The Old Foodie

In 1946, President Truman’s Famine Emergency Committee issued a list of 39 ways in which American’s could save food, thus enabling resources...

You probably don’t need a recipe for oxoleum - I am sure you already make it regularly- but I thought you might be interested in a seventee...

I have always loved the word piccalilli. I have always loved the condiment too. I like the many variations of the word, but am particular ab...

This day in 1758 was not, as I pointed out in a post on the same day a couple of years ago, the first time that mustard was advertised in A...

An interesting article in the New York Times of March 21, 1886 made ponder on the various and devious ways in which the determinedly subver...

When I first started this blog, the theme was a very broad interpretation of “What Happened on this Day in Food History”. The source of i...

Colouring food with various things natural and unnatural has a long history, and not just to give an entire dish a new colour. Sometimes foo...

February 5 The flower of the day, according to the much quoted but perhaps mythical medieval monks’ calendar, is the primrose (Primula ...

December 3 … Some random “on this day” browsing turned up a piece of apparently un-food-related trivia: today is the anniversary of the...

November 30 ... Today is Mark Twain’s one hundred and seventy second birthday. I am not sure, but I think he is the third most often qu...

November 20 ... Sir Jo hn Harington, the “saucy godson” of Queen Elizabeth I, and the man who first got the idea of the flush toilet d...

October 24 ... William Makepeace Thackeray, the author of Vanity Fair , was enthusiastic about food, as we can surmise from his ...

I was delighted to receive an email from Colleen in Sarasota, Florida - English-born but a long-time resident of the States, married to an A...

Today, July 17 th Dorothy Wordsworth, sister of the poet William Wordsworth kept a journal of day to day life with her brother in Gra...

Today, July 4 th Today being The Fourth of July , for no particular reason other than I find its title oddly appealing, I decided to feature...

Today, June 22 nd ... Once upon a time, Harrods of London ran a series of newspaper advertisements in which they gave suggested menus...

Today, May 31 st … Worcestershire Sauce, an essential ingredient in a Bloody Mary (and even more essential in a Virgin Mary) was trade...

Today, May 23 rd … The state of South Australia was the first in the world to give women the right to vote. One of the pioneers of the f...

Today, April 19th … The plant of the day according to the medieval calendar is garlic ( Allium sativum* ), dedicated to St Leo. I have no id...

Today, January 19th … Since the ratification of the twentieth amendment in 1933 the traditional day for the inauguration of the President of...