I would like to thank Rebecca Rix, Tracey Deutsch, Malinda Lindquist, and James McElroy for being generous with their time and feedback—this article would have been greatly impoverished without their insights. Additional insights came from Vera Candiani, the University of Minnesota Modern History Graduate Workshop, and the anonymous reviewers for this journal. This research was supported by funding from the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University.

1 Mary Hinman Abel, “The Story of the New England Kitchen,” Boston, 1890, foreword by Ellen H. Richards, 6–7, foreword by Ellen H. Richards, from Ellen Swallow Richards Collection, Institute Archives and Special Collections, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Libraries, Cambridge, MA.

2 Edna A. Miller, “New England Kitchen and School Lunches,” May 1911, speech read at the YWCA of Scranton, PA, box 4, Benjamin Andrews Collection on Home Economics, Cornell University Rare and Manuscript Collections, Ithaca, NY; Eula, Michael J., “Failure of American Food Reformers Among Italian Immigrants in New York City, 1891–1897,” Italian Americana 18:1 (2000): 86–99Google Scholar; Levenstein, Harvey, Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar; Cravens, Hamilton, “Establishing the Science of Nutrition at the USDA: Ellen Swallow Richards and Her Allies,” Agricultural History 64:2 (1990): 122–33Google Scholar.

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12 Andrew Carnegie and Mr. Phipps each contributed $500. Edward Atkinson to Ellen Richards, letter, January 4,1890, carton 19, volume 32, EAP; Richards also secured $300 from the Elizabeth Thompson Science Fund, which sought to benefit research efforts “which have for their object the advancement of human knowledge or the benefit of mankind in general.” Elizabeth Thompson Science Fund, June 1890, flier, carton 12, folder 61, EAP.

13 Abel, Mary Hinman, “The Story of the New England Kitchen, Part II (The Rumford Kitchen Leaflets No. 17)—A Study in Social Economics,” in Richards, Ellen, Plain Words About Food: The Rumford Kitchen Leaflets (Boston: The Home Science Publishing Company, 1899), 139Google Scholar.

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20 Abel, “The Story of the New England Kitchen” (1890), 5.

21 Edward Atkinson to Ellen Richards, January 4, 1889, letter, carton 19, volume 29, EAP. Much of this science, according to Atkinson, came down to the application of heat. See Edward Atkinson, The Right Application of Heat to the Conversion of Food Material, August 1890, paper read at the meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Ellen Swallow Richards Collection, MIT.

22 Edward Atkinson to Ellen Richards, March 18, 1891, letter, carton 20, volume 38, EAP.

23 Abel, “The Story of the New England Kitchen” (1890), 7–8.

24 Ellen Richards to Mary Hinman Abel, letter, February 26, 1892, box 42, The American Association of Family and Consumer Sciences Records, Cornell University Library Rare and Manuscript Collections, Ithaca, NY.

25 Mary Hinman Abel, “The Rumford Kitchen Leaflets, No. 9: Proteid or Albuminous Food in Our Daily Fare,” in Richards, Plain Words About Food, 68.

26 Mary Hinman Abel, “The Rumford Kitchen Leaflets, No. 18: Public Kitchens in Relation to the Workingman and the Housewife,” in Richards, Plain Words About Food, 159.

27 Abel, “Proteid or Albuminous Food in Our Daily Fare,” 68.

28 Based on correspondence between Atkinson and Richards, it seems Atkinson did eat the food he experimented with, but this was done with dinner parties, which he used to test cooking methods using his Aladdin Oven (though with different foods than at the NEK) and to impress his wealthy guests. See, for example, Edward Atkinson to Ellen Richards, letter, August 4, 1891, carton 21, folder 40, EAP. See also Edward Atkinson, “The Art of Cooking,” Popular Science Monthly 36 (November 1889).

29 Abel, “The Story of the New England Kitchen” (1890), 9–10.

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32 Abel, “The Story of the New England Kitchen, Part II,” in Richards, Plain Words About Food, 141.

33 Hamilton Cravens, “Establishing the Science of Nutrition at the USDA,” 128.

34 Two of the many helpful sources are Eula, “Failure of American Food Reformers Among Italian Immigrants in New York City,” and Adams, David Wallace, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding-School Experience, 1875–1928 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1995)Google Scholar.

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36 Abel, “The Story of the New England Kitchen, Part II,” in Richards, Plain Words About Food, 139–42.

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40 Edward Atkinson to Ellen Richards, letter, January 24, 1900, carton 28, volume 67, EAP. Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought; and Bannister, Robert C., Social Darwinism: Science and Myth in Anglo-American Social Thought (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1979)Google Scholar.

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46 Richards, The Cost of Living as Modified by Sanitary Science, 84–85.

47 Ellen Richards to Edward Atkinson, letter, April 10, 1896, carton 12, folder 64, EAP. Pauline Agassiz Shaw, the largest financial backer of the NEK, believed that the NEK served “as a rival to the saloon” by providing inexpensive and nourishing food. Abel, “The Story of the New England Kitchen” (1890), 5.

48 Atwater, Wilbur Olin, “Food and Diet” (Washington: US Department of Agriculture, 1895)Google Scholar, box 1, folder 6A, Wilbur Olin Atwater Papers, National Agricultural Library, Beltsville, MD, 359–61.

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56 Wilbur Olin Atwater, “Food and Diet,” 357–58.

57 Edward Atkinson to Mary Hinman Abel, letter, July 9, 1891, carton 21, volume 40, EAP. Atkinson was not opposed to paying laborers more, but only if they worked more (for the same wage rate). Edward Atkinson to Ellen Richards, letter, September 20, 1890, carton 20, volume 36, EAP.

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