Focus On Cooking
Blog Posts
- The Journals of Abby and Mattie Sanderson of Whately Glen
In the winter and early spring months of 1874 and 1876, Martha “Mattie” Ann Sanderson (1854-1933) and her mother, Abby H. Rice Sanderson (1829-1902), kept a journal of their work schedules, domestic cookery, farm production and inventories, sewing projects, daily weather reports, church and prayer meeting attendance and numerous other tasks… - It’s Fall! It’s Time for Cooking with Pumpkin
This is not a blog about pumpkin spice. While today we decorate our yards and front steps with pumpkins and gourds and drink coffee flavored with pumpkin pie spices, long ago the pumpkin and its relatives — winter squashes — were a staple and necessary food item that were stored and eaten over the long and cold New England winters.
- What’s for Dinner?: Examining the Tools of Hearth Cooking
Generations of cooks have known the daily chore of putting food on the table for anxious mouths. Today, we have little trouble readying and preparing food—even if the result might not be perfect. Few modern American spend time butchering hogs, plucking feathers off chickens, grinding corn, or milking cows to make a meal.
- Baby It’s Cold Outside: A Sweet History of Chocolate in New England
Although cacao trees don’t grow in our climate, chocolate has a long history in New England, given our close economic connections to the West Indies. New England merchants supplied barrel staves, lumber, onions, salt fish, salt beef, and horses to the Caribbean in exchange for sugar, molasses, rum, and cacao.
- Pass it Round: Festive Drinks for Holiday Cheer
In this installment of Maker Mondays we want to treat you to some recipes for holiday drinks that were popular in early New England.
Cooking Events
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Soapstone Bead Workshop with Elizabeth James-Perry
Join 2023 NEA Heritage award recipient Elizabeth James-Perry (Aquinnah Wampanoag) for a workshop on making soapstone beads.
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Envisioning America: Deerfield Academy’s Collection of Paintings and Drawings
Deerfield Academy, a private boarding school located in Old Deerfield, possesses a rich collection of American art, ranging from colonial American portraiture to early 20th-century modernism. This exhibition highlights significant works of art from the Academy’s collection, many of which have not been on public view for decades.
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Body by Design: Fashionable Silhouettes from the Ideal to the Real
This exhibition will explore the enduring interest in clothing our bodies to achieve fashionable shapes. It will feature twenty-five ensembles from the 18th to 21st centuries drawn predominantly from Historic Deerfield’s renowned clothing collection. Displayed along with the historical garments will be the understructures – stays, corsets, hoops skirts, and bustles – that helped shape,…
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Engaging with the Legacies of Northern Slavery
Historic Deerfield is pleased to announce a one-day conference, “Engaging with the Legacies of Northern Slavery,” in collaboration with the Witness Stones Project, Inc. to mark the completion of the second phase of installing 35 Witness Stones Memorials™ that honor the enslaved people who lived in the community. In Deerfield, by the mid-eighteenth century over a…
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Historic Deerfield Museum Course 2025 — One Hundred Years of Song: Singing Early New England Music for Science, Memory, and Abolitionism, 1770–1870
REGISTRATION CLOSED Historic Deerfield’s hybrid 2025 museum course, “One Hundred Years of Song: Singing Early New England Music for Science, Memory, and Abolitionism, 1770–1870,” will be held on Wednesdays March 12, 19, and 26, 2025 virtually and in person.
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Free Virtual Lecture Series — Tempus Fugit/Time Flies: Measuring, Perceiving, and Living Time in Early America
This virtual lecture series features speakers who will address both the abstract and material nature of time found not only in clocks but also in other objects and processes central to life in early New England such as brewing, needlework, husbandry, farming, and cooking.
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Historic Trade Demonstration: Pots and Chairs
Join us for stoneware pottery with Mark Shapiro and chair making with Charles Thompson.
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Family Program: Fake It While You Make It
Starting May 10th, open Saturday and Sundays through June at the History Workshop.
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Hearth Cooking Demonstration: Cooking with Herbs
May 10, 17, 24 & June 7, 14, 21, 28 Come and learn about the use of herbs in cooking that were used add flavor and freshness to seasonal dishes.
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Historic Trade Demonstration: Furniture and Woodworking with Sharon Mehrman
Sharon Mehrman is an artisan woodworker and historian of material culture, historic woodworking trades, tools, and technology.