Linda Civitello
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041082
- eISBN:
- 9780252099632
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252041082.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
This book is about the Hundred Years War of food business, how a mid-nineteenth century American invention, baking powder, replaced yeast as a leavening agent and created a culinary revolution as ...
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This book is about the Hundred Years War of food business, how a mid-nineteenth century American invention, baking powder, replaced yeast as a leavening agent and created a culinary revolution as profound as the use of yeast thousands of years ago. Before government regulation, the force controlling the market was not a visible or invisible hand, but advertising sleight of hand. Four companies—Rumford, Royal, Calumet, and Clabber Girl—fought advertising, trade, legislative, scientific, and judicial wars with proprietary cookbooks, lawsuits, trade cards, and bribes. In the process, they altered or created cake, cupcakes, cookies, biscuits, pancakes, quick breads, waffles, doughnuts, and other foods, and forged a distinct American culinary identity. This new American chemical leavening shortcut also changed the breadstuffs of Native Americans and every immigrant group and was a force for assimilation. The wars continued in spite of scandals exposed by muckraking journalists and investigation by President Theodore Roosevelt, through WWI, the 1920s, the Depression, and WWII in every state, territory, and kitchen in the United States until standardization finally occurred at the end of the twentieth century. Now, global businesses such as McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken depend on baking powder for their baked goods, and baking powder is in home and commercial kitchens around the world.Less
This book is about the Hundred Years War of food business, how a mid-nineteenth century American invention, baking powder, replaced yeast as a leavening agent and created a culinary revolution as profound as the use of yeast thousands of years ago. Before government regulation, the force controlling the market was not a visible or invisible hand, but advertising sleight of hand. Four companies—Rumford, Royal, Calumet, and Clabber Girl—fought advertising, trade, legislative, scientific, and judicial wars with proprietary cookbooks, lawsuits, trade cards, and bribes. In the process, they altered or created cake, cupcakes, cookies, biscuits, pancakes, quick breads, waffles, doughnuts, and other foods, and forged a distinct American culinary identity. This new American chemical leavening shortcut also changed the breadstuffs of Native Americans and every immigrant group and was a force for assimilation. The wars continued in spite of scandals exposed by muckraking journalists and investigation by President Theodore Roosevelt, through WWI, the 1920s, the Depression, and WWII in every state, territory, and kitchen in the United States until standardization finally occurred at the end of the twentieth century. Now, global businesses such as McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken depend on baking powder for their baked goods, and baking powder is in home and commercial kitchens around the world.
Linda Civitello
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041082
- eISBN:
- 9780252099632
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252041082.003.0004
- Subject:
- Sociology, Culture
In antebellum America, baking powder experimentation moved out of women’s kitchens and into men’s laboratories as chemistry became a serious discipline. In 1856, Eben Horsford, a chemistry professor ...
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In antebellum America, baking powder experimentation moved out of women’s kitchens and into men’s laboratories as chemistry became a serious discipline. In 1856, Eben Horsford, a chemistry professor at Harvard, patented the first true baking powder, which he called yeast powder. It coincided with the discovery that yeast was a live fungus, which disgusted Americans concerned about food adulteration, and who flocked to baking powder bread made without fermentation. In 1868, in New York City, salesman William Ziegler, together with pharmacists the Hoagland brothers, formed the Royal Baking Powder Company, which used cream of tartar, a formula different from Horsford’s.Less
In antebellum America, baking powder experimentation moved out of women’s kitchens and into men’s laboratories as chemistry became a serious discipline. In 1856, Eben Horsford, a chemistry professor at Harvard, patented the first true baking powder, which he called yeast powder. It coincided with the discovery that yeast was a live fungus, which disgusted Americans concerned about food adulteration, and who flocked to baking powder bread made without fermentation. In 1868, in New York City, salesman William Ziegler, together with pharmacists the Hoagland brothers, formed the Royal Baking Powder Company, which used cream of tartar, a formula different from Horsford’s.
Max Felker-Kantor
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520275591
- eISBN:
- 9780520956872
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520275591.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
This chapter focuses on the responses of African Americans and Mexican Americans to Proposition 14—dubbed the antifair housing initiative—in Los Angeles, with particular emphasis on the interracial ...
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This chapter focuses on the responses of African Americans and Mexican Americans to Proposition 14—dubbed the antifair housing initiative—in Los Angeles, with particular emphasis on the interracial cooperation and tension that marked the battle against the proposed amendment to California's constitution that allowed homeowners and landlords to sell or rent—or refuse to sell or rent—their property to anyone they wished. Proposition 14 was an effort in 1964 to basically overturn California's Rumford Fair Housing Act and to open the door once again to residential segregation. Activists, especially in the African American community, developed an intensive campaign to overturn the initiative. Early plans calling for cooperation with Mexican Americans never materialized. This chapter shows that Blacks were able to overcome their class divisions and close ranks in the fight against Proposition 14, whereas Mexican American remained a split community and vote.Less
This chapter focuses on the responses of African Americans and Mexican Americans to Proposition 14—dubbed the antifair housing initiative—in Los Angeles, with particular emphasis on the interracial cooperation and tension that marked the battle against the proposed amendment to California's constitution that allowed homeowners and landlords to sell or rent—or refuse to sell or rent—their property to anyone they wished. Proposition 14 was an effort in 1964 to basically overturn California's Rumford Fair Housing Act and to open the door once again to residential segregation. Activists, especially in the African American community, developed an intensive campaign to overturn the initiative. Early plans calling for cooperation with Mexican Americans never materialized. This chapter shows that Blacks were able to overcome their class divisions and close ranks in the fight against Proposition 14, whereas Mexican American remained a split community and vote.
