Wife of Jim Norris with canned goods, Pie Town, New Mexico, 1940, by Lee Russel. Image from Library of Congress

Cranberries are probably the easiest fruit to jelly and preserve. Besides being high in microbe-inhibiting acid, they are also high is phenolic compounds, some of which are antimicrobial, and others antioxidant. The natural pectin in cranberries ensures the juice will gel, so there’s no messing around with store-bought thickeners and almost no failure rate. This pectin is so powerful that even a barely-heated puree will begin to thicken almost immediately, and given the right coaxing, natural cranberries can firm up into a jelly not unlike the notorious, sliceable, ridged cranberry-in-a-can.

Cranberries ripen and turn deep red in the fall and keep well for months for some of the same reasons they preserve well, so they are usually still in groceries well after the new year.

This recipe stews them with citrus (cranberries’ fellow cold weather fruit), brown sugar and winter-y spices. The jam can be used to glaze a roasting bird, but I use it more often as a cordial with sparkling water, mixed with a bit of vodka and ice cubes, or spooned over pound cake.

RECIPE
1 pound of whole cranberries
1 cup of brown sugar
½ cup of water
juice of 2 limes, peel of one (1 orange or ½ grapefruit can be used instead)
½ teaspoon cinnamon
¼ teaspoon nutmeg
½ teaspoon vanilla

Put the cranberries, sugar and water in a saucepan over medium heat.

As the cranberries heat up, peel a lime as you would an apple — the peelings should be 2–3 inches long and half an inch wide. Cut both limes in half and squeeze the juice into the pot. Throw in the lime peelings and add the spices.

Simmer the mixture until it is thickened slightly, but still loose, about 5–8 minutes. Depending on what you prefer, the skins and seeds can be left in as part of the jam, or strained out through a cheesecloth.

Ladle the jam into jars and process them immediately to preserve the fruit. If you’re planning to eat the jam right away, there’s no need to go through boiling and sealing, just refrigerate the jam and eat it.

The Joy of Canning, 1917 (detail). Image from Shorpy.com

PREPARE FOR A LONG WINTER
Here are a few other winter canning projects that make use of winter’s modest bounty:

This is meant to be an campfire pie filling, but I’m sure it’ll taste as good in a homemade pop-tart. Carrot cake jam, Well Preserved.

Recipe after recipe, in case you wound up with a million pounds of carrots. Can Jam February Round-Up: Carrots, Tigress in a Pickle.

And because not everything in a jar comes from trees: stock is always handy, and this looks delicious. Dark duck broth, Hunter Angler Gardener Cook.

From the same cook, a walk-in-the-woods syrup. Spruce or fir tip syrup, Hunter Angler Gardener Cook.

FURTHER READING
Canning Safely, Weck
Home Canning, Kaumfann Mercantile Blog
Home Canning, Fresh Preserving
Recipes: Food in Jars
Homemade Yogurt, Food52

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Enamelware Cup, circa 1920

There are so many looks and uses for enamel: jewelry, desk lamps, outdoor grills, tiled walls and subway tunnels. However, we usually interact with enamel in our daily lives in the kitchen; enamel kitchenware products include pitchers, a plethora of bowls, coffee pots, plates, serving spoons and many more.

Brightly colored enamel housewares were mass-produced and appeared in the U.S. market in the late 1800s. These first collections of ladles, baking pans and colanders were stamped out of thin sheets of aluminum, steel or iron before being coated with enamel, giving a touch of porcelain‘s luxury to everyday items.  They were quite popular for being lightweight and durable, and housewives were pleased by how easy it was to clean the smooth, glass-like surface.

"Krenit Bowl" by the Danish Designer Herbert Krenchel (born 1922), circa 1950

Krenit bowl in red and white

If you’ve ever sipped watery hot cocoa from a blue and white speckled camping cup, you’ve experienced the more utilitarian side of enamelware and the casual pleasures of using a no-fuss product of the mass-produced domestic experience. Its first users had a similar feeling back in 1880. You many have also felt the cup becoming too hot to keep holding, this is thanks to the thin material’s heat conducive efficiency. Not great for keeping your fingers from getting too hot, but ideal for slow roasting.

