by Matt Siegel
81. offered a twelve-thousand-franc reward: “Nicolas Appert,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, www.britannica.com/biography/Nicolas-Appert.
82. It took fourteen years: Ibid.
83. L’Art de conserver: Ibid.
84. the French destroyed: Standage, An Edible History of Humanity.
85. tactical herbicides: Jeanne Mager Stellman and Steven D. Stellman, “Agent Orange During the Vietnam War: The Lingering Issue of Its Civilian and Military Health Impact,” American Journal of Public Health 108, no. 6 (2018): 726–28.
86. Agent Orange: Ibid.
87. we actually employed: Committee to Review the Health Effects in Vietnam Veterans of Exposure to Herbicides, Board on the Health of Select Populations, Institute of Medicine, Veterans and Agent Orange: Update 2012 (Ninth Biennial Update) (Washington, DC: National Academies Press, 2014).
88. “The crude contamination”: Brian J. Lukey et al., eds., Chemical Warfare Agents: Chemistry, Pharmacology, Toxicology, and Therapeutics, 2nd ed. (Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 2008), 53.
89. The Assyrians poisoned: Ibid.
90. Confederate and Union soldiers: “Water Conflict Chronology,” Pacific Institute, www.worldwater.org/conflict/list.
91. “A few dikes”: “Text of Intelligence Report on Bombing of Dikes in North Vietnam Issued by State Department,” New York Times, July 29, 1972, www.nytimes.com/1972/07/29/archives/text-of-intelligence-report-on-bombing-of-dikes-in-north-vietnam.html.
92. before Hoover became: “Herbert Hoover,” The White House, www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/herbert-hoover.
93. before the United States entered: “Years of Compassion, 1914–1923,” Herbert Hoover Presidential Library and Museum, https://hoover.archives.gov/exhibits/years-compassion-1914-1923.
94. the entire nation of Belgium: George H. Nash, “An American Epic: Herbert Hoover and Belgian Relief in World War I,” Prologue 21, no. 1 (1989), www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/1989/spring/hoover-belgium.html.
95. his own pirate nation: Seymour Morris, Jr., Fit for the Presidency?: Winners, Losers, What-ifs, and Also-rans (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017), 183.
96. delivering, in total: William Clinton Mullendore, History of the United States Food Administration, 1917–1919 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1941), 39.
97. Hoover himself volunteered: “Sow the Seeds of Victory! Posters from the Food Administration During World War I,” National Archives, www.archives.gov/education/lessons/sow-seeds.
98. “of the nature”: Mullendore, History of the United States Food Administration, 1917–1919, 52.
99. “spirit of self-denial”: Ibid., 53.
100. “food will win the war”: “Sow the Seeds of Victory! Posters from the Food Administration During World War I.”
101. Within months he’d built: Mullendore, History of the United States Food Administration, 1917–1919, 87.
102. Restaurants and public eateries: Ibid., 97.
103. urging consumers to consume less: Ibid., 89.
104. an estimated $19,417,600: Ibid., 89–90.
105. Even the White House: “Sow the Seeds of Victory! Posters from the Food Administration During World War I.”
106. 18 million tons: Jeff Lyon, “The Misunderstood President,” Chicago Tribune, April 29, 1985.
107. “If English medical men”: The Ice Cream Review 1, no. 10 (1918): 2.
108. “Reports from nearly”: Ibid.
109. “In this country”: Ibid.
110. it wouldn’t be patented: Jefferson M. Moak, “The Frozen Sucker War: Good Humor v. Popsicle,” Prologue 37, no. 1 (2005), www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2005/spring/popsicle-1.html.
111. depended on toxic gases: Sam Kean, “Einstein’s Little-Known Passion Project? A Refrigerator,” Wired, July 23, 2017, www.wired.com/story/einsteins-little-known-passion-project-a-refrigerator.
112. introduced in the 1930s: Ibid.
113. the United States was still: Mullendore, History of the United States Food Administration, 1917–1919, 169.
114. before the war had imported: Ibid., 167.
115. “Ice cream is no longer”: “New Sugar Regulations,” United States Food Administration, Food Conservation Notes, no. 15, July 6, 1918.
116. Howard Johnson: Anthony Mitchell Sammarco, A History of Howard Johnson’s: How a Massachusetts Soda Fountain Became an American Icon (Charleston, SC: History Press, 2013).
