Culinary History Conference

My Top 3

For the past two days, I was at the Hagley Museum in Delaware attending a culinary history conference. I have to say, Delaware is basically a place I drive through to get to other, more promising spots, like DC. Mostly, what I saw in the First State was the usual suburban sprawl. But there is an area near Wilmington where the Du Ponts resided, that’s definitely worth a detour. It’s marked by rolling hills and lush gardens, not to mention fabulous estates and homes.

For this conference, the International Association of Culinary Professionals arranged a special tour of Winterthur, the 60-acre estate that was built by Henry Francis du Pont (1880-1969), an avid antiques collector and horticulturist. Antiques lovers make pilgrimages to the place because of its unparalleled collection of early American furniture, porcelain, rugs, and other objects. The garden is lush and extensive, planted with numerous varieties of plants and trees in a naturalistic manner.

We got the cook’s tour so to speak of the dining room, living room and other period-appropriate furnished rooms. There are 85,000 objects set in 175 gorgeous period settings.

For this crowd, the tour guide focused on the culinary. It seems that Dupont was a locavore way before the term was ever invented. By 1925 Winterthur had its own turkey, chicken, sheep, pig, and dairy farms as well as vegetable and flower gardens, greenhouses, a sawmill, a railroad station, and a post office.

Dupont raised Holstein-Friesian cows for their rich milk and personally oversaw menu planning. When traveling, he had his staff prepare watercress sandwiches and such so that he wouldn’t have to eat foods he hadn’t raised himself.

On Saturday, we all congregated at the Hagley Museum. There, we heard a terrific overview of the history of service from Gary Allen; a history of the fork from Gastronomica editor, Darra Goldstein, also a Russian professor at Williams; and a fascinating history of the hot dog from Roger Horowitz of the Hagley Museum.

Ruben Garcia, Director of Research and Development at Jose Andres’ THINKfoodGROUP in DC (they own Jaleo, Cafe Atlantico, Zatinya, etc.) dazzled the audience with his molecular gastronomic derring-do. The olive oil bon bons, crafted from olive oil and a sugar extracted from corn, were a particular crowd pleaser. Garcia plopped one on my tongue. The texture was like velvet with a quick crunch from the membrane surrounding the tasty globule.