Display with enamelware, 1923, courtesy of Shorpy.

Today enamelware is a bit more sophisticatd: it has a classic, yet modern look and feel, it is tough and colorful, sleek and presentable. The sheer number of high quality enamelware for sale at flea markets and vintage stores is testament to its durability: it is stain resistant and its nonporous surface keeps it nearly germ free.

Finel enamel percolator, designed by Antti Nurmesniemi (1927-2003), courtesy of H is for Home

If you’re a collector, you know that small cracks and rust spots are common on older pieces. Pieces exposed to heat, like teakettles and cookware, are less susceptible to blemishes because the iron bonds to the glass more and more with repeated heating. You may notice vintage spoons stamped out of steel have rust spots because steel is more likely to rust than iron.

Antique enamelware cup, circa 1920

It is recommended that you wash your enamelware by hand using hot soapy water and a soft cloth, do not use brillo pads or anything that might scratch the surface.  Washing by hand will also help avoid banging against other dishes, which can lead to chipping. Enamelware should be dried immediately after washing, as water can cause corrosion and cracks or nicks can rust.

FURTHER READING
“The Fisher Enamels,” The House Beautiful: The American Authority on Household Art. March, 1900.

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At 16, a late bloomer by some standards, two friends and I admitted we’d never really been drunk. Wanting a quick remedy, my friend had just the fix in his mother’s garage: “Her last boss gave her a case of some French Champagne when she left last year, I think it’s getting pretty old now anyway.” Drinking premier cru champagne from coffee mugs, we spent several hours perusing our favorite periodicals and commenting on the finer aspects of this new favorite beverage. The next morning, the pile of Playboys and empty ’85 Mumm Grand Cordon bottles attested to one simple truth: people should drink more Champagne.

Marilyn Monroe holding a Coupe Glass

Because it’s a perfect compliment to so many foods — from salty to sweet, spicy to mild, salad to dessert, and most anything else, because nothing makes a good time that much better, and because nothing quite raises your spirits like those little bubbles. And Champagne aside, from beautiful Californian sparklers like Roederer and Iron Horse, or the great New Mexico Blanc de Noirs and Blanc de Blancs from Gruét, to the spectacular Crémants of Jura and Loire, there’s no end to the great sparkling wines out there.

DEVIL IN THE BUBBLES

Not knowing the carbonation resulted from yeast eating remaining sugars in the sealed bottle, these defining bubbles were once considered a defect. So much so that early wine makers in Northern France, struggling to figure out how to prevent this strange phenomenon, referred to the strange sparkling wine as “the Devil’s wine.”

This, of course, seems odd today because it’s the bubbles we love so much. How pleasant it is to briefly tune out during some mundane toast while watching them lazily trail up the edges of a flute, or pool up at the top a coupe. And few things so clearly declare a party as that ‘pop’ of a cork.

Niki Lauda after winning the Italian Formula One Grand Prix, 1975, Courtesy of The Age

Nonetheless, while we see these bubbles as a boon rather than a flaw, perhaps unknowingly, there was a kernel of truth in early, “devil’s wine” moniker. Conjecture has long held that the bubbles may get us tipsy quicker. Researchers at the University of Surrey put this to the test, conducting experiments which demonstrated that 5 minutes after drinking, those who had traditional, bubbly Champagne had 54 mg of alcohol in their blood stream as opposed to those who’d drank the same amount of flat Champagne, who had only 39 mg.

CAPTURING

It seems that for delivering and protecting these precious bubbles, stemware is essential. Be it long and elegant flutes showcasing the rise of the bubbles while limiting the surface area to slow the trapped gas’s release, or small saucers arranged in tower, wine cascading from one glass to the next, appropriate stemware is a must.

Pommery

FROM COUPE TO FLUTE, TULIP AND BACK TO COUPE

Although now thought of as myth, early sparkling folklore held that the Champagne coupe was molded on the breast of Marie Antoinette. Upon hearing this ages ago, and at the time familiar with only the ubiquitous Champagne flute, images of Madonna’s Blonde Ambition tour and Gaultier designed cone-bras instantly came to mind. Intrigued, I thus became acquainted with the small curved glass that is the champagne coupe, or champagne saucer.

