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Sarah Lohman

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American historian
Sarah Lohman
Sarah Lohman with copies of her bookSarah Lohman with copies of her book
BornHinckley, Ohio
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s)historian, author

Sarah Lohman is an American historian, specializing in the history of food. She is the author of Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine.

Biography

As a teenager, growing up in Hinckley, Ohio, Lohman worked, in costume, as a historic re-enactor. Her duties there included showing visitors how Americans used to prepare food. In 2005, she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Cleveland Institute of Art.

She traveled to New York City in 2006. She worked for Grub Street, upon her arrival, and worked at the Tenement Museum from 2009.

In 2016, she told The New York Times that she "searches old cookbooks and other records to recreate forgotten recipes as a way of studying history". She then prepares food, according to those recipes. She called eating those foods "an elaborate form of performance art".

Her book, Eight Flavors, published in 2016, has eight chapters, which each trace a signature taste crucial to the development of modern American cooking: black pepper, vanilla, curry powder, chili powder, soy sauce, garlic, MSG, and Sriracha. Several reviewers praised Lohman's deep research, and told readers her writing was informed by wide travel to conduct that research.

Lohman was one of the food historians used as an expert in a PBS documentary series entitled "The Poison Squad", first broadcast in 2020.

Lohman is working on a second book, documenting cookery at risk of disappearing, entitled Endangered Eating: Exploring America’s Vanishing Cuisine, scheduled for publication in 2021.

Works

  • Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine, 2016.
  • Endangered Eating, 2023.

References

  1. ^ Corey Kilgannon (2016-11-17). "Devouring (and Drinking) American History". The New York Times. p. MB4. Retrieved 2020-08-19. Now she works part time as an educator at the Tenement Museum on the Lower East Side, leading tours and creating food programming.
  2. Sophie Gilbert (2016-11-23). "How American Cuisine Became a Melting Pot". Atlantic magazine. Retrieved 2020-08-19. Smile's biography is revealed in Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine, a new book by Sarah Lohman that unpacks the diverse history of a nation's palate via eight distinct ingredients.
  3. ^ "Wilton Historical Society's Booked for Lunch with Foodie Author Sarah Lohman". Wilton Hamlet. 2020-06-12. Retrieved 2020-08-19. But a young historical gastronomist named Sarah Lohman discovered that American food is united by eight flavors: black pepper, vanilla, curry powder, chili powder, soy sauce, garlic, MSG, and Sriracha.
  4. David Holahan (2016-12-16). "'Eight Flavors' is a tasty history of American cuisine". USA Today. Retrieved 2020-08-19. When Sarah Lohman describes herself as a "historic gastronomist," she is being too modest. She is, in addition, an accomplished writer, an intrepid traveler, dogged researcher and pundit. She knows what Americans eat, what our ancestors ate, and why.
  5. Alan YU (2016-12-06). "How Just 8 Flavors Have Defined American Cuisine". National Public Radio. Retrieved 2020-08-19. Sarah Lohman has made everything from colonial-era cocktails to cakes with black pepper to stewed moose face. She is a historical gastronomist, which means she re-creates historical recipes to connect with the past.
  6. Audie Cornish (2016-12-15). "'Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine'". National Public Radio. Retrieved 2020-08-19. Sarah Lohman is a culinary historian. She was introduced to the idea back in high school when she worked at a living history museum. Back then, it was a summer gig she did in costume and in character.
  7. ^ "Sarah Lohman: About". Retrieved 2020-08-19. Sarah Lohman is originally from Hinckley, Ohio where she began working in a museum at the age of 16, cooking historical food over a wood-burning stove. She graduated with a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2005. For her undergraduate thesis, she opened a temporary restaurant/installation that reinterpreted food of the Colonial era for a modern audience.
  8. ^ Caitlin Dewey (2016-12-07). "Kebabs are the next hamburgers: how war and immigration predict what we eat". Washington Post. Retrieved 2020-08-19. I've also worked for the last seven years at the Lower East Side Tenement museum, which has made me aware of and connected to immigration in a way I never was before -- it underlies everything in American culture. So I knew that in writing the stories of these flavors, I was going to be writing American stories -- and in the process, making an argument for a broader definition of what America is and who Americans are.
  9. Debbi Snook (2017-01-18). "Watch Sarah Lohman make Black Pepper Brown Sugar Cookies (recipe) (video)". Cleveland Plain Dealer. Retrieved 2020-08-19. Here's how Sarah Lohman talks about them in her new book, 'Eight Flavors, The Untold Story of American Cuisine.'
  10. Darrell Delamaide (2017-01-24). "Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine". Washington Independent Review of Books. Retrieved 2020-08-19. As Lohman continues with her blend of food and travel writing, history and chemistry, personal memoir and thumbnail biographies, the reader finds out how soy sauce enjoyed an early popularity in this country only to be replaced by ketchup and Worcestershire sauce. Then, later waves of Chinese and Japanese immigrants reintroduced soy sauce, paving the way for Kikkoman to start manufacturing it in Wisconsin and popularize its use.
  11. Corby Kummer (2017-01-06). "Dishing It Out: Why Americans Eat the Way We Do". The New York Times. p. MB4. Retrieved 2020-08-19. She's also impressively plucky, traveling, for example, to a remote Mexican vanilla plantation, where she's subject to a full-body mosquito attack (par for the course, the woman who runs it admits).
  12. Jane Levere (2020-01-28). "Documentary Debuting On PBS Tonight Traces Roots Of FDA And First US Consumer Protection Laws". Forbes magazine. Retrieved 2020-08-19.
  13. "Gastro Obscura: Open Fire Cooking with Sarah Lohman, Basics". Atlas Obscura. Retrieved 2020-08-19. Her current project, Endangered Eating: Exploring America's Vanishing Cuisine will be released with W.W. Norton & Co. in 2021.
  14. "'Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine'". NPR. December 15, 2016.
  15. Severson, Kim (2023-10-23). "Gutting American Cuisine". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-11-19.
  16. "'On the brink of extinction': a food historian's hunt for ingredients vanishing from US plates". The Guardian. 2023-11-05. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2023-11-19.
  17. "Foods you love are disappearing — here's how to save them". Think. 2023-11-13. Retrieved 2023-11-19.
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