When Student Dining Included 5-Course Banquets

Early June Peas, Pounded Murphies, and Coconut Cake: University of Michigan Banquet Food in the Early 20th Century with Lisa Young

We're all about eating local now. What did local eating look like in Ann Arbor in the early 20th Century when local food was the norm? What were the common ingredients and how did people prepare food without all of our modern conveniences?  Join us to hear from Lisa Young about her findings based on menus for University of Michigan banquets of the time as well as local cookbooks. Perhaps information about the "original" local cuisine will provide insight into what could be most sustainable today.

We'll let our taste buds travel in time as well. Come and enjoy dishes that were a part of a standard five-course menu of a U-M banquet. We'll begin with celery, olives and sweet Gherkin pickles, move on to Mulligatawny soup, chicken timbales, Waldorf salad, and coconut cake.

Lisa Young is a lecturer at the University of Michigan, in the Department of Anthropology. She is also a local food enthusiast and serves on the Advisory Commission for the Ann Arbor Farmers Market. In 2018, Lisa began teaching a seminar for first-year students called “Food at the University of Michigan: Then and Now.”  In this course, students learn about changes in the food system by researching dishes served at U-M student banquets. Their research uses the student scrapbooks in U-M the Bentley Historical Library, and cookbooks and menu books in the Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive, as well as the Ann Arbor Public Library.

When Lisa isn't indulging in her food passions she's researching the variation and change in small-scale farming communities in North America, focusing on the southwestern United States. Lisa brings her historian’s mind and approach to uncovering fascinating information about the foodways of Ann Arbor and the University of Michigan in the early 1900s.

This event will be held at ZingTrain, at 3728 Plaza Dr. (This is in our same parking lot, directly across from the Zingerman's Coffee Company.)