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- June 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780804763103
- eISBN:
- 9780804779098
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804763103.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
After the Second World War, James Franck launched an appeal on the issue of an inadequate supply of food in the German population. He joined other prominent American Jewish refugees in a public call ...
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After the Second World War, James Franck launched an appeal on the issue of an inadequate supply of food in the German population. He joined other prominent American Jewish refugees in a public call for such humanitarian aid, pointing out that many children and innocents were suffering. The year 1946 brought Franck much personal happiness and scientific success. He continued his research in photosynthesis and eventually, his interests extended beyond photosynthesis. A few years later, he was awarded the Max Planck Medal, the highest German distinction in physics. The Boston Academy of Arts and Sciences also awarded him their Rumford medal.Less
After the Second World War, James Franck launched an appeal on the issue of an inadequate supply of food in the German population. He joined other prominent American Jewish refugees in a public call for such humanitarian aid, pointing out that many children and innocents were suffering. The year 1946 brought Franck much personal happiness and scientific success. He continued his research in photosynthesis and eventually, his interests extended beyond photosynthesis. A few years later, he was awarded the Max Planck Medal, the highest German distinction in physics. The Boston Academy of Arts and Sciences also awarded him their Rumford medal.
Alan M. Wald
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- January 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781469635941
- eISBN:
- 9781469635965
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469635941.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
The development of an anti-Stalinist Left among pro-Communist intellectuals is explored. Receiving special treatment are the pages of Menorah Journal and the activities of some of its contributors, ...
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The development of an anti-Stalinist Left among pro-Communist intellectuals is explored. Receiving special treatment are the pages of Menorah Journal and the activities of some of its contributors, along with intellectuals attracted to the American Workers Party and those involved in the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners and League of Professionals. James Rorty and Charles Rumford Walker are among activists described A sustained analysis of Tess Slesinger’s novel The Unpossessed is presented in the context of this background.Less
The development of an anti-Stalinist Left among pro-Communist intellectuals is explored. Receiving special treatment are the pages of Menorah Journal and the activities of some of its contributors, along with intellectuals attracted to the American Workers Party and those involved in the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners and League of Professionals. James Rorty and Charles Rumford Walker are among activists described A sustained analysis of Tess Slesinger’s novel The Unpossessed is presented in the context of this background.
Jennifer Coopersmith
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- August 2015
- ISBN:
- 9780198716747
- eISBN:
- 9780191800955
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198716747.003.0009
- Subject:
- Physics, Particle Physics / Astrophysics / Cosmology, History of Physics
Benjamin Thompson (later Count Rumford), founder of the Royal Institution, designs experiments showing that an ‘inexhaustible’ quantity of heat is generated by friction when cannons are bored with an ...
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Benjamin Thompson (later Count Rumford), founder of the Royal Institution, designs experiments showing that an ‘inexhaustible’ quantity of heat is generated by friction when cannons are bored with an especially blunt borer. The caloric theory can’t explain this, but Rumford’s work isn’t taken up until Joule, 40 years later. Humphry Davy and the polymath Thomas Young endorse the motion theory of heat and are hired as lecturers at the Royal Institution. Young puts forward the idea that radiant heat and light are the same thing, waves, but at different frequencies; and William Herschel and Ritter discover heat and ultraviolet radiation, respectively. Other connections are noticed between heat, light, chemistry, electricity, and magnetism (e.g. in Volta’s pile, and the Seebeck and Peltier effects). Young uses the term ‘energy’ in his A Course of Lectures in Natural Philosophy.Less
Benjamin Thompson (later Count Rumford), founder of the Royal Institution, designs experiments showing that an ‘inexhaustible’ quantity of heat is generated by friction when cannons are bored with an especially blunt borer. The caloric theory can’t explain this, but Rumford’s work isn’t taken up until Joule, 40 years later. Humphry Davy and the polymath Thomas Young endorse the motion theory of heat and are hired as lecturers at the Royal Institution. Young puts forward the idea that radiant heat and light are the same thing, waves, but at different frequencies; and William Herschel and Ritter discover heat and ultraviolet radiation, respectively. Other connections are noticed between heat, light, chemistry, electricity, and magnetism (e.g. in Volta’s pile, and the Seebeck and Peltier effects). Young uses the term ‘energy’ in his A Course of Lectures in Natural Philosophy.
