‘Resetting the Table’ explores food across the country
Corn and chocolate, hot dogs and beer: We think of these foods as quintessentially American. But a new exhibit at the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology shows that they actually reflect the wildly disparate origins our favorite foods. “Resetting the Table: Food and Our Changing Tastes,” which opened Nov. 16, takes a fresh look at dining and food production, exploring what our meals — and how they are served — reveal about us. Take corn and chocolate, for example, and consider a Central American greenstone carving on display. Depicting a Maya lord holding a staff from a cacao tree, it documents the ancient roots of these indigenous foods, which became essential ingredients in the American kitchen. A 19th-century engraving of enslaved people cutting sugar cane in the West Indies marks how another distinctive ingredient — sugar — came to our table through the labor of African Americans who, as cultivators,...