The Culinary Historians of Souern California

The CHSC logo features the Cook Bear, from a 1915 cookbook called The Pan-Pacific Cookbook. There is no mention or credit for the artist in the book. || Image provided by the CHSC

If Drinking With Jane Austen , The Rise and Fall of Tiki and The Whole Schmear: The Creation of Cream Cheese in America just sparked your interest, The Culinary Historians of Southern California is a group you should know.

Over the years we've had some fantastic events with great speakers, said Charles Perry, the President and co-founder of the club, which he started in 1995 with Dan Strehl, a librarian at the Los Angeles Public Library. Perry, a retired food writer and restaurant critic for the Los Angeles Times, as well as a translator and historian, has lectured on a variety of topics including The 17th Century Roots of Hot Sauce , Eating My Way Across Uzbekistan and A Thousand and One Fritters: Food in the Arabian Nights . My tiki lecture was probably the most popular, he said. It sure brought out the Hawaiin shirt crowd.

Richard Foss, a CHSC Board Member, demonstrates how to use an antique waffle iron during a talk on dining in California during the Victorian era at the Workman-Temple Homestead Museum in the City of Industry earlier this year. || Image provided by Richard Foss

At its start, there were only a few other Culinary Historian groups around the country and Perry, Strehl and Jackie Knowles, another organizer, were thrilled when the first meeting drew about twenty people. Since then, the group has grown exponentially. Today, membership hovers between two hundred and two fifty, making CHSC the largest group in the country. Typically, the lectures are held the second Saturday of every month at the Central Library and are free and open to the public. There are also lectures given at other libraries and locations around town.

Chefs, cookbook authors, journalists, historians and experts have all lectured since the clubs inception. Over the years notables like Marion Cunningham, Marcella Hazen and Paula Wolfert have hosted events. And Joe Coulombe, the founder of Trader Joe's, gave a talk. But it is also a place for local cookbook authors, historians and experts focused on a particular topic to lecture as well. We have the famous and the not so famous, but there is growing number of people interested in food history and the events are always well received, Perry said.

And most importantly we have a very enthusiastic crew, said Perry. With the Cook Bear as their mascot-the only other place he has appeared is in the Pan-Pacific Cookbook published in 1915-CHSC keeps to their mission statement, Dedicated to pursuing food history and supporting culinary collections at the Los Angeles Public Library , by taking the money raised from membership dues ($30 a year), fundraising dinners and regular cookbook sales (typically after the events) and giving it to the library. To date the group has donated over $100,000.

Boxes of cookbooks are ready for one of the regular sales. All proceeds go to the Culinary Collection at the Los Angeles Public Library. || Image provided by the CHSC

We act as a support network for the culinary collections, said Nancy Zaslavsky, Speaker Chair, who was asked to give a talk on regional Mexican Cooking nineteen years ago and has been a member since. With budget cuts and positions being lost at the library, our group is able to help when times get tough, she said. She maintains that being a member is worth the small amount of money because there are all sorts of perks, like an event last November at the Getty Museum's The Edible Monument: The Art of Food at Festivals exhibit, which included a panel discussion with the curators, a private tour and a reception. It was a real behind the scenes event and it was so informative.

For Carol Penn-Romine, a long time member who recently moved to Seattle, the cookbook sales are her favorite part of fundraising because of the treasure hunt aspect. Finding a book with Anne Willan's bookplate in it, or an autographed book, or a from the library of.. inscription in a cookbook delights and inspires me, she said. And the messier and more worn it is, the better I like it. Maybe someday someone will be jazzed to pick up one of my donated books, and when they open it they'll be greeted with a whiff of the vanilla extract I accidentally spilled in it.

According to Stella Mittelbach, a librarian who oversees the Culinary Collection in the Science, Technology, and Patents Department at Central Library, the funds help replace classics, purchase expensive titles that may not be in the budget and invest in rare culinary titles. It is a resource that chefs, students, teachers and just regular foodies use. We are constantly striving to make it better, she added.

This platter is from Charles Perrys talk on Dried, Frozen and Rotted: Food Preservation in Northern Eurasia . It includes reindeer jerky, reindeer sausage, dried fish, yogurt balls and dried squid. || Image provided by the CHSC

While cookbooks can be found in each of the 71 branches around the city, the Central Library alone has one of the largest culinary collections in the country, which includes 43,000 food and wine books. Some can be found in the Rare Books Department, which has over 2,000 American and European cookbooks and is considered one of the largest and most important in the country, while others are kept in the International Languages Department and Children's Literature. There is also a large menu and food ephemera collection available for viewing.

While Mittelbach maintains a growing regional interest in food, the California Cookery collection is a particular point of pride. The L.A. Public Library contains the worlds largest collection of cookbooks printed in California. This collection consists of more than 1,000 boo

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