117. purchased a dilapidated drugstore: “Howard Johnson, 75, Founder of the Restaurant Chain, Dead.”
118. an ice cream recipe: Ibid.
119. The recipe, which called: “Howard D. Johnson,” Rosenberg International Franchise Center, Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics, University of New Hampshire, https://www.unh.edu/rosenbergcenter/howard-d-johnson.
120. it was the largest: “The Last Howard Johnson’s Restaurant Is for Sale: The Demise of a Once-Great Food Chain,” The Economist, February 16, 2017, www.economist.com/united-states/2017/02/16/the-last-howard-johnsons-restaurant-is-for-sale.
121. debut of the Eskimo Pie: Moak, “The Frozen Sucker War: Good Humor v. Popsicle.”
122. originally called the “Epsicle”: Ibid.
123. who inserted lollipop sticks: “Good Humor Ice Cream Truck,” Smithsonian Institution, June 21, 2011, www.si.edu/newsdesk/snapshot/good-humor-ice-cream-truck.
124. bells initially borrowed: “100 Years of Good Humor,” Good Humor, www.goodhumor.com/us/en/our-history.html.
125. “You are at all times”: “NMAH-AC0451–0000012,” Gold Bond–Good Humor Collection, National Museum of American History, Archives Center.
126. around 1916, a Polish immigrant: Peter Smith, “The Stunt That Launched Nathan’s Famous Stand on Coney Island,” Smithsonian, July 3, 2012, www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/the-stunt-that-launched-nathans-famous-stand-on-coney-island-312344.
127. paying college students: David Gerard Hogan, Selling ’em by the Sack: White Castle and the Creation of American Food (New York: New York University Press, 1997), 17.
128. “Let me advise you”: S. S. Schoff and B. S. Caswell, The People’s Own Book of Recipes (Kenosha, WI: Schoff and Winegar, 1867), 189.
129. had part of their fleet: Ron Grossman, “Flashback: Good Humor Delighted Generations with Its Curbside Delivery of Ice Cream Bars—and Not Even the Mob Could Stop It,” Chicago Tribune, August 2, 2019.
130. “Ellis Island Authorities Gently Lead”: “Ice Cream as Americanization Agent,” The Soda Fountain 20, no. 7 (1921): 81.
131. “It augurs well”: Ibid.
132. which accounted for roughly: Mariani, The Encyclopedia of American Food and Drink, 518.
133. endorsing carrots on sticks: Jill Reilly, “In My Day, All We Got for Easter Was a Carrot on a Stick: Newsreel Reveals What Children Got Instead of Chocolate Eggs in WW2,” Daily Mail, April 2, 2012, www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2123981/In-day-got-Easter-carrot-stick-World-War-Two-showreel-reveals-children-swapped-ice-cream-carrots.html.
134. mock fudge: Lee Edwards Benning, The Cook’s Tales: Origins of Famous Foods and Recipes (Old Saybrook: Globe Pequot, 1992), 119.
135. building pop-up ice cream factories: Funderburg, Chocolate, Strawberry, and Vanilla, 143.
136. breaking into the freezer: Ibid., 142.
137. US bomber crews used to make: McGee, On Food and Cooking, 43.
138. soldiers on the ground: “Transcript of an Oral History Interview with Richard T. Meland, Communications, Anti-Aircraft Artillery, Army, World War II,” Wisconsin Veterans Museum Research Center, 1995, 14.
139. the most decorated member: “Gen. Chesty Puller Dies; Most Decorated Marine,” New York Times, October 12, 1971, www.nytimes.com/1971/10/12/archives/cert-chesty-puller-diesi-most-decoralted-marine-commissioned-at-20.html.
140. called it a “sissy food”: Betty Cuniberti, “Celebrating 40 Years of 31 Flavors,” Los Angeles Times, December 11, 1985.
141. during which he was photograph
ed: Meyer Liebowitz, “Fidel Castro Eating Ice Cream,” April 2, 1959, Getty Images, www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/cuban-president-fidel-castro-eats-an-ice-cream-cone-as-he-news-photo/2967514.
