At the end of an early American funeral, participants were given a cookie: spiced with caraway, and stamped with a special design, they were often kept for years as a memento of the departed. Although mourning traditions have changed over time, and vary from place to place, what they have in common is food and drink. From the home parlour to the funeral parlor; from Irish wakes to sitting Shiva, consumption offers comfort in a time of grief. In this talk we’ll look at the culinary traditions surrounding funerals throughout American history, and we’ll taste beer from Midas’s tomb, funeral cakes, and Mormon funeral potatoes.
Tickets:
General: $35.00
The Woodlands & HFSDV Members: $25.00 (email The Woodlands for membership discount code)
To RSVP and purchase tickets at the door, please call 215-386-2181.
Food of the Dead is cohosted with the Historic Foodways Society of the Delaware Valley.
About the speaker: Sarah Lohman is originally from Hinckley, Ohio (near Cleveland), where she began working in a museum at the age of 16, cooking historic food over a wood-burning stove. She graduated with a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2005 and for her undergraduate thesis, she opened a temporary restaurant/installation that reinterpreted food of the Colonial era for a modern audience.
Lohman moved to New York in 2006 and worked Video Producer for New York Magazine’s food blog, Grub Street. Currently, she works with institutions around the country to create public programs focused on food. Dubbed a “historic gastronomist,” Lohman works with culinary history as a way to make a personal connection with the past. She chronicles her explorations in culinary history on her blog, FourPoundsFlour.com, and her work has been featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the NY Post, The Atlantic and NPR. She appeared in The Cooking Channel’s Food: Fact or Fiction.
Lohman’s first book, Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine, is out now–order it here!