Synonymous with mid-century, the coupe recently came into vogue again. Perhaps Mad Men is to blame (or to thank) for this development, nonetheless, many purists dismiss these small glasses because they quickly allow the carbonation to dissipate; further, they spill more easily and don’t hold as much (4 to 5 ounces per coupe as opposed to the average 8 ounces for flutes). All the same, there’s something eternally classy about a black tie, a long dress, and these little saucers.

More often than not, the flute is the vessel of choice when serving sparkling wine. There are several advantages to the flute as compared to the coupe. Most striking is the length of the glass, allowing the signature bubbles a leisurely assent. In addition, the narrower bowl and mouth of these glasses result in less surface area, meaning the wine retains its carbonation longer.

Champagne Straight From the Bottle

Yet, the flute still as a couple of drawbacks: while protecting the bubbles, the shape doesn’t truly allow the drinker to appreciate the aromas of the wine. Also frustrating, is the way one has to upend the whole glass to get the last of the wine. The Tulip glass is thus my stemware of choice.

Really, only just a slight variation on the flute, the bowl of Tulip widens a bit near the top of the glass and then narrows again. The advantage to this design allows for a bit more swirling, permitting one to more appreciate the aromas of the wine. While not usually quite as dramatic as the flute, the length of a tulip glass should still be striking. Crystal or traditional blown-glass, the tulip should have the same nucleation bead at the bottom of the glass. This is a small rough point at the bottom of the glass upon which bubbles of trapped gas in the champagne will collect and float upward.

French Antarctica Expeditionist J.B. Charcot (left) enjoys a glass of Mumm with Raymond Rallier du Baty, Antarctica, Bastille Day 1904.

Whether you’re into the style of the coupe, the striking silhouette of the flute, or the class of the tulip, make sure to get at least 6: few things are shabbier than having friends over to celebrate a new promotion, lament a recent firing, or simply to watch Damages and discovering that someone has to drink from your 4 year-old’s sippy cup because, “Well, at least this one is sort of the same size.”

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Image by Nina Lee, 1952, Courtesy of LIFE Magazine

Compared with the sourness of fermentation, the desiccated texture of drying, or the cloyingness of candying, canning altered the flavor and texture of preserved produce only slightly, a technological innovation that turn-of-the-19^th-century society went mad for.

Rogers Canning Co., Milton-Freewater, OR, 1941, Courtesy of The Library of Congress

In basic terms, canning is the heating of food isolated in hermetically sealed containers. The heat deactivates plant enzymes and kills off harmful microbes. Along with a tight seal preventing re-contamination, food properly tucked into a canning jar can be stored at room temperature without spoiling.

1858 was a watershed year for home-canning. Prior to this date, home-canners had to use ‘wax sealers’, which featured glass tops and bottoms sealed together with wax. It sounds quaint, but in practice was time consuming and error prone. And discovering just before dinner that instead of a jar of fresh from the vine tomatoes, you had in fact been storing moldering mush, is a sad error indeed. When the young tinsmith John L. Mason invented the threaded lip and two-piece sealing lid, home-canning became far more foolproof.

Indiana "Farmerettes" at a War Garden Exhibit in Washington, 1918, Courtesy of Shorpy

Mason jars are made with thicker glass than single use commercial jars, allowing them to withstand the boiling temperatures of the canning process without cracking. The sealing compound on the lids creates a barrier impenetrable to microbes, and the screw band holds the lid in place. After boiling to create the seal, pressure form outside on the cooling lids makes a taut indentation. Press down on the lid, and if pops, the jar hasn’t sealed and you know to either give it another shot, or put the jar in the refrigerator and get to eating it quickly.

