Barbara Ketcham Wheaton, born in

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the sixth-largest city in the U.S., the second-largest city in both the Northeast megalopolis and Mid-Atlantic regions after New York City. Sinc ...

in 1931, is a writer and food historian. Since 1990, she has been the honorary curator of the culinary collection at the

Schlesinger Library The Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America is a research library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University. According to Nancy F. Cott, the Carl and Lily Pforzheimer Foundation Director ...

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

, one of the largest collections in the United States of books and manuscripts relating to cooking and the social history of food.

Biography

In 1976, Wheaton produced a modern edition of

Agnes B. Marshall Agnes Bertha Marshall (; 24 August 1855 – 29 July 1905) was an English culinary entrepreneur, inventor, and celebrity chef. An unusually prominent businesswoman for her time, Marshall was particularly known for her work on ice cream and ot ...

's Victorian classic ''The Book of Ices'', originally published in London in 1885. She is the author of the well-reviewed ''Savoring the Past: The French Kitchen and Table from 1300 to 1789'', and of the biography of

Marie-Antoine Carême Marie Antoine (Antonin) Carême (; 8 June 178412 January 1833) was a French chef and an early practitioner and exponent of the elaborate style of cooking known as '' grande cuisine'', the "high art" of French cooking: a grandiose style of cookery ...

, French exponent of ''

grande cuisine ''Haute cuisine'' (; ) or ''grande cuisine'' is the cuisine of "high-level" establishments, gourmet restaurants, and luxury hotels. ''Haute cuisine'' is characterized by the meticulous preparation and careful presentation of food at a high pric ...

'', in Alan Davidson's ''

Oxford Companion to Food ''The Oxford Companion to Food'' is an encyclopedia about food. It was edited by Alan Davidson and published by Oxford University Press in 1999. It was also issued in softcover under the name ''The Penguin Companion to Food''. The second and t ...

'' (1999). At her request (she did not want to wash dishes and wanted a durable but disposable dish) the

MIT Media Lab The MIT Media Lab is a research laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, growing out of MIT's Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture. Its research does not restrict to fixed academic disciplines, but draws from ...

's Counter Intelligence Group created its

Dishmaker The Dishmaker is a machine which thermoforms cups, bowls, and plates from acrylic ( polymethyl methacrylate) plastic discs and then thermoforms them back into discs when they are done being used. It was about the size of a home dishwasher, and coul ...

, a machine that made dishes on demand out of food-safe materials and recycled them afterwards. She developed "The Cook's Oracle", a searchable database that establishes relationships among recipes in cookbooks from different historical periods. Wheaton hopes to find someone who will continue her database, now on

Microsoft Access Microsoft Access is a database management system (DBMS) from Microsoft that combines the relational Access Database Engine (ACE) with a graphical user interface and software-development tools (not to be confused with the old Microsoft Access ...

, and make it available. Wheaton received a bachelor's degree in art history at

Mount Holyoke College Mount Holyoke College is a private liberal arts women's college in South Hadley, Massachusetts. It is the oldest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of elite historically women's colleges in the Northeastern United State ...

in 1953 and a master's from Radcliffe College in 1954. In 1964-65 she attended the

École des Trois Gourmandes L'école des trois gourmandes (The School of the Three Hearty Eaters) was a cooking school founded in Paris, France, during the 1950s by Julia Child, Simone Beck, and Louisette Bertholle. The work done by the school was later expanded into the two-v ...

founded in

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. ...

Julia Child Julia Carolyn Child (née McWilliams; August 15, 1912 – August 13, 2004) was an American cooking teacher, author, and television personality. She is recognized for bringing French cuisine to the American public with her debut cookbook, ...

Simone Beck Simone "Simca" Beck (7 July 1904 – 20 December 1991) was a French cookbook writer and cooking teacher who, along with colleagues Julia Child and Louisette Bertholle, played a significant role in the introduction of French cooking technique a ...

, and

Louisette Bertholle Louisette Bertholle (26 October 1905 – 26 November 1999) was a French cooking teacher and writer, best known as one of the three authors (with Julia Child and Simone Beck) of the bestselling cookbook ''Mastering the Art of French Cooking''. ...

