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Eating up the culture of food Cookbook archive helps students at the University of Denver discover new passions BY KAILYN LAMB KLAMB@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
For students at the University of Denver with an interest in cooking, Carol Helstosky’s course Think, Eat, Write: Food History is an eye-catcher in a long list of class offerings. But while classes discussing the role food plays in culture, gender roles and even the language of cookbooks lead to a new level of knowledge, it is the university’s archives that really open up the world of cooking. Jacob Thielen, who took Helstosky’s class this semester, said the class “just kind of jumped out at me.” Most of the grade came from a final paper that required students to spend time researching in the archives. He was happy, he said, to see a professor revolve her class around a great resource for which student tuition helps pay. “This is a resource I never would have come across if I hadn’t been in this class,” Thielen said. About the archive The Cookery and Foodways Collection at DU first got its start in 1985 when the university received a surprise shipment of books from a local cooking school, Helstosky said. The books had seen a chain of owners before landing at DU. The original owner was Margaret Husted, a Virginia native who collected cookbooks from across the country. When she died in 1980, the Boettcher Foundation purchased her collection and donated it to the cooking school. When the cooking school closed five years later, the books made their way to DU. Since then, three other major cookbook collections from Coloradans Helen Dollaghan, Katie Stapleton and Betty Carey have been added. All three
Carol Helstosky flips through a cookbook from the special collections at the University of Denver. Helstosky teaches a food history class that lets students explore the tens of thousands of books and pamphlets included in the university’s food archive. KAILYN LAMB women were avid cooks. Dollaghen was food editor at the Denver Post from 1958 to 1993. Stapleton hosted a radio cooking show. Having the collection at DU has been a draw to other organizations or individuals looking to donate cook-
books, said Katherine Crowe, curator for special collections and archives in the DU library. “As soon as you have a collection that people know about,” Crowe said, “you get lots of small donations.” Although Crowe said Cookery and
Foodways is far from the largest cookbook collection in the country, the university has amassed a unique group of works. SEE FOOD, P13
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VOICES: PAGE 8 | LIFE: PAGE 10 | CALENDAR: PAGE 12 VOLUME 92 | ISSUE 31