FREE Workshop: Preserving your Family recipes. When you dip your madeleine in your Proustian tea, make it more than a memory. This workshop, in partnership with Society life member the First Bank of Highland Park, will provide the tools to preserve your family’s culinary history whether the original format is digital, oral or on a file card! Limited seating, please reserve. Continue reading
Category Archives: Chicago Foodways Roundtable
Food: Gathering Around the Table + Church Supper
Join Us on Saturday, July 12, 2025 @ 1 PM
DeKalb County History Center
1730 N Main Street | Sycamore, IL 60178
Saturday, July 13, 2024 at 1 PM Central
Highly recommended:
Church Supper at Kingston United Methodist Church 121 1st St | Kingston, IL 60145
Dinner will feature chicken dinner plus homemade pie!
Saturday, July 12, 2025 at 5 PM Central Time
Cost: $20 including admission and supper
The food on the American table may not define exactly what we are as a nation, but the traditions surrounding our foods speak volumes about who we are. Rooted in centuries of borrowing and sharing, food traditions are staggeringly diverse and constantly evolving. The intersection of cultures in America is perhaps the most important factor in the mix that is America’s food. Continue reading
A Culinary Journey Through India: The Cuisine of Kerala
Presented by Colleen Taylor Sen
Mintza Restaurant, 2245 West Devon Avenue | Chicago, IL 60659
Get Directions
Wednesday, April 23, 2025 at 6 PM Central Time
This series of dinners curated specially for members of the Culinary Historians of Chicago and Rogers Park West Ridge Historical Society features the cuisines of different regions of India.
At the first dinner we enjoyed the delicious cuisine of Hyderabad. This time we’ll savor the cuisine of Kerala, a small state on the southwest corner of India famous for its beautiful scenery, diverse communities, and delicious cuisine, prepared with aromatic spices (but not hot!) and coconut in various forms. Continue reading
Preserving Family Heirloom Recipes
Presented by Valerie J. Frey
Sock It To Me Cake
Heirloom dishes and family food traditions are rich sources of nostalgia and provide vivid ways to learn about our families’ past, yet they can be problematic. Many family recipes and food traditions are never documented in written or photographic form, existing only as unwritten know-how and lore that vanishes when a cook dies. Even when recipes are written down, they often fail to give the tricks and tips that would allow another cook to accurately replicate the dish. Continue reading
Food in the Midwest: More Interesting Than You May Think
Cynthia Clampitt
The history of the Midwest is remarkable for many reasons, not least of which is the diversity of its population, and therefore of its regional cuisine. Everyone contributed to what was developing, from the Ojibwe harvesting wild rice in Minnesota to Belgian hoteliers in Chicago inventing new dishes. There were Cornish miners in Michigan, Bohemians in Nebraska. Swiss farmers in Wisconsin, Chinese in Missouri, Germans in Ohio, and so many more. Foods found here married with introductions. Traditions of dozens of nations mixed and evolved and added to the richness of a region that became famed for the abundance of food it provides, but that is sometimes hard to define because of its variety. Continue reading