic weirdness. For example, when Sam the cab driver (Tom D’Andrea) tells Vincent Parry (Humphrey Bogart) a story about a fare who got in the cab carrying a bowl with goldfish in it.

Food Data Visualization, Food History

A Google Books Ngram of Pumpkin Pie Spice and Pumpkin Spice

September 18, 2021 No Comments

Halloween postcard, circa 1908, showing four pumpkin creatures cutting a cake and celebrating. From Huron County Museum's Flick Commons collection

Mother Earth's children; the frolics of the fruits and vegetables (1914) - from Internet Archive on Flickr

We are at the edge of pumpkin and pumpkin spice season, with the peak still ahead of us, so I thought it would be fun to run three pumpkin terms through the Ngrams Viewer from Google Books: pumpkin pie, pumpkin pie spice, and pumpkin spice. For those not familiar with the tool, The Ngrams Viewer tool searches the Google Books library of digitized printed materials, which is mostly books but also includes periodicals, for the terms you request (with numerous variations allowed, as explained in the documentation).

Pumpkin Pie, Pie Spice, and Spice

Here is the Ngram chart for the three terms (link) from 1800 to 2019:

Not surprisingly, pumpkin pie spice and pumpkin spice do not appear until the mid-to-late 20th century. Pumpkin pie spice was probably created by one of the big spice houses (like McCormick), while pumpkin spice is a much more recent creation of the food and drink industry.

Film and Television, Food History

What is the First Movie to Mention Pizza?

September 4, 2021 No Comments

Google Books Ngram of Pizza - pizza pie, pizza pie 1950-2008

Updated, 8/29/21 with an earlier sighting

I’m a big fan of old movies — film noir, musicals, the epics of the 1950s and 60s. I recently watched The Band Wagon, a 1953 musical directed by Vincente Minnelli¹, one of the last huge and lavish MGM musicals. In a scene that follows the out of town premiere of the “show within a show” that stars Tony Hunter (Fred Astaire) and Gabrielle Gerard (Cyd Charisse), the cast and crew are having a party to reduce their sorrow after the out-of-town premiere did not go well. Soon after Hunter arrives, one of the cast members offers him “some pizza pie.”²

Screenshot from The Band Wagon movie, where Fred Astaire's character is offered pizza pie — *At a post-show party, one of the performers in the show offers Tony Hunter (Fred Astaire) some pizza pie. Screenshot from The Band Wagon (released on August 7, 1953).*

That “Want some pizza pie?” line made me wonder: in which Hollywood movie was pizza first mentioned? Could The Band Wagon be the first one?

Industrial History, Miscellany

B.T. Babbitt’s Soap Factory and a New Shoreline for Lower Manhattan

July 17, 2021 No Comments

The B.T. Babbitt company’s soap and saleratus (baking soda) factory in Lower Manhattan, 1876 (note Trinity Church in the background)

My previous post about B.T. Babbitt and his soap company provides a brief sketch of his life and soap company. As I looked closer at his company it turned out that the location of his factory is also an interesting story (to me anyway).

Babbitt’s New York City soap and saleratus (baking soda) factory was near the southern tip of Manhattan, occupying about 20,000 sq. ft. (1,848 sq. m) of land on 1/2 of the block bordered by West St, Rector St, Washington St, and Morris St (41-44 & 46-51 West St, and 64-82A Washington St). The first map below shows that it was just a few blocks from Battery Park (“The Bronx is up, and the Battery’s down”, as the “New York, New York” song in “On The Town” goes). The second and third maps show other views of the area.

Its riverfront location was probably not by accident, as the facility produced more than 100,000 pounds (~45,000 kg) of soap, and a large amount of baking soda each day. This required a lot of raw materials from outside of New York City, and therefore, having the docks close by was an advantage.

Today the Babbitt factory site is covered by residential buildings and a large parking garage.

Industrial History, Miscellany

B.T. Babbitt, Soap and Baking Soda Magnate of the Late 1800s

June 20, 2021 No Comments

At the end of my post on the Sanitary Fair in Brooklyn to raise funds for Union Army soldiers, I highlighted an advertisement from the B.T. Babbitt company, and noted that one of their all-text ad felt as if it could have been written today. It offered free shipping for certain orders and promised a donation to charity with every purchase. Those features, plus the wording made me think that this B.T. Babbitt company was a small operation, maybe even a huckster. I was wrong.

It didn’t take long to find out that that Benjamin T. Babbitt was a big deal: he held numerous patents, his company was an innovator in advertising, the company had multiple factories and multiple product lines, including a 300,000 sq. ft. (27,870 sq. m) factory in Lower Manhattan.

