A Dash of Caltech’s Culinary History

By Sharon Kaplan

Nestled deep in the shelves of Caltech’s Archives and Special Collections, amid volumes dedicated to particle physics and molecular biology, sits a recipe collection. The culinary trove, belonging to the Tolman and Bacher families, is an heirloom that serves up a plate of Caltech history and recalls a slice of time when entertaining was a science of its own. The collection also provides insight into the lives of these two families that helped shape the Institute and American history.

The recipes span from 1925 to the 1950s and represent a snapshot of American 20th-century flavors, ingredients, and cooking methods. Richard and Ruth Tolman and Jean and Robert Bacher were avid hosts, and the home on Caltech’s campus first occupied by the Tolmans and later by the Bachers was the site of decades of gatherings and dinner parties attended by many of the Institute’s (and the world’s) preeminent scientists. Parties hosted by the Bachers were reminiscent of potluck gatherings at the home of J. Robert and Kitty Oppenheimer in Los Alamos, New Mexico, during the Manhattan Project, said Shirley Gray, wife of Harry Gray, Caltech’s Arnold O. Beckman Professor of Chemistry and founding director of the Beckman Institute, in a 1991 introduction to the recipe collection in the Archives. Notable guests at the house included Albert Einstein, who had a Thanksgiving meal with the Tolmans. Robert Oppenheimer often stayed in the guest house during the 1930s, a decade in which he split his time between Caltech and UC Berkeley.

The house, which sits at 345 S. Michigan Ave., was built in 1925 for the Tolmans. Richard Tolman, a physicist and chemist, served as dean of the graduate school and was the scientific host to Einstein during the famed physicist’s visits to Caltech in the early 1930s. Richard also served as scientific advisor to US Army Gen. Leslie Groves, director of the Manhattan Project. One of the first graduate students Richard recruited to Caltech was Arnold O. Beckman (PhD ’28), a former Caltech chemistry professor, Board chair, and an Institute benefactor.

Robert Bacher, a former Caltech physics professor who also served as the Institute’s vice president and as its first provost, came to Caltech in 1949 after working with Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project as head of the experimental physics division and then the bomb physics department. During construction of the Beckman Institute in the 1980s, Caltech purchased the house from Robert Bacher.

Shirley Gray had been friends with Beckman’s wife, Mabel Beckman, until Mabel’s death in 1989. Shirley knew about the recipes and collected them in 1991. “I thought visitors to the Tolman House would like to try the recipes, so I put them together to make them accessible to all and revive a bit of Caltech’s history,” Shirley says. “After all, the house had a kitchen, so why not use it!” One Caltech guest who stayed in the house and tried some of the recipes was Nobel Laureate Pierre-Gilles de Gennes.

There are around 150 recipes from Tolman and Bacher in the collection, including many from Jean Bacher’s mother, Byrd Fox Bacher. The handwritten instructions are organized in binders, folders, composition notebooks, and even envelopes from the WWII-era National Defense Research Committee. Other recipes are clipped from newspapers, magazines, and catalogs. Among them are dishes such as white layer cake, oyster salad, lemon souffle, and “yum-yum pudding.”

Above is a handwritten recipe for spaghetti sauce—one that was used and loved, if the drips, splatters, and smudges on the worn page are any indication.

From the Caltech Recipe Book

Spaghetti Sauce

1/2 lb hamburger

Olive Oil

2 cloves garlic

1 small medium size onion 

1 no. 21/2 can tomatoes

1 small can tomato sauce

1 small can Italian tomato paste

salt and pepper 

cumin seed

oregano

marjoram

3 bay leaves 

Fry garlic and onion in olive oil, then hamburger. Take a fork and mash out the hamburger so it’s all finely crumbled and mixed with onion and garlic. When all well fried, add the large can of tomatoes, all of the spices. Simmer until its juice is pretty well cooked down, then add the tomato sauce and Italian paste. It requires about 2 - 3 hours to cook.

Chocolate Fudge Upside Down Cake

3/4 cup sugar

1 tbsp of butter 

• cream these together then add 1/2 cup milk and stir

1 cup flour

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 tablespoons cocoa

• Sift together and add mixture to the mixture above, stir well and put in a buttered bread tin or casserole round (other recipes call for a 9-inch square baking pan)

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

• sprinkle in the batter and mix

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup brown sugar

1/4 cup cocoa

• Mix and spread over the nuts

1 1/4 cups boiling water

• pour over the top of all of it. Bake in 350 degree oven for about 40–50 minutes.