142. “ice cream cathedral”: Myles Karp, “The History of Cuba’s Ongoing Obsession with Ice Cream,” Vice, May 10, 2018, www.vice.com/en_us/article/mbkje8/history-of-ice-cream-cuba-fidel-castro-ubre-blanca-coppelia.
143. (after the French ballet Coppélia): Jason Motlagh, “The Future of Cuba’s Socialist Ice-Cream Cathedral,” The Guardian, April 14, 2015, www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/14/future-of-coppelia-cuba-socialist-ice-cream-cathedral.
144. “[finish] off a good-sized lunch”: Gabriel García Márquez, “A Personal Portrait of Fidel,” in Fidel Castro, Fidel: My Early Years, edited by Deborah Shnookal and Pedro Álvarez Tabío (Melbourne: Ocean Press, 2005), 13.
145. the CIA tried to assassinate: Anthony Boadle, “Closest CIA Bid to Kill Castro Was Poisoned Drink,” Reuters, July 5, 2007, www.reuters.com/article/us-cuba-cia/closest-cia-bid-to-kill-castro-was-poisoned-drink-idUSN0427935120070705.
146. when Castro got into a fight: Guillermo Cabrena Infante, Mea Cuba (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994), 324.
147. a breed of miniature cows: Peter Fritsch and Jose De Cordoba, “Castro Hopes to Clone a Famous Milk Cow,” Wall Street Journal, May 21, 2002, www.wsj.com/articles/SB1021927734453270880.
148. Ubre Blanca: Karp, “The History of Cuba’s Ongoing Obsession with Ice Cream.”
149. 241 pounds of milk: Fritsch and De Cordoba, “Castro Hopes to Clone a Famous Milk Cow.”
150. “our great champion”: Fidel Castro, “Fidel Castro Addresses Medical Students,” Havana Domestic Television Service, March 12, 1982, Castro Speech Data Base, Latin American Network Information Center, http://lanic.utexas.edu/project/castro/db/1982/19820314.html.
151. eulogized her with military honors: Karp, “The History of Cuba’s Ongoing Obsession with Ice Cream.”
152. Cotoni and Swiss dairy farmers: Samantha Clark, “Santa Cruz County Supervisors Support Cotoni-Coast Dairies as Name for Proposed National Monument,” Santa Cruz Sentinel, June 23, 2015, www.santacruzsentinel.com/2015/06/23/santa-cruz-county-supervisors-support-cotoni-coast-dairies-as-name-for-proposed-national-monument.
153. “No G.I. who passed”: Lee Kennett, G.I.: The American Soldier in World War II (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 197.
154. maggot-infested rice: Sue Shephard, “A Slice of the Moon,” in Food and the Memory: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2000, edited by Harlan Walker (Devon, UK: Prospect, 2001), 226–29.
155. “as obtainable”: Quoted in ibid., 225.
156. “Somebody listening in”: Ibid., 223.
157. pictures of food: Ibid., 235.
158. “perhaps it was just”: Quoted in Jan Thompson, “Prisoners of the Rising Sun: Food Memories of American POWs in the Far East During World War II,” in Food and the Memory: Proceedings of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 2000, edited by Harlan Walker (Devon, UK: Prospect, 2001), 274, 280.
159. “Belly empty”: Quoted in Shephard, “A Slice of the Moon,” 235.
160. “During the forty-three months”: Quoted in Thompson, “Prisoners of the Rising Sun,” 278–79.
161. “Few tried to recall”: Shephard, “A Slice of the Moon,” 233.
162. “There are today”: Visser, Much Depends on Dinner, 315–16.
163. Researchers testing: Peter Walla et al., “Food-Evoked Changes in Humans: Startle Response Modulation and Event-Related Brain Potentials (ERPs),” Journal of Psychophysiology 24, no. 1 (2010): 25–32.
164. human milk is significantly sweeter: Mark Kurlansky, Milk!: A 10,000-Year Food Fracas (New York: Bloomsbury, 2018).
165. contains more fat: Harold H. Williams, “Differences Between Cow’s and Human Milk,” The Journal of the American Medical Association 175, no. 2 (1961): 104–07.
166. calming and pain reduction effects: Mahnaz Jebreili et al., “Comparison of Breastmilk Odor and Vanilla Odor on Mitigating Premature Infants’ Response to Pain During and After Venipuncture,” Breastfeeding Medicine 10, no. 7 (2015): 362–65.
