A few years ago, the food historian Bruce Kraig learned from his friend and colleague Andrew Smith that plans were under way for a food encyclopedia of New York City. The news bruised Kraig’s midwestern pride. “I thought, if those SOB New Yorkers can do one,” he says, “we can do one for Chicago!”
The book itself was a logistical beast. Kraig had previously worked on the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and knew that the best way to start writing an encyclopedia was by making lists of notable food people, places, and events. But he and Sen quickly realized they had significant gaps in their knowledge. Kraig felt most comfortable with the 19th century, while Sen’s area was the early 20th century and Prohibition. They recruited a third editor, Carol Mighton Haddix, a former food editor at the Tribune who was not only an expert in current food history but also knew lots of writers who could help with the writing. (Among them is Reader senior writer Mike Sula, who wrote the entry on Korean food and also insisted on contributing one for Jeppson’s Malort. “We said, ‘OK, as long as we don’t have to taste it,’” Kraig recalls.) Grants from the Julia Child Foundation and Les Dames Escoffier Chicago helped pay the contributors and cover the costs of permissions for artwork.
Though they spent two years immersed in food, the three editors did very little eating, aside from testing a small collection of recipes for Chicago’s most famous dishes. These include Ann Sather cinnamon rolls, deep-dish pizza, and shrimp de jonghe. “It’s still debated whether some of these iconic recipes were created in Chicago or not,” Haddix admits. “For some there’s no definitive answer, like chicken Vesuvio. Maybe someone will find the answer one of these days.”
