Harvard Food: Porridge, Plum Cake, Ptomaine

Ever since the first head of Harvard College, Samuel Eaton, was thrown out for serving the students "insipid porridge," College presidents have been painfully aware that although man does not live by bread alone, erudition comes easier on a happily full stomach.

The history of Harvard is to a very great extent a history of its food. In the first 200 years of its existence, the College became notorious for its poor local pigs, and mealtime was never anticipated with glee. In fact, the Corporation the 20th century.

Students at one time complained of eating "share and share alike" with the local pigs, and mealtime never anticipated with glee. In fact, the Corporation and Board of Overseers were constantly passing new rules and regulations in an effort to keep one step ahead of periodic student uprisings, strikes, and rebellions.

What most present-day detractors of the food don't realize is that although they may occasionally bite into something resembling a spike, the present dining hall system is paradise itself compared to the perpetual state of anarchy that existed prior to 1929--when a Yale man stepped in and gave the University its first organized food system.

In that year Edward S. Harkness, a Yale graduate, gave President Lowell $10 million for what he called the "House Plan." He had offered the $10 million gift for inaugurating his plan to Yale first, but they hesitated. Lowell did not. Later on, Harkness repented and gave Yale an equal amount anyway.

Lowell and Dunster opened in 1930, and Adams, Eliot, Kirkland, Leverett, and Winthrop were opened the following year. All except Dunster and Adams were connected to the central kitchen in Kirkland by an intricate tunnel system.

In September, 1931 the freshmen took over the Yard from the seniors and at the same time gained exclusive right to the Union, which had been established 30 years before as a club for all Harvard men.

New Dining Hall

Memorial Hall dining hall, which for many years had been the College's main eating center, had been abandoned in 1925 for lack of patronage. A survey taken about this time revealed that 3,100 students ate daily in the square eateries for lack of an adequate University dining hall system. Faced by a growing crisis, President Lowell promised to erect a new dining hall on Mount Auburn Street if enough students were interested, but not even 500 signatures could be obtained. Students had not yet forgotten the old days at Memorial Hall.

With the opening of the Houses, a new era began. The advent of an efficient system of cooking and distributing food produced an immediate improvement in the student disposition. The dining hall system, which now includes the Union and three graduate school units, has blossomed into a $3 million annual business, which last year supplied 3,295,969 meals to the University.

The University dining hall system is run by Walter S. Heamen, whose career in Harvard food began 29 years ago when he became Manager of the Freshman Union. He has been in charge of the whole dining hall system for the past seven years.

Heamen is quite proud of his network of kitchens. "These are the only College dining halls I know about," he asserts, "where you can get all the food you want." He is probably right. Students at Yale have little good to say about the food and are only served once. At Princeton, Howard Johnson's supplies the food, and the consensus of opinion is lukewarm at best.

Mass Consumption

Contrary to popular belief, the University has no food endowments. Ice cream, which is served at an average of seven meals a week, appears this often because it is popular, not because it is endowed. Vanilla with chocolate sauce is the heavy favorite.

For a man whose job it it to please everyone, Heamen is quite successful. In line with this policy, he does not commit himself on whether or not Adams House has the best food and other such ticklish questions. As for the quality of the food, Heamen says only, "We try to supply the best food for the money--$14.00 a week."

The process of feeding thousands of students three times a day requires a very large number of kitchen employees. In the seven Houses there are 413 employees, consisting of 226 full-time employees, 78 part time, 10 administrators, and 99 students. Throughout the entire University system, including 28 in the bakery under Eliot House and 236 students, there are 953 employees--almost the size of an entire College class. All of these are paid and fed out of the system's $3 million budget.

Like any giant enterprise, the quantities handled are immense. Last year students consumed over a million quarts of milk, 157,000 dozen eggs, 318,000 packages of coreal, and 63,000 gallons of ice cream. One provoking aspect of the dining hall food is the secrecy that surrounds the brand names of the food products. A student is never quite sure what kind of coffee he is drinking, if he drinks the coffee, or what kind of ice cream he is eating. The University generally refrains from giving these firms any free publicity, but to satisfy the curiousity of many curious coffee drinkers, Heamen revealed that the College dining halls use Edmund's Coffee and the graduate schools serve Whitehouse. Milk and ice cream are purchased from Hood's and Whiting's. "There is no one firm," says Heamen, "that is big enough to do business with Harvard University all the time."

