About the museum
The Museum of Mostly Pudding is a new digital museum that asks what the kitchen pantry reveals about American mass culture from the 1880s-1970s, particularly from the perspective of the wives and mothers who prepared the meals. The museum’s collection explores a range of original artifacts from the time period, including packaged food products, promotional recipe pamphlets, and women’s magazines, and represents many long-forgotten brands that you might not find anywhere else.
The museum’s long-term vision will be to examine how American consumerism reflected and reinforced mainstream constructions and ideologies of femininity, within the context of a century of significant technological and social change that transformed women’s roles both in and out of the home.
The Museum of Mostly Pudding is a passion project from Julia Evanczuk, a history nerd and software engineer in New York City.
Historical scope
This project explores a century of profound shifts in politics, technology, and culture, which propelled a pre-industrial America into the modern age and advanced the status and opportunities available to women.
The timeline below offers a glimpse of what the country looked like from the 1880s-1970s, via a small sampling of the events and innovations that shaped this transformative era.
Why pudding*?
It reflects the circumstances of its time.
Once a delicacy reserved for the upper class, the commercialization of granulated gelatin in the late 1800s democratized the dish, just as the American Industrial Revolution was ushering the country into the modern era. In the decades following, pudding always managed to perfectly fit the needs of the nation: economical during the Depression, sugar-saving during WWII, fast and easy for the efficiency-minded housewife of the atomic age. Pudding’s broad appeal, as well as the dishes prepared with it, reflected America’s evolving appetites, values, and circumstances.
It’s versatile and ubiquitous.
Appetizer, main course, dessert, or even health drink. Savory or sweet. An indulgent delight or a dietetic bite for careful appetites. Satisfactory for children, bridge parties, and when the boss came to dinner. In 20th century America, pudding proved to be the ultimate culinary chameleon, suitable for all palates and occasions.
It’s fun and (mostly) delicious.
From the advertisements to the packaging to the prepared dishes, pudding offers up a wonderfully whimsical lens into history that we can all understand. Even better, pudding gives us an opportunity to experience 20th century America firsthand–we can recreate the recipes of the past and then, for better or worse, have a taste.
*Here’s a bit of a caveat: “pudding” here refers to any gelatin-based powdered mix including flavored and unflavored gelatin, ice cream mix, whipped cream mix, pie filling, and pudding proper. Perhaps “Museum of Mostly Gelatin” would’ve been a more apt name for this project, but it just doesn’t have the same ring to it, don’t you think?
About Julia
Hi! I’m Julia. I sometimes joke that food is 90% of my personality, but the love is real: I’m enchanted by the way a new dish can feel like a discovery, how it’s a conduit for creativity, how it opens doors and brings people together. Hosting folks for dinner is one of my favorite things in the world. In another life I might’ve worked in the food industry, but in this one I’m a software engineer, because I also enjoy a good puzzle.
I’m a third or fourth-generation American, depending on which side of my family tree you look at. My father’s family were Catholic Ukrainians who emigrated here in 1906/1907 and put down roots in the Midwest; on my mother’s side were Jewish Ukrainian-Romanian-Russian-Hungarian-et-cetera who arrived around the same time and settled in New York City. My brothers and I grew up celebrating Christmas and Hanukkah, and we ate kielbasa in our spaghetti.
My interest in history was born out of my love of food. My first cookbooks were a couple of Time-Life books published in 1979 (Classic Desserts and Fruits, if you’re curious), purchased at a second-hand bookshop. As a '90s kid, I loved paging through the illustrated recipes, marveling at their unfamiliarity, feeling like I was peering back to a different time. As I grew up, I came to appreciate how that "different time" was actually pretty recent; the society to which my parents and grandparents belonged felt worlds away from the one I knew–particularly as a woman–and yet somehow I felt like I’d only just missed it. Since I lack a time machine, this project is my next best option to explore what life used to look like, not so long ago.
- Me, now-ish, at the historic Brooklyn restaurant Gage & Tollner
- Me and my Manhattan-born great-grandma in 1989
- My aunt in front of her family’s Victory Garden in 1940s Ohio
- My grandfather (far right), his siblings, and their parents, late 1910s
- Me, now-ish, at the historic Brooklyn restaurant Gage & Tollner
- Me and my Manhattan-born great-grandma in 1989
- My aunt in front of her family’s Victory Garden in 1940s Ohio
- My grandfather (far right), his siblings, and their parents, late 1910s
Ways to support the museum
Help spread the word
The best way to support the Museum of Mostly Pudding right now is to help spread the word. If you want to help this project grow, please follow the museum online and share it with your friends and family!
Make a financial contribution
The other best way to show your support is by making a donation by using the form below. Financial contributions help keep the website’s lights on, as well as offset the costs of acquiring objects for the museum’s collection.
Note: financial contributions are not currently tax-deductible.
Disclaimer
Engaging with American sociocultural history necessitates that we touch on some sensitive topics.
Some of the materials included in this museum contain offensive language or imagery, or reflect outdated ideas. Although these are absolutely not reflective of my personal values, it’s important to present them within their historical context to facilitate a deeper understanding of societal attitudes during the era. It’s my goal to describe these materials in a way that accurately reflects the historic record while using inclusive language and remaining respectful to those represented in the collections.
It’s also important to acknowledge that this project’s narrow scope does not encompass the full spectrum of experiences of all American women during this time period, particularly those belonging to historically marginalized groups. I’m engaging in ongoing research and learning to better contextualize the source material and provide a more comprehensive and meaningful analysis.
You can read my full statement on my commitment to inclusivity here, and I always welcome your feedback on how I can do better.
Contact
You can reach me via this form. I look forward to hearing from you!