167. “spent significantly more time”: Julie A. Mennella and Gary K. Beauchamp, “The Human Infants’ Response to Vanilla Flavors in Mother’s Milk and Formula,” Infant Behavior and Development 19, no. 1 (1996): 13–19.
168. “what all prisoners of war”: Russell Braddon, The Naked Island (New York: Doubleday, 1953), 159.
Chapter 7: The Ghosts of Cockaigne Past
1. “It has been”: Clement A. Miles, Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan (Detroit: Gale, 1968), 17.
2. “A couple of flitches”: William Cobbett, Cottage Economy (London, 1823).
3. before the winter frost: Madeline Shanahan, Christmas Food and Feasting (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019), 36.
4. the old German and Anglo-Saxon names: R. S. Ferguson, “Culvershouses,” The Archaeological Journal, June 1887, 106.
5. “labours of the months”: “Labours of the Months: December,” Victoria and Albert Museum, http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O7617/labours-of-the-months-december-panel-unknown.
6. Latin calendar descriptions: Piero Camporesi, The Magic Harvest: Food, Folklore and Society, translated by Joan Krakover Hall (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1998), 43.
7. having had time: Shanahan, Christmas Food and Feasting, 36.
8. freshly fermented: Ibid., 10.
9. And to ensure: Joan P. Alcock, “The Festival of Christmas,” in Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery 1990, edited by Harlan Walker (Devon, UK: Prospect, 1990), 27.
10. This is also where: Ibid.
11. “a kind of safety valve”: Ken Albala and Trudy Eden, Food and Faith in Christian Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 2011), 16.
12. from the Latin roots: Anais N. Spitzer, Derrida, Myth and the Impossibility of Philosophy (London: Continuum, 2011), 107.
13. observed around the time: Frederick B. Jonassen, “Lucian’s Saturnalia, the Land of Cockaigne, and the Mummers’ Plays,” Folklore 101, no. 1 (1990): 58–68.
14. Saturnalia sought to re-create: Ibid.
15. it was a time of the year: E. O. James, Seasonal Feasts and Festivals (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1961), 176.
16. of the grape harvest: Victor Shea and William Whitla, eds., Victorian Literature: An Anthology (West Sussex, UK: John Wiley and Sons, 2015), 749.
17. wine, intoxication, ritual madness, ecstasy: “Dionysus,” in The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd rev. ed., edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth (Oxford University Press, 2005).
18. raw flesh torn: Ibid.
19. sacrificial humans: William Smith, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (Boston: Little, Brown, 1859), 413.
20. it was considered bad manners: Ibid., 411.
21. also because they involved: Ibid., 410–14.
22. some scholars have suggested: A.J.M. Wedderburn, Baptism and Resurrection: Studies in Pauline Theology Against Its Graeco-Roman Background (Tübingen, Germany: Mohr Siebeck, 1987), 323.
23. lighting yule logs: Clement A. Miles, Christmas Customs and Traditions: Their History and Significance (New York: Dover, 1976), 244–45.
24. a Teutonic or Norse festival: Alcock, “The Festival of Christmas,” 27.
25. a Saxon rite of sacrifice: W. F. Dawson, Christmas: Its Origins and Associations (Detroit: Gale, 1968), 15.
26. hwéol: Miles, Christmas Customs and Traditions, 171–72.
27. iol, or iul: Dawson, Christmas, 15.
28. it was eventually adopted: “Yule,” in Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud, A Dictionary of English Folklore (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).
29. There is also a theory: “Jolly,” OED Online, Oxford University Press, December 2020, www.oed.com/view/Entry/101618.
30. “No singular one”: Shanahan, Christmas Food and Feasting, 10.
31. celebrate the birth: Alcock,
“The Festival of Christmas,” 27.
32. “Christian symbolism”: Miles, Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan, 183.
33. “Because they are wont”: Ibid., 179.
34. “The medieval year resembled: Bridget Ann Henisch, Fast and Feast: Food in Medieval Society (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1976), 28.
35. demonstrations of power: Ibid., 10–11.
36. would have been heavily salted: Massimo Montanari, Medieval Tastes: Food, Cooking and the Table, translated by Beth Archer Brombert (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 155–56.