From Great Aunt May's Cellar, 1967l Courtesy of Leader Jar

Hot on the heels of the success of mason jars, in 1882 Henry William Putnam filed a patent that combined the all-glass construction of ‘wax sealers’ with the gasket seal of mason jars. Called lightning jars, Putnam’s invention kept food from touching metal and had easy to open wire closures. Lightning jars were made for home canning up until the 1960s, and these more beautiful, decorative jars still use the wire clasp today and the aesthetic appeal of all-glass canning jars continue to maintain a strong following.

Canning is a satisfying activity. Making a pile of produce into a neat line of shiny, filled jars can make for a wholesome Sunday afternoon. All sorts of fruits and vegetables can be canned, from oranges and plums, to kale and beets. In the winter months, I prefer my canned tomatoes to the tasteless out-of-season varieties, and I don’t mind the constant task of preserving or jellying the beautiful yellow jewels of my over-active Meyer lemon tree.

Odessa Dow Laboratory, 1923, Courtesy of Shorpy

Produce for canning is minimally processed. Lemon marmalade may need a few extra steps to develop pectin and candy the sugar, but tomatoes need only to be peeled and stuffed into jars. The majority of the work goes into sterilizing and processing the jars. In other words: boiling. You have to boil the glass and the lids before filling them, fish them out of hot boiling water (fix a magnet onto a stick to get the metal lids out, and get your tongs ready for the jars), then boil the filled jars again in a canner to create the all-important seal. Under-processing can result in spoiled food, and over-processing may overcook the vegetables. Pay attention to the recommended boiling times to get it right.

Of course the last thing you want to think about while you dream of canning is botulism, but it is important to be aware of its causes. Clostridium botulinum thrives in low-acid, airless conditions. Like most toxins, it is killed off by boiling. However, the spores are hardy and can survive prolonged boiling and proliferate into active bacteria as the cans cool down. Bulging caused by the pressure of gasses produced by the bacteria is a clear indicator, and those should be thrown out. Boiling the food again after opening will also kill the toxin. The high acid content of most tomatoes and citrus fruit inhibits the growth of the bacteria, but other vegetables with pH of 5 or 6 should be processed in a pressure canner for 30 to 90 minutes at 240°F to kill any possible spores.

Mason's Canning Jar, Patent Nov. 30th, 1858

FURTHER READING:

Jaime Gross. “‘Urban Homesteaders’ Are Farming in San Francisco”, The New York Times. April 23, 2010.

Food in Jars — A Canning Blog

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Soda cans, furniture, cookware, structural building supports – the number of products made with the ubiquitous material is endless. Incredibly light, non-rusting, fully recyclable, cheap, and in seemingly limitless supply, it is the metallic element of choice for an extraordinary number of everyday goods. It cannot be denied that aluminum is a miraculous metal whose industrial and commercial applications have revolutionized the modern world. Yet it is most common in products we use in our everyday personal life, and its positive aspects, especially in regards to its contact with the foods we consume, is more questionable.

Aluminum is found in buffered aspirin, most antiperspirants (as aluminum chlorhydrate), antacids, and in shampoo (as aluminum lauryl sulfate or magnesium aluminum silicate). The “miracle” metal is also found in many foods: cake mixes, self-rising flour, prepared doughs, nondairy creamers, pickles, some baking powders, and many processed cheeses. We seem to be either rubbing it on our bodies or ingesting it or pouring it on something on a daily basis, and have been doing so for years, and concern is steadily on the rise.

Secret Anti-Perspirant Advertising, 1969

HISTORY OF ALUMINUM

Aluminum is the third most abundant element of the Earth’s crust, behind that oxygen and silicone, but foremost among all metals, adding up to 7.3% by mass of the earth’s crust. Industrial aluminum is a rather “young” metal (it has only been produced for commercial purposes for a century and a half), but have been using it in its natural form for much longer. 7,000 years ago, Persians made their strongest pottery out of clay containing aluminum oxide. Three millennia later, ancient Egyptians were using  aluminum compounds in medicines, dyes, and cosmetics. The Romans used various aluminum compounds as astringents; they called these alum, or the Latin alumen, giving the metal the origin of its modern name.

