Tooth for Tooth
Gastronomica: The Journal of Food and Culture, 2012
In the Williams College archives survives a purple hardback cookbook gold-stamped with the title Harry H. Hart’s Favorite Recipes of Williams College, With Training Table Records, Notes and Menus (1951). The eponymous author was a training table chef at Williams College, cooking for various sports teams and, before that, fraternities, from 1917 until 1954. His self-published book contains his recipes, along with professional tips, diet menus, and even the body weights of student athletes for whom he cooked. Hart’s text focuses on eating for optimal athletic performance, for instance, telling the reader when and what an athlete should eat before a game. Team photos in the first half of the book are a reminder that this was a pre-integration era of higher education; Hart is the only African American pictured in the cookbook, and he is not shown fraternizing with the athletes but in a portrait alone. This example of African American cookery literature is today a collectible, and until recently, Hart’s recipes have been largely unknown and inaccessible to most save for curious scholars. Now, the New York-based artist Heather Hart has given them new life in her participatory installation The Oracle of Epicure: Tooth for Tooth. Heather is Harry’s great granddaughter.