. She was a founding Trustee, 2003–2007, of the Charitable Trust for the

Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery The Oxford Symposium on Food & Cookery is an annual weekend conference at which academics, food writers, cooks, and others with an interest in food and culture meet to discuss current issues in food studies and food history. Overview The Sympo ...

and has been vice-president since 2008 of the American Friends of the Oxford Symposium. She is also an Overseer at

Plimoth Plantation Plimoth Patuxet is a complex of living history museums in Plymouth, Massachusetts, founded in 1947. Formerly Plimoth Plantation, it replicates the original settlement of the Plymouth Colony established in the 17th century by the English coloni ...

and a Corporator of the

Worcester Art Museum The Worcester Art Museum, also known by its acronym WAM, houses over 38,000 works of art dating from antiquity to the present day and representing cultures from all over the world. WAM opened in 1898 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and ranks among th ...

. On October 28, 2007, the Schlesinger Library held a day-long symposium to mark her seventy-fifth birthday.Elizabeth Gawthrop Riely,
Library Honors Food Historian Barbara Ketcham Wheaton
in ''The Radcliffe Quarterly'' (2007)

Publications

; Books * (introduction and annotations) ''Ices, Plain and Fancy: The Book of Ices by Agnes B. Marshall''. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1976. Reissued under the title ''Victorian Ices & Ice Cream'', 1984 * (with Patricia Kelly) ''Bibliography of Culinary History: Food Resources in Eastern Massachusetts''. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1987 * ''Savoring the Past: The French Kitchen and Table from 1300 to 1789'' Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983; London: Chatto & Windus, 1983. French translation: ''L'office et la bouche: étude des moeurs de la table en France, 1300-1789''. Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1984 ; Articles * "How to Cook a Peacock" in ''Harvard Magazine'' (1979) * "The Cooks of Concord" in ''Journal of Gastronomy'' (1984) * "The Serendipitous Year" in ''Journal of Gastronomy'' (1987) * "Petits Riens and Pommes Barigoule: Food in France after the Revolution" in ''Journal of Gastronomy'' (1989/1990) * "The Pleasures of Parisian Tables from Daumier to Picasso" in Barbara S. Shapiro, ed., ''The Pleasures of Paris from Daumier to Picasso'' (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1991) * "Carême" in Alan Davidson, ed., ''

The Oxford Companion to Food ''The Oxford Companion to Food'' is an encyclopedia about food. It was edited by Alan Davidson and published by Oxford University Press in 1999. It was also issued in softcover under the name ''The Penguin Companion to Food''. The second and t ...

'' (Oxford, 1999) * "Culinary History" (with Ellen Messer, Barbara Haber and Joyce Toomre) in ''The Cambridge World History of Food'' (Cambridge, 2000) * "Le menu dans le Paris du XIXe siècle" in ''À table au XIXe siècle'' (Paris: Réunion des musées nationaux; Flammarion, 2001. Catalog of an exhibition at the

Musée d'Orsay The Musée d'Orsay ( , , ) ( en, Orsay Museum) is a museum in Paris, France, on the Left Bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French a ...

, 2001–2002)

References

Bibliography

*
Food-Historikerin Barbara Ketcham Wheaton
" in ''Valentinas-Kochbuch.de'' (January 2010) * Francesca T. Gilberti,
Stacks of Delicious
in ''The Harvard Crimson'' (1 November 2006) * Ursula Heinzelmann,
Die beharrliche Entschlüsselung der Kochbücher
in ''Effilee'' (29 Oct. 2009) *

Verlyn Klinkenborg Verlyn Klinkenborg (born 1952 in Meeker, Colorado) is an American non-fiction author, academic, and former newspaper editor, known for his writings on rural America. Early life and education Klinkenborg was born in Meeker, Colorado and rais ...

, "Of Cabbages and Kings: Why don’t cookbooks reflect what's really going on in the kitchen?" in ''Gourmet'' (June 2000) * Elizabeth Gawthrop Riely,
Library Honors Food Historian Barbara Ketcham Wheaton
in ''The Radcliffe Quarterly'' (Cambridge, Mass., 2007) {{DEFAULTSORT:Wheaton, Barbara Ketcham 1931 births Living people American food writers Food historians Writers from Philadelphia Mount Holyoke College alumni Radcliffe College alumni Women food writers