Joseph Dommers Vehling

Joseph Dommers Vehling (born August 9, 1879 in Dülken , † September 20, 1950 in Chicago ) was a German and American cook , author , translator, cookbook historian and book collector. With his publications on cookbooks of antiquity and the Renaissance, he is considered the founder of research on the art of cooking.

life and work

Youth and first years in America

Joseph Dommers Vehling was born in the small town of Dülken in the Lower Rhine region and attended high school there. However, his parents de-registered him at the age of 14 and put him in a cooking school. He then continued his education in Belgium, France, England and Scandinavia and collected material on early Roman cuisine in libraries and museums in Italy. At the age of 24 he was "assistant manager" at the Hotel Bristol in Vienna. In 1904 he emigrated to the USA and married Johanna Ostendorf in 1910.

Vehling founded the "International Hotel Workers Union" in New York; He was committed to the profession of chef and designed a program for the union newspaper International Hotel Work to “raise this great and versatile profession to the level of public recognition”. He has worked in several hotels, including Milwaukee and New York. After the outbreak of the First World War, he left New York in 1914. "Possibly his work in the extreme left union and as president of the more nationally conservative German war club had to do with his withdrawal to Canada."

Writing activity

Vehling's first books contained aphorisms , songs and poems. A novel announced by the publisher entitled Sons of the Night. American customs are undetectable. In a memorandum of Decline of Germanism in America published in 1934, he criticized the clumsy and amateurish German cultural policy and was annoyed by the disregard for Germany's contribution to American history. A study on "Food Cost Accounting and Control" for hotels, restaurants and other hospitality establishments appeared in 1923.

Apicius manuscript of the Fulda monastery from the 9th century.

Sixtus IV appoints Platina Prefect of the Vatican Library

He was the editor of Hotel Bulletin and the Nation's Chefs . For many years he worked on the translation of the world's oldest cookbook De re coquinaria , which was attributed to the Roman gourmet Marcus Gavius ​​Apicius . The work, published in 1936, is entitled Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome and is still in reprint today .

Historian of culinary arts

Through his collection of cookbooks, which has grown over decades, which covered the history of culinary art from antiquity to today, as well as his studies, Vehling developed into a historian of culinary art. As early as 1927, he bought the original manuscript The Art of Cooking from Maestro Martino , the chef of the Patriarch of Aquileia , from an antiquarian in Italy . He discovered that it was this Martino whom Bartolomeo Platina had cited as the source for his own cookbook. Vehling wrote about this in his main work Platina and the Rebirth of Man (1941). This manuscript, "which for many years was the only known text by this Renaissance chef , was donated to the Library of Congress in 1941. "

Vehling taught at Cornell University on the art of cooking in the Renaissance and ancient times. He also bequeathed his collection of around 400 books and manuscripts to this university, including original manuscripts from 1491 and 1516 of “On Right Pleasure and Good Health”, as well as menus from historical banquets and woodcuts by famous gourmets; it is accessible under the name "JD Vehling Collection". The historian Ballerini called him the founder of the research of culinary art.

Publications

• From ravines and quiet hills . Bonsels, Munich 1910
• The legacy of the lonely. Apercus . Didion, New York 1913
• Singing sand. Songs of fate . Didion, New York 1914
• Food cost finding and controls . Food Research Bureau, Chicago 1923
• Martino and Platina. Exponents of Renaissance Cookery . In: Hotel Bulletin and the Nation's Chef . October 1932
• Decline of Germanness in America . Gutenberg Publishing 1934
• Apicius. Cookery and Dining in Ancient Rome . (Translator). Hill, Chicago 1936 (most recently: Apicius. Cookery and Dining in Imperial Rome . Dover Publications Inc., New York, 1977, ISBN 0-486-23563-7 )
• Platina and the Rebirth of Man . Hill, Chicago 1941
• America's Table . Hostaids, Chicago 1950

literature

• Linda Civitello: Cuisine and Culture. A History of Food and People . John Wiley & Sons , 2003, ISBN 978-0471202806
• Berndt Ostendorf: About the fine art of cooking in the new world. The American career of Joseph Dommers Vehling from Dülken . In: Heimatbuch des Kreis Viersen , Viersen 2010
• S. Vinceus: An Evaluation of the Vehling Collection . Ithaca, New York, Cornell University. Also: The Joseph D. Vehling collection of books on food, cookery and dining, and miscellaneous gastrosophic documents (16-page manuscript)
• Joseph Vehling, 71, Cooking Authority . In: The New York Times, September 21, 1950

Web links

• Literature by and about Joseph Dommers Vehling in the catalog of the German National Library
• Title image and reprint of the Apicius book translated by Dommers Vehling

Individual evidence

1. ↑ presumably sous chef ; Berndt Ostendorf only mentions the English name
2. ↑ Berndt Ostendorf: From the high art of cooking in the new world . P. 16
3. ↑ Berndt Ostendorf: From the high art of cooking in the new world. The American career of Joseph Dommers Vehling from Dülken . P. 21
4. ^ L. Didion, New York 1914
5. ^ Evidence for 1932: The New York Times of September 21, 1950
6. ↑ Last 2009. The entire edition can be viewed in the Gutenberg project [1] .
7. ↑ Original title: Liber de arte coquinaria
8. ↑ Original title: De honesta valuptate et valitudine
9. ^ Luigi Ballerini: Introduction: Maestro Martini. The Careades of Cooks . California Studies in Food and Culture, 14th University of California 2005
10. ^ California Studies in Food and Culture . No. 14. University of California 2005