Yes it does matter and I think it would be awesome if you devoted a whole week to this subject. Think of the recipes, stories, and photographs!

I'm very nostalgic for foods I grew up with: the rosettes my French descended grandmother made every Christmas and the meatballs my Swedish grandmother made every time my brother and I slept over and the knowledge my butcher grandfather passed on to my mom. I've never given much thought to the broader culinary history aspect of my nostalgia though - I've always just appreciated my personal connection to these recipes and tools. For example, now I make rosettes every Christmas with my grandma's rosette irons and my mom and I laugh remembering all the strict rules my grandma left behind: you must use Wesson, you must daub the irons on paper grocery bags. I'm sure other rosette makers don't follow these strictures and their rosettes turn out just fine, but we adhere to grandma's laws!

my mom used to make chili-mac as a last minute dinner so I went to make it yesterday and realized i had no macaroni noodles and stole some from a box of mac and cheese rather than putting canned chili on rigatoni or spaghetti! heaven forbid I stray from moms recipe :)

Oh, as someone who loves food from both the cooking, eating and sharing of it, I love this topic. It goes beyond just what you eat on holidays and other momentous occassions but also helps to shape who you are (think of ritual of the family dinner).

I second the idea of a week at the Kitchn devoted to this.

The great thing about culinary history is that it's more than what you grew up eating. It's family, friends, co-workers, places you've been to, interests you've shared. My culinary history ranges all over: Phillipine sinegang, Scandinavian lefse, Mexican carne guisado, French chocolate tart, Jewish latkes, Greek spanokopita, ... I just learned how to make polo lubia from my shrink.

Culinary history is the reason I started writing about food!

Permit me to rant, because it is very much related to this topic: I love Kolaches, a Czech pastry---barely sweet. Poppy seed is the traditional filling, though fruits and cream cheese are used, too. A kolache is shaped a bit like a flattened biscuit, with the filling spooned into a depression in the center before baking.

But somehow, somehow! this divine little bit of Czech heaven has been confused with the German treat traditionally known as a Wurst Roll: a small sausage rolled up in a soft dough. Wurst Rolls are a happy, holiday food, and a staple of Oktober Fest, but no way does a Wurst Roll look or taste anything like a Kolache.

But all over south Texas, Wurst Rolls by the thousands are being served up and called Kolaches. Wurst Rolls taste delicious, but they are not Kolaches. Yet there are registered and trademarked bakeries serving Wurst Rolls and calling them Kolaches.

It breaks my heart that in just two generations, this beloved Czech sweet has disappeared. And there is nothing that I can do about it. It's like culinary genocide.

SunnyBlue, while I agree that there are many mislabeled kolaches out there, many places in TX are still serving the slightly sweet kolaches you describe. They haven't disappeared, but are not as easy to find at the Wurst Roll/mislabeled kolaches that are so popular (and amazingly delicious). I have a friend who recommends this place: http://www.weikels.com/

I know my husband jokes that when we visit my family back in Louisiana, if we're watching what we eat or whatever, all that goes out the window when I'm presented with good Southern and Cajun cooking. When we were getting married and trying to lose a few before the big day, I made a few trips to New Orleans to plan with my parents and every time came back weighing more than when I left from all the sweets, sauces and foods I grew up around. Its my one weakness.

This is a very interesting topic and a week devoted to it would be great.

In addition to the recipes we use, there's also the equipment we cook with that I find fascinating. I'm just about to make jam using my great grandmother's preserving pan...it's over 100 yrs old, very heavy, and makes great jam.

I think about my childhood experiences in the kitchen and with food, and to some degree vow to never cook or eat that way again. I do tend to think (maybe a little too often) about the food legacy that I'll leave behind or how people perceive the food I create. I think it's just one of those things that I care deeply about that doesn't make a ton of sense to other people.

I third the idea of a Kitchn culinary history week!

As a historian, I think culinary history is extremely important! Historic foods tell us a lot about the people who cooked and ate them, including social and personal preferences as well as the availability of tools and ingredients. Not only that, there are a lot of tasty "lost" recipes out there.

In addition, ethnic and cultural culinary history is also an important part of preserving heritage. I grew up in a Scandinavian family (both sides - Norwegian/Swedish on one side and Norwegian/Danish on the other) and our food heritage reflects our immigrant status. It is the food of 1850-1900 poor farming and fishing communities in Scandinavia and generally doesn't reflect modern Scandinavian cuisine, although we have adopted some modern Scandinavian recipes as our own. To me, heritage cooking is about two things: getting to look through a window into your own past, and also making new traditions by keeping, altering, or reviving old ones.

@cherylp---XXXOOO! I'd stop to visit but I'm out the door to LaGrange :)

Of course! I came from a (100%) Moroccan-Israeli-(New Yorker) family so we have so many traditional recipes and also quite a bit of mixed upness. For his birthday, I sent my brother who lives in Boston two jars -- one filled with homemade harissa and one with homemade preserved lemons.

These days, I'm vegetarian so I've learned to alter some foods. My Harira no longer has chicken in it and my couscous is sans lamb.

Nevertheless, I've been know to put orange blossom water in just about anything sweet. For me it's all about the spice and flavor!

But I've also adopted "Beet Kubbe" (an amazing lemony Iraqi soup made with beets and heavenly semolina dumplings) as one of my "signature dishes" and I've been known to make a good batch of dense sesame bagels and (fresh!) scallion cream cheese when I'm homesick here on the West Coast.

@SunnyBlue -- You can still get Kolaches here in Berkeley, CA at Crixa Cakes. The real sweet kind. Time for a culinary travel adventure?

http://www.crixacakes.com/

I think our culinary history is important. Even if we don't actively think about it, it does impact us on a daily basis. It's in the recipes we cook, the food we crave, the foods we find around us...

My father's family is all from the South. My mother's family however is from the coal regions of Pennsylvania, which was heavily settled by Irish, Italians, and Eastern Europeans. And then I live in an area of Texas with heavy German and Mexican influences. So, I crave foods like smothered steak, chess pie, hot potato salad, kolaches, pierogi, halupki, spicy salsas, and cheese enchiladas.

I also love to collect community cookbooks. I find it interesting to see how recipes have evolved over the decades. From oleo and sweet milk...to cream of X soups...to low-fat this and that...to the 5 ingredients or less recipes of today.

I would LOVE a culinary history week!! And I have to tell you what I saw during lunch at Sotheby's the other day. I observed a human x-ray (upper east side woman) order a cappucino. From her designer purse she pulled out a zip lock bag of lettuce and proceeded to eat two leaves. Then using a spoon, she ate the foam off the top of the cappucino, and ONLY the foam. I wanted to slap her!!!

@SunnyBlue - Here in Nebraska we have festivals devoted to kolaches and we're home to the Czech Capitol of the US. I can assure you kolaches are not forgotten here.

http://nebraskaczechsofwilber.com/

Thank you for mentioning my blog post, "Why Bother with Culinary History" - so happy to see that others agree that culinary history really can bring back memories and reveal stories of families and cultures.

Culinary history week sounds really interesting, great idea!

Absolutely --- both personal culinary histories and wider cultural and social culinary histories!

I study archaeology, foodways, and art history, and I believe that the most mundane aspects of our lives are also the most profound: exploring how other people sustain themselves daily can be deeply revealing of the similarities and differences between cultures, places, and eras.

If we paid more attention to our culinary history, we'd probably eat better and more healthily. I also think it would be a good subject for Kitchn.

I would love a culinary history week as well! Very interesting idea.