Cooking Boston: Final Courses

Cooking Boston: Final Courses

Join Mount Auburn docents for a walking tour of the cemetery to visit the graves of notable chefs, inventors, and confectioners. Mount Auburn is the final resting place of 19th-century cookbook author Fanny Farmer, chefs Joyce Chen and Gian Franco Romagnoli, chocolate makers Walter Baker and William Schrafft, hotel impresario Harvey Parker of Boston’s famed Parker House, and many more.

Cooking Boston: How the Hub Shaped the American Diet

This six program series will explore the culinary history of Boston and the impact the city has had on the American diet. In the first half of the 19th century, Boston had a reputation as the center for European taste and refinement. By the end of the 19th century, the Colonial Revival movement nationally popularized foods like Boston baked beans and Yankee pot-roast shifting Boston's image from refined to rustic. In the 20th century, Boston clung to two identities: that of thrifty Puritans and of cosmopolitanism through education. This created some remarkably bland food but also made the city fertile ground for a culinary revolution. In the 1960's, chefs like Julia Child and Joyce Chen brought the flavors of the world to America through Boston.

The series will run from March through June of 2017.