Library Research Guides: WRIT 128: Writing About Food and Culture: Primary Sources & Websites

Selected Food Studies Resources on the Web

Food Environment Atlas
This Atlas from the USDA allows you to map a community's ability to access healthy food, using indicators such as the availability of food assistance programs, store and restaurant proximity, food prices, state food insecurity, socioeconomic characteristics, and health and physical activity.
Food History Resources
Selected by the USDA National Agricultural Library
Your Story, Our Story: Foodways
A national project from the Tenement Museum that explores American immigration and migration through crowd-sourced stories of everyday objects. Choose Category: Foodways to explore stories and images related to food.
The Recipes Project: Food, Magic, Art, Science, and Medicine
An international collaborative project that showcases interdisciplinary research on recipes.
A Historian's Take on Food and Food Politics
A blog by Rachel Laudan, the author of Cuisine and Empire.
Food Studies Bibliography
A selected and annotated list of books, articles, and journals in food studies, organized by broad topics such as food policy, history, nutrition, etc.
Food Studies Journals

Food and Drink in History This link opens in a new window
Documents from the 16th to early 21st centuries, including cookbooks, advertising ephemera, government reports, films, and illustrated content, from around the world, illustrating the links between food and identity, politics, power, gender, race, and socio-economic status.
Everyday Life & Women in America c.1800-1920 This link opens in a new window
Monographs, pamphlets, periodicals and broadsides addressing 19th- and early 20th-century political, social and gender issues, religion, race, education, employment, marriage, sexuality, home and family life, health, and pastimes.
African American Communities This link opens in a new window
Focusing predominantly on Atlanta, Chicago, New York, and towns and cities in North Carolina this resource presents multiple aspects of African American communities through pamphlets, periodicals, correspondence, official records, reports and in-depth oral histories.

Digital Public Library of America: Food
Materials from archives, libraries, and museums across the US. Explore topics such as Farm & Factory, Food & Wartime, and Food & Social Justice.
What America Ate
An online archive documenting food during the Great Depression, including historical recipes, cookbooks, advertising, stories, photos, and more.
HEARTH: Home Economics Archive
Digitized historical collection of books and journals in Home Economics and related disciplines, along with bibliographies and essays. From Cornell University
Historical Dietary Guidance Digital Collection
A collection of documents covering more than 100 years of nutrition education and dietary advice published by the U.S. government -- from school lunch programs to wartime meal planning.
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Over 1,200 items, including posters, brochures, recipes, and radio transcripts, from the National Agricultural Library.

Cookbooks and Home Economics
Guide to Digitized Historic Cookbook Collections
Mexican Cookbook Collection
Digitized manuscript cookbooks from the collections of the University of Texas San Antonio. These handwritten recipe books provide an intimate view of domestic life and Mexican culinary culture.

What's On the Menu?
A searchable database of almost 18,000 historical restaurant menus from the New York Public Library's collection.
Menus: The Art of Dining
Digital collection of menus from the University of Nevada at Las Vegas Libraries, along with brief essays on menu and restaurant history, graphic design, and other topics.
Schomburg Menu Collection
Menus from Harlem and New York restaurants and nightclubs such as The Cotton Club and the Savoy Ballroom.
Los Angeles Public Library Menu Collection
A searchable database of menus from Los Angeles and other cities, as well as steamships and airlines. You can search by keyword, cuisine type, date, and restaurant name.
Historical Menus from the National Archives at Denver
Browse menus from the 1940s.
University of Washington Menu Collection
Menus, placemats, and other graphic materials from restaurants in the Puget Sound area, 1889-2003.
The National Restaurant Association Menu Collection