Local Roots Menu Preview Evening DiningApril 14, 2014Be one of the first guests to try the brand-new spring Eagle Tavern menu. Local Roots Spring Evening DiningMay 2, 2014Come see how the French have influenced Michigan’s cuisine. |
The Henry Ford has a "tasty" collection of food-related artifacts that let us peer into kitchens from America's past. It is one of the best collections of its kind in the country.
Click on an artifact below to see how the foods we ate and the ways we prepared them have changed over the last three centuries.
1800-1850
Coffee Roaster
United States
30.297.5
Though we began as a nation of tea drinkers, coffee grew increasingly popular in America throughout the 1800s. In fact, the Civil War helped add to the number of coffee fans. Civil War soldiers received coffee along with their food rations--when they returned home, they brought with them a taste for this beverage.
Before coffee can be brewed, coffee beans have to be roasted and then ground. Before the 1860s, housewives had to roast their own coffee beans--in the fireplace or, after its introduction, on a cast iron stove. The result was often unevenly roasted or burnt coffee beans. This coffee roaster was made for use in a fireplace. A housewife placed her coffee beans inside the cylinder and then pivoted the roaster on its bottom point over the hot coals. |