Bauxite: Aluminum Ore

Aluminum does not occur naturally in its elemental state. In 1821 Pierre Berthier discovered a clay-like material that contained 52 percent aluminum oxide outside the small village of Les Baux in the south of France. In reference to the place of this most significant of discoveries, he gave the material the name bauxite. He did not realize it at the time, but he had discovered the aluminum ore.

The first commercial process of extracting aluminum was created in 1854 by Henri Sainte-Claire Deville of France, and by 1855 he was able to create enough aluminum for display at the Paris Exposition of that year. Billed as “silver from clay,” aluminum bars were shown alongside France’s crown jewels. The juxtaposition was fitting: rubies, emeralds and sapphires consist mainly of crystalline aluminum oxide. At that time, pure aluminum was valued at $115 per pound — more expensive than gold. Napoleon III proudly displayed aluminum cutlery at his state banquets, commissioned aluminum equipment for his military and even had an aluminum and gold baby rattle made for his son.

B-24 Assembly Hall, 1943 / Courtesy of Shorpy

In 1886, after years of experimentation by many scientists and industrialists, Charles Martin Hall of the United States and Paul L.T. Héroult of France — both 22 years old — independently discovered a way to produce aluminum cheaply. Hall developed a method for “reducing” aluminum oxide, called alumina, to pure aluminum by electrolysis. In the electrolytic cell, alumina is dissolved in molten cryolite. A strong electric current passes through the solution and removes the oxygen, leaving deposits of nearly pure aluminum on the bottom of the bath. This method — called the Hall–Héroult process — is still used today.

Club Aluminum Advertising, 1946

Two years later, Hall founded the Pittsburgh Reduction Company (which would in 1907, be renamed Aluminum Company of America, and become the largest producer of aluminum in America). Before the end of 1888, Hall had produced the first commercial aluminum. As Hall improved his process, the price of aluminum ingots dropped from $4.86 per pound in 1888 to 78 cents per pound in 1893.

Industrialists were at first reluctant to use unfamiliar aluminum, but business grew as manufacturers grasped the benefits of this light yet strong metal. In the mid-1930s, industrial designer Henry Dreyfuss predicted that “aluminum will play a large and significant part” in the “greatest period of redesign the world has known.” By the late 1930s, a pound of aluminum cost just 20 cents, and its uses numbered more than 2,000.

As is often the case (and almost always for the winning side), war was very good for business. During World War II, demand doubled as the cheap, durable material spawned a new generation of aircraft, automobiles, cooking utensils, foil, electric wire and cable. There has been no going back since. Aluminum is ubiquitous in our modern world. Other metals, such as copper, lead, and tin have been mined and used by humans for millennia, but nothing compares to the exploitation of aluminum. More aluminum is produced today than all other non-ferrous metals put together.

The Aluminum Association Advertising, 1967 (Click on Image for Details)

ALUMINUM HEALTH CONCERNS

The bulk of the health discussion centers around whether there is a link between the absorption of aluminum and Alzheimer’s disease. The idea was first introduced in the early 1960s, when neurologist Igor Klatzo at the National Institutes of Health led a study of the workings of the immune system in the brain. When Klatzo injected various solutions into the brains of rabbits to observe immune response, the animals went into severe convulsions. Investigating further, Klatzo learned that it was not active ingredients in the solutions that caused this response, but aluminum added to the solution to aid in their action. Klatzo also observed that brain cells appeared to have suffered a kind of microscopic degeneration in the form of ‘plaques’ and ‘tangles’ which were also characteristic of Alzheimer’s patients.

Neuropathologist Alois Alzheimer (1864 - 1915)

A few years later, researchers at the University of Toronto set out to look for aluminum in the brains of Alzheimer’s subjects. Using autopsy samples, they measured aluminum levels in various parts of the brain and compared levels in Alzheimer’s patients with those in patients who died of unrelated health conditions. The Alzheimer’s patients had aluminum levels two to three times higher.

