Culinary research grants awarded

Two women will conduct culinary research projects at Radcliffe College's Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library in the History of Women in America with the support of Les Dames d'Escoffier Research Awards.

The recipients of the awards are Laura Shapiro of Seattle, Washington, who will prepare a book on "The Domestic Science Movement in America, 1865-1920;" and Barbara Wheaton of Concord, Massachusetts, who will work on a project entitled "The Re-enactment of and Eighteenth-Century English Meal."

A committee of four culinary experts and scholars chose them to receive the $ 500 grants-in-aid to assist with the costs of research.

The awards were made possible by a gift to the Schlesinger Library from Les Dames d'Escoffier of New York, in honor of food writer and cookbook author Helen Duprey Bullock.

The Schlesinger Library, established in 1943, preserves published and unpublished of records and women's contributions and achievements in all areas of American life.

The nearly 3,000 volumes in its Culinary Collection are a scholarly resource that includes classics from the United States, France, and Britain, as well as an extensive collection of regional cookbooks. The holdings are particularly strong in works of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.

Les dames d'Escoffier, chartered in New York in 1972 as an autonomous branch of Les Amis d'Escoffier Society of New York, works to promote the "understanding , appreciation, and knowledge of food, wine, and the arts of the table." The society has been working to help women become accepted as equals in the gastronomic world. The funding of these research awards is part of its effort to further the work of women in the culinary field.