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Erica J. Peters, Ph.D:
A Cosmopolitan City and Its Cookbooks

Thursday, July 19th, 7pm – 8pm

San Francisco is a relatively young city, but from the days of the Gold Rush it has had a reputation as a sophisticated place, with many immigrants, many restaurants, and an openness to trying each other’s food. Those who came appreciated the Bay Area’s great produce and fresh seafood. From very early on, San Franciscans published cookbooks to promote a Northern California approach to cooking. This presentation will look at the city’s food history through some of its cookbooks, as chefs began to realize that there was a market for cookbooks connecting people to a somewhat idealized representation of San Francisco’s cosmopolitan cuisine.

Erica J. Peters, Ph.D., is the director of the Culinary Historians of Northern California and author of San Francisco: A Food Biography (2013) and Appetites and Aspirations in Vietnam: Food and Drink in the Long Nineteenth Century (2012). She received her bachelor’s degree in history and literature from Harvard University and her doctorate in history from the University of Chicago. Peters has taught at Stanford University, Santa Clara University, San Francisco State University, Portland State University, and the University of Maryland University College. Most recently, she designed and taught “Introduction to Food Studies” and “Local Food History” for the innovative master’s degree program in Food Studies at the University of the Pacific’s San Francisco campus.

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