Aluminum Clad Fire Fighter, Kaiser Aluminum Advertising, 1950s

A number of studies were conducted shortly after, each one discounting the last, some claiming no correlation, others an obvious one. Critics of the supposed link say that association does not prove causation. The buildup, they argue, may be a consequence of Alzheimer’s, which may cause changes in the brain that cause the metal to accumulate in brain tissue. While the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services states that exposure to high levels of aluminum may result in respiratory problems, it does not state that exposure to very small levels is harmful. The current view of the Alzheimer’s Association is that “the findings (… ) do not convincingly demonstrate a causal relationship between aluminum and Alzheimer’s disease, and that no useful medical or public health recommendations can be made, at least at present.”

Pepsi Advertising, 1980s

Another issue directly connected to the aluminum health debate is BPA. BPA is found in the epoxy lining used in aluminum cans and bottles to prevent the leaching of potentially harmful properties from the metal into the food or drink within. that aluminum even NEEDS something to prevent it from coming into contact with your food or drink makes the container doubly dangerous, since BPA has long been known to have even worse health implications than what it’s put in place to protect you from! Bisphenol A is a chemical which can mimic human estrogen and which is linked to breast cancer and early puberty in women.

According to a study conducted by the Environmental Working Group, a wide variety of canned food was bought and tested. In more than half the items they found “200 times the government’s traditional safe level of exposure for industrial chemicals.” Still, there are no standards for BPA; it is allowed to be put in anything, and billions of pounds are produced each year. According to EWG: “Of all foods tested, chicken soup, infant formula, and ravioli had BPA levels of highest concern. Just one to three servings of foods with these concentrations could expose a woman or child to BPA at levels that caused serious adverse effects in animal tests.”

Reynolds Aluminum Advertising

CONTROVERSY AND ITS EFFECTS

Many cookware manufacturers have heeded the call of careful consumers, offering them pots and pans made of anodized aluminum. Anodizing involves thickening the naturally-oxidized surface of the metal by passing a direct current through it as it sits in an electrolytic solution (usually sulfuric acid). Afterward, the surface is sealed to fill in pores that form during the process and to prevent degradation. The result is a coating that is highly-resistant to corrosion, much harder, and can accept dyes readily. The leaching of aluminum residue is considerably lowered with this process. Socially responsible food manufacturers are also switching to canned goods with non-BPA linings due to growing public concerns over the obvious health issues.

Most studies seem to agree that low-level exposure to aluminum from food, air, and water, is not harmful. However there are clearly enough legitimate questions concerning its use in a number of important everyday applications to continue the debate and make us think twice before buying aluminum products. Whatever the case, it seems likely that this very valuable material will continue to be used until solid evidence shows us that without a doubt, it may not be best to chase your Rolaids with a can of tomato juice.

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Bascal Aluminum Tumbler, 1950s

The two main manufacturers of aluminum tumblers were Sunburst and the Italian company Bascal. The cups came in bright colors – purple, pink, red, blue, silver and a variety of other hues. The aluminum was anodized – a process that protects aluminum from oxidation, increases wear resistance, and promotes color retention. Still, these cups are not recommended for dishwashers, as their colors will fade faster than with hand washing.

Bascal

With their humble size, these cups are a bit out-dated for today’s soda lovers. They hold a mere 11 oz of liquid. The current 7-11 Super Gulp measures a mammoth 64 fluid oz.

Since last week’s article on aluminum ice cube trays, I’ve done a fair amount of additional research on the health concerns of aluminum. Just type in “aluminum health” or “aluminum kitchenware health” into Google, Yahoo, or one of the other search engines, and you’ll get thousands of results. The main objects of attack are deodorants, baking soda, cheap cheese (as used in cheeseburgers), and of course, cookware.

The discussions are very emotional (which is understandable, considering a the possible consequence of Alzheimer’s), but are also unfortunately rarely based on scientific studies. It seems studies backing up either side are hard to come by, or don’t appear to exist at all. What a pickle. We actually have an article devoted to the discussion of health issues concerning aluminum. Since I now own both an aluminum ice cube tray and this green tumbler, I really wanted to know if they’re safe for my tequila gimlet at this year’s first cookout.

