AUGUST 18 • 2022 | 69

O

ne of the foremost 
authorities on the 
history of American 
cooking, Janice Bluestein 
Longone, died Aug. 3, 2022, at 
the age of 89. Her passion for 
collecting early cookbooks and 
her enthusiasm for sharing her 
knowledge anticipated the rise 
of culinary history. She became 
an essential resource for cook-
book publishers, for restauran-
teurs and academic historians.
Janice Bluestein, middle 
child of a Jewish family in 
Dorchester, Mass., recalled 
that she grew up on traditional 
Ashkenazic Jewish cuisine, cab-
bage rolls and gefilte fish. Her 
father sold kitchen equipment. 
Janice graduated as a history 
major from Bridgewater State 
Teacher’s College in 1954. 
After her graduation, she 
married Daniel Longone, her 
sweetheart since they had met 
as teenagers. They continued 
their education at Cornell, 
where she studied Chinese 
history and Dan completed his 
Ph.D. in organic chemistry. 
An early present from Dan 
to Jan, the first edition of newly 
published Gourmet magazine, 
inspired the couple to sub-
scribe, stretching their tight 
graduate-student budget. Jan 
counted that magazine as one 
of the formative influences on 
her career. 
The couple moved to Ann 
Arbor in 1959, when Dan 
joined the chemistry faculty 
at U-M. 
She learned about interna-

tional cooking from students 
who came from around 
the world. When these stu-
dents asked her for “typical 
American meals,” she took that 
as an intellectual challenge. She 
began a quest for the sources of 
American food traditions, col-
lecting early American recipes 
and cookbooks. 
She told Steve Friess of 
Tablet magazine, “I started 
looking for and finding and 
then collecting books, and 
unbeknownst to me, I must 
have decided I was going to 
open an antiquarian cookbook 
shop because I had been buy-
ing every book I could find in 
rare book shops, but I’d buy 
four copies.” 
And in 1972, she did open 
a mail-order business, “The 
Wine and Food Library,” sell-
ing out-of-print cookbooks 
from her basement. Word 
spread quickly. According 
to Pat Cornett, a friend and 
colleague of Jan Longone’s: 
“Through her work at her 
bookshop, she came to know 
everyone in the culinary and 
cooking communities.” 
The customers of her busi-
ness were impressed by her 
encyclopedic knowledge, 
and so, according to Cornett, 
“restauranteurs, cookbook 
writers and academic histo-
rians relied on her for infor-
mation, especially about early 
American cooking.” 
She collected early cook-
books, including ephemera 
such as menus, diaries, food 

advertisements and cookbooks 
published to support charitable 
projects of religious and com-
munity groups. These obscure 
charitable cookbooks would 
typically disappear shortly 
after publication and get lost 
to history. Longone collected 
them as invaluable sources for 
recipes, but also as examples of 
women’s activism. Longone’s 
collection of cookbooks pro-
duced by temperance workers, 
church groups and synagogue 
sisterhoods anticipated and 
helped build a change of focus 
in the study of history: histo-
rians focused on domestic life 
of ordinary men and especially 
women. 
Her collections include the 
first known cookbook pub-
lished in the United States 
in 1796, and the first known 
cookbook written by a Black 
woman, published in 1866. Jan 
Longone had a special interest 
in cookbooks produced by 
Jewish institutions, including 
examples from every state. She 
noted the regional differences 
between Jewish cookbooks 
about the kosher laws. In 
some regions, recipes include 
shellfish, but not pork; others 
include pork; and some do not 
include mention of anything 
Jewish. 
In these obscure charity 
cookbooks, Longone could 
see how American eating 
changed in ways that modern 

Americans can barely fathom. 
Imagine: 
• Buying groceries before 
stores sold food in standard 
packages.
• Buying groceries before 
there were national brands. 
• Cooking before your home 
had a continuous supply of 
fuel.
• Processing leftovers before 
you could count on regular 
deliveries from the iceman. 
• Unsubscribing from your 
iceman when you got your first 
refrigerator. 
In Ann Arbor, Jan volun-
teered at libraries in the Ann 
Arbor area while she founded 
organizations for the study 
of cooking. Eventually, Jan 
Longone became Curator of 
American Culinary History 
at Special Collections of 
the Hatcher Library at the 
University of Michigan. 
The couple began, in 2000, 
donating their extensive col-
lection of culinary publications 
to the University of Michigan, 
where the Janice Bluestein 
Longone Culinary Archive 
now contains more than 30,000 
items. 
She co-founded the Culinary 
Historians of Ann Arbor in 
1983 and served as its first chair 
for several years. Since then, she 
retained the title of honorary 
president. She was a found-
ing member of the American 
Institute of Wine & Food. 
Pat Cornett recalls that after 
Dan retired in 1988, “the cou-
ple would travel the country 
haunting used bookstores.
” 
Dan sought especially books 
about wine, and she about food. 
Cornett observes that “they 
remained sweethearts as long as 
she lived. I never met a couple 
who were closer — intellectu-
ally and emotionally — than 
they.” 

An Authority on 
American Culinary 
History Dies at 89

LOUIS FINKELMAN CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Janice Bluestein Longone

