Wednesday, February 10, 2021
Culinary Historians of New York presents…
Taverns and the Emergence of the Colonial American Culinary Scene
Vaughn Scribner discussing how urban tavern-going bought 18C notions of health and sociability full circle.

Free for Culinary Historians of New York members
$10 for non-members and guests
Register via eventbrite

As the most numerous, popular, and accessible public spaces in colonial America, taverns provided a wide variety of services to a broad swathe of the American populace. And, though customers enjoyed seemingly endless opportunities to connect with the broader world within taverns’ walls, food and drink remained these spaces’ top draws. As this presentation demonstrates, British American taverns’ global origins and associations made them the center of the colonial culinary world. Not only did taverns provide alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages from around the world, but they also connected with other blossoming gastronomic spaces—namely mineral springs, pleasure gardens, and fruit orchards—thus bringing eighteenth-century notions of health, nutrition, and sociability full circle.

Vaughn Scribner is an associate professor of history at the University of Central Arkansas and the author of Inn Civility: Urban Taverns and Early American Civil Society (New York University Press, 2019).