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1950s Aluminum Ice Cube Tray with Lever

And aluminum doesn’t just conduct the cold air in the freezer faster, it also makes the cubes melt faster so they’re easier to remove.

Redi-Cube Ice Cube Tray

Unfortunately, things become a little more complex when taking a closer look. For decades there has been a discussion about the possible link between Alzheimer’s and the use of aluminum kitchen utensils. The discussion came up in the 1960s when autopsies found unusually high amounts of aluminum in the brains of Alzheimer patients. But most scientist believe that the high aluminum concentrations are a result of the Alzheimer’s and not the other way around. To this date, no proof has been found for a link between aluminum and Alzheimer’s. (More at our article devoted to the subject of aluminum and health concerns.)

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It is a renewable resource,  relatively easy to carve, and a good polishing results in a glassy luster. In addition to carving, the gelatin present in animal horns softens up when heated, allowing for it to be flattened and separated into sheets that can be formed into whatever shape necessary.

Cow Horn

Technically speaking, it’s the sulfur in egg white and in caviar that tarnish the metal and change the taste. Mother of pearl has actually the same quality as horn, and is therefore also used for fine spoons. Horn (and mother of pearl) spoons are also used by homeopathic pharmacists to measure and administer medicine because metal can sometimes effect the potency of the substances.

Over time, horn slowly loses its natural oils and therefore requires a bit of maintenance, an occasional rub with oil. The range of patterns and colors from horns is remarkable. A set of six spoons from one horn will result in six very different spoons.

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American Meat Institute Advertising 1940s

Butcher Block is what I’m seeking – and some digging shows that this material – an infinitely sturdy hardwood maple that is used for high-end counter tops and chopping boards – has a fascinating history.

19th Century Butcher Block, Musée de la Civilisation

Originally butchering was done atop a tree stump or “tree rounds”, which were literally enormous chunks of tree set on legs. I love imaging these ultra masculine old-time butcher shops – where giant chunks of dead animal were axed apart by sweaty guys with huge blades – atop giant tree trunks! Wow!

This process was functional but not the best option, as eventual cracking lead to an inability to keep the surface of the chopping area clean – making for some pretty unsanitary conditions. Seeking out a durable alternatives, in the mid 1880s butchers created a maple-based material which they rather unimaginatively dubbed “The Sanitary Meat Block”. Now known as “butcher block”,  it is used all over the world – in both home kitchens and professional and currently exists in two basic forms, Edge Grain and End Grain.

End Grain Butcher Block

The superior (and more pricey) End Grain is created by gluing the maple wood fiber perpendicular to the surface and creating a thickness of at least 4 inches (the more the better). This process creates a pleasing, chessboard/parquet design surface which not only looks nice, but also serves double duty by absorbing the impact of knife blades – allowing blades to come down between fibers and thus absorbing the impact. As a result a knife will stay sharp longer, and the butcher block will keep free of nicks.  End Grain is used by professional chefs and deep-pocketed amateurs with some extra dough to put toward their kitchen fetishes.

Waldorf Astoria Hotel 1944 / Photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt

Edge Grain is much more common however – particularly as a home counter top material. Also, utilizing a hardwood maple – the manufacture of  Edge Grain involves wood fiber glued parallel – a look similar to a wood floor. Edge Grain is much less expensive to produce and still creates a durable surface which will work just fine for your every day cooking and cutting.

Both End and Edge Grain butcher block can be kept looking pretty (and functioning properly) by a good rub with natural mineral oil every 3 months of so, depending on amount of use.

Beef Cuts (Click Image to Enlarge)

A little off subject, but I couldn’t resist to show you these pieces of meat art. They’re just too good (I guess only if you’re not a vegetarian).

Victoria Reynolds "Fight of the Reindeer"

Mark Ryden "Meat Boy"

David Kennedy "Meat Collage" (Great as a Desktop Image)

Nicolas Lampert "Meatscapes"

And here two more ads from the good people of the American Meat Institute, who helped to bring Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (with all its great side effects of hormone and antibiotic infested meat as well as and polluted runoffs) to this country.

American Meat Institute Advertising 1949

American Meat Institute Advertising 1940s

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