I really like this Atlas Obscura piece by Reina Gattuso about Emily Dickinson’s big-ass recipe for black cake and the context of colonial extraction and exploitation that underpins it. Food history can be treated as an area of whimsy and unimportance but it can also illuminate difficult historical realities around labor, gender, and racism. (Among many other things!) #FoodHistory #baking
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/emily-dickinsons-black-cake-recipe
(The image of Dickinson as this reclusive New England mystic is really enduring and powerful but she was materially connected to the world outside her house, not just in terms of friends, neighbors, and lovers but her participation in these economies that required systematic exploitation and cruelty to operate. Contextualizing the ingredients of this recipe, where they came from; and its very scale — two pounds of sugar! Half a pint of molasses! — is really grounding.)