The B.T. Babbitt company was a pioneer in advertising and marketing, perhaps the first to use retail premiums to sell products in America, as they gave away free lithographic prints with purchase of baking soda ¹. Some of the marketing items that survive are advertising cards: one side typically shows a cute child or two, sometimes a pet, and always a box of B.T. Babbitt soap; the other side has text that praises the soap and its proprietor Mr. Babbitt. For example:

“Full of hope with Babbitt’s soap…Call on B.T. Babbitt if you would know how joyous life is beyond the clouds…”
“Behold! you washing world; the soap, / That lightens labor, brightens hope, / Begrudge to worthless wares your dimes, / And order BABBITT’S BEST betimes”

Kitchen Projects, Miscellany

Using Arduino for Better Homemade Bread

April 17, 2021 2 Comments

Drawing of a DIY dough proofing box that is controlled by an Arduino microcontroller

Photograph of homemade proofing chamber for bread dough — The DIY proofing box in use

During the COVID-19 pandemic and run-up to the 2020 U.S. Election, I started watching the Great British Baking Show (a.k.a. Great British Bake Off) on Netflix as a way to reduce stress. When one of the contestants mentioned a “proofing drawer” my ears perked up. Soon I understood that the proofing drawer (a.k.a. warming drawer) as a tool that provided a warm, temperature-controlled environment that would keep a batch of dough happy and growing.

My personal interest in this appliance is driven by the room temperature in my house Berkeley, California, which is usually too cool for most bread fermentation (typically 65 F/18 C)¹, but I don’t have space or energy to research and install a commercial proofing drawer.

Evolution of the DIY Proofing Drawer

A few years ago, while living in another house in Berkeley, I also faced the room temperature problem. Full of creative inspiration from the Maker Movement of the time, I built a DIY proofing drawer, using a kitchen cabinet as the container and a 60 Watt incandescent light bulb as the heat source. An Arduino microcontroller with various accessories controlled the temperature in the cabinet. It worked OK, but I didn’t use it much because it was a pain to set up — empty the cabinet, dig out my Arduino stuff, set it up, etc.

Food Data Visualization, Food History, Menus, Restaurants

Before 1950, Celery Was an Extremely Popular Restaurant Menu Item

April 4, 2021 1 Comment

Charts of celery on restaurant menus, data from NYPL

I don’t like celery, so it might have been a defense mechanism when I started noticing it on menu after menu from the late-19th and early-20th centuries¹. As I looked through the Buttolph Collection of Menus for food conservation messages on World War I-era menus, it seemed that nearly every menu included celery as a distinct menu item, like the five shown below.

Collage of menus with celery, menus from NYPL

Art, History

The Brooklyn Fair To Aid Union Soldiers During the U.S. Civil War

March 6, 2021 2 Comments

Brooklyn, February 1864. A young woman steps up to the Post Office counter and asks “Anything for me, if you please?”

Is she hoping for a letter from a brother, husband, or ‘beau’ who is serving in the Grand Army of the Republic? Is he in the field, waiting for action? Or in a hospital recovering from battle wounds (perhaps from Gettysburg, which took place 7 months earlier)? Or does she have a sister or aunt working as a nurse in a military hospital?

Film and Television, Food History, Herbs and Spices

Examining the Hangover Cure in the Western “El Dorado”: Was Asafoetida Known in the Old West?

January 24, 2021 2 Comments

John Wayne in El Dorado — John Wayne in *El Dorado*

For some forgotten reason, I recently watched the 1966 Western El Dorado. It’s one of the better Westerns I have seen, with more humor and a lot less racism than the typical Western (though there’s a short cringe-worthy stereotyping of a Chinese person near the end). The film has a top-notch cast and crew: the great Howard Hawks directing, John Wayne playing a roving gun for hire, Robert Mitchum as a troubled sheriff, and James Caan as a mysterious man from the South with a mysterious grudge (they call him “Mississippi”). The performances are engaging: John Wayne is in full “John Wayne mode” but not over the top, Mitchum gives a laid-back performance that feels more 1960s than 1860s, and Caan is enthusiastic in his supporting role.

Like many Westerns, the central conflict is access to water: a big rancher wants to take a family’s water. The town sheriff (Mitchum) recently had his heart broken by the main female character and has been drowning his sorrows in a lot of alcohol, so he can’t help in the battle for justice against the nefarious rancher and his goons. But when things get really serious, the sheriff needs to sober up.

Mississippi suggests a sure-fire potion to free someone from alcohol’s grip that has a bunch of odd ingredients, including asafoetida (full recipe at Booze Movies). When I heard Mississippi say “asafoetida”, I was quite surprised. It’s something that I completely associate with Indian cooking and not at all with the United States in the 19th century or medicinal use (to be sure, that’s a subject that I’m ignorant about). So I started wondering: Was it put into the script because the word “asafoetida” has an exotic sound that makes it a perfect ingredient for a quack remedy? Or was this ingredient actually known in the U.S. in the late 19th century so that Mississippi could have run across it (in his fictional life)?