First Fridays at the Gilder Lehrman Collection

Once a month, the Gilder Lehrman Institute offers teachers the opportunity to visit the Gilder Lehrman Collection for a behind-the-scenes show-and-tell with our curatorial staff. Last Friday, July 7, the curators were joined by Megan Elias, Director of Online Courses at GLI and author of Food on the Page: Cookbooks and American Culture. Together, we explored documents that focus on food and discussed what they tell us about the past and how food history can be used in the classroom. Some topics that came up were weevils as a source of protein, one hundred gallons of wine ordered for the hospital department of the army, and cold tongue in gelatin as the perfect wedding dish.

Click here to learn about First Fridays and other ways to explore the documents in the Gilder Lehrman Collection.