Although Heamen runs the University dining hall system as a whole from his headquarters in the Union, the College dining halls are directed by Carle T. Tucker from the central kitchen in Kirkland House. For various reasons based on past problems mainly involving independability, the College employs no dietitians. Instead, Tucker himself holds the title of "steward," and as such serves the same function--making out the menus. Tucker emphatically denies that he is the dietitian or that there are any "female dietitians" in the College at all, and perhaps through modesty, is not particularly anxious to be known as the man responsible for the menu.

The University dining hall system exists in seven separate units: Harkness at the Law School, Kresge at the Business School, Dunster, Adams, the Medical School, the Union and the main kitchen for the other five Houses. Each of the first six is independent.

The five Houses in the main College system, however, are bound together by an underground food tunnel 1750 feet long that extends from Kirkland to Leverett. Lost students at Leverett or any other House along the route claim this is the probable cause of cold food, Heamen maintains that it requires only six minutes at the most for food to be wheeled, via electrically heated wagons, from one end of the tunnel to the other, and, from there, up dumbwaiters to the House kitchens. Eggs and other cooked order delicacies are prepared in the Houses themselves, rather than in Kirkland.

Eliot Bakeshop

The one branch of the main kitchen on which all the units of the University dining hall system depend is the bakery, underneath Eliot House. Each of the two giant 10-shelf ovens, which were installed in 1946-47, are capable of baking 120 loaves of bread in one hour. In all, the bakeshop, under the supervision of Mrs. Frances Sweeney, bakes 500 leaves of bread a day. In addition, the bakery makes cookies, pies and rolls.

The most delicate subject in dealing with food and its problems are the occasional outbreaks of food poisoning. "There are no real cases of ptomaine poisoning any more," said Heamen, "but in mass feeding there are times when some people become ill." This last remark does seen a bit of an understatement, at least to the medical staff at Stillman who have to treat large scale waves of "indigestion" several times a year on the average.

Even though food is no longer the central problem in running the University, the authorities still keep more than a casual eye trained on the dining halls. It is both an interesting fact and an unfailing truth that the presidents of Harvard who have been mindful of the food, like Henry Dunster and John Leverett, have gone down in history as great and even had Houses named after them--for the same reason that no one would consider naming a House after presidents Eaton or Hoar who treated the culinary arts with indifference.

Hampered by Puritan prudery, the early presidents like the Reverend Increase Mather imposed what now appear to be ludicrous regulations. For lying, a student would be fined one shilling, a good sum. But for eating plum cake, students would be fined 20 shillings! Somehow, Mather had gotten the notion that eating plum cake was an abomination unto the Lord. His regulation, furthermore, was religiously upheld by the authorities until just before the Revolution, and naturally enough, caused students to sneak plum cake more than ever. Student complaints about the food in general never ceased.

College rules in the old days also forbade eating in town. This, combined with the fact that freshmen were obliged to run errands for upperclassmen, known as "the masters," created a big problem. For, since the food situation was constantly bad, the upperclassmen demanded that their freshmen fags raid the chicken coops of local farmers.

Under the administration of Leverett, the fork was introduced. Until this time, the food was placed on the table and ravenous students would immediately lunge for the food and spear whatever they could. The College dandies in those days came into the dining hall with strange implements resembling stilettes stuck in their belts. These, of course, gave them a great advantage in snatching chunks of meat, until Leverett's introduction of the fork equalized the situation.

The food got so bad under Hoar's administration that when students rebelled, the police had to be called to restore order. In 1766 students went on strike for a month in what was known as the Butter Rebellion, driving the Corporation frantic. "The butter stinketh," was a common cry.

The furor never let up. If it had not been for the Bread and Butter Rebellion in 1805 and the Cabbage Rebellion in 1807, the administration of Samuel Webber might have been forgotten. But it was during the Great Rebellion of 1818 that a whole class was expelled. It was at this time that "The Rebelliad" was written:

When Nathan threw a piece of bread

And hit Abijah on the head,

The wrathful freshman, in a trice,

Sent back another bigger slice,

Which, being buttered pretty well,

Made greasy work wher'e'er it fell.

And thus arose a fearful battle:

The coffee-cups and saucers rattle,

The bread-bowis fly at woeful rate,

And break full many a learned pate.

* * *

Regardless of their shins and pates,

The bravest seiz'd the butter-plates,

And rushing headlong to the van,

Sustained the conflict man to man