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Historic Gastronomy

image courtesy Sarah Lohman
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Taught by Sarah Lohman

Sarah Lohman is the author of Four Pounds Flour, a blog dedicated to uncovering the flavors of the past and using them to inspire contemporary cooking. Lohman is originally from Cleveland, Ohio, where she began working in a museum at the age of 16, cooking over a wood-burning stove. She graduated with a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2005; 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 to work as Video Producer for New York Magazine's food blog, Grub Street. She currently works as an educator at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum and curates food-related events at museums around the city. 

Recent Activity

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    Jen posted a link to Four Pounds Flour

    Sarah has a great, super informative historic gastronomy blog!

This class meets at our Court Street location

In this course, we will explore the day-to-day cooking of the past 200 years: tasting; talking; and extracting inspiration from the past to inspire contemporary cooking. In this three-part course, you'll become familiar with the popular flavors and recipes of different eras, then learn how to interpret historic and vintage recipes for a modern day kitchen.

Part 1: A Timeline of Taste

A Timeline of Taste will explore the history of American food through flavor: we'll travel from 1796-1950, making a pit stop every 50 years to explore the tastes of a particular time. You'll be allowed to smell and sample the spices, fruits, extracts, and other ingredients that defined the flavors of different time periods. From rosewater to vanilla; nutmeg to cinnamon; citron to reddi-whip, we'll discuss why each of these flavors were popular and how they were used in day to day cooking.

Part 2: Iconic Dishes

What was being cooked in the kitchens of American can reflect the politics and popular culture of an era. Looking at the past 200 years, we'll explore iconic recipes from each time and discuss why each was popular: including the legends behind them and the technology that made them possible. We'll taste each of these recipes and talk about what they represented to families, communities and culture.

Part 3: Re-writing Recipes

In our final session, participants are invited to bring in their own vintage cookbooks and handwritten recipe cards from the past as we learn how to interpret historic recipes. We'll unveil tricks to modernize these recipes for today's kitchen: how to interpret amounts, flesh out directions, find comparable ingredients and most importantly, learn how to pull inspiration from these recipes to create unique contemporary dishes.

Notes & Posts

16ec9eca_tinyOur Teachers Do Awesome Things - Food Edition

We're lucky to have an incredibly talented assortment ofmore

16ec9eca_tinyOur Teachers Have Awesome Blogs

Four Pounds Flour - by Sarah, who taught a wicked class on Historicmore

16ec9eca_tinyWhat's Going on This Week

Lots of new classes starting this week:

Monday! Soma knows more about fish saucemore

81b202da_tinyMay Classes Open for Registration

Check them all out here!

And as always, we'd love to hear yourmore

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