The illustrated lecture offers a fascinating look at our past and uses long-forgotten recipes to explain how eight flavors changed how Americans eat. Lohman then delves into one flavor, black pepper, what it had to do with the American Revolution, and how it connected Salem, Massachusetts to Sumatra. Lohman explains how pepper went from being as precious as gold to the ubiquitous shaker on a dinner table.

Sarah Lohman is originally from Ohio, where she began working in a museum at the age of 16, cooking historical food over a wood-burning stove. She graduated with a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2005. For her undergraduate thesis, she opened a temporary restaurant/installation that reinterpreted food of the Colonial era for a modern audience. Lohman moved to New York City in 2006 and was Video Producer for New York magazine’s food blog, Grub Street. She chronicled her personal explorations in culinary history on her blog, Four Pounds Flour, from 2008-2018. Lohman’s work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and the New York Times, as well as on All Things Considered, CNN, Gimlet Media, and NHK Japan. She also appeared in two seasons of The Cooking Channel’s Food: Fact or Fiction. Formerly the Curator of Food Programming at the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, she currently works with institutions around the country to create public programs focused on food. Her book,  Eight Flavors: The World Story of American Cuisine, Simon & Schuster, 2016, will be available at a reception following the program.