From our Test Kitchen: Firehouse Food

[Group photo of firemen at Engine 19 on 1300 4th Street]. 1972 June 16.

Photo courtesy of the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection, San Francisco Public Library

This month, I discovered that firefighters cook for themselves and each other. In each firehouse, during any given 24-hour shift, a firefighter is on meal duty and cooks for the whole team. Such a tradition has bred talented amateur (and sometimes professional) chefs among firefighters, and the San Francisco Fire Department boasts them aplenty. Fittingly, then, the San Francisco History Center has three cookbooks--from three different decades--of SFFD firehouse food:

1965: San Francisco Firehouse Favorites. A gem of a book from 1965, with color photographs featuring fat-saddled cuts of red meat, whimsical illustrative drawings, and black-and-white photographs of trucks, instrument dials, hoses, hydrants, and badges. Recipes are scaled to family size.

1984: Fireman Chef Jim Neil's Favorite Recipes. Jim Neil, "the fireman chef" who appeared weekly on the CBS television show "People Are Talking," once prepared Salad Nicoise with Julia Child.

2003: Firehouse Food: Cooking with San Francisco's Firefighters. A more contemporary title from Chronicle Books, reflecting what we regard today as more healthful fare.

This month's test kitchen, in which librarians cook for themselves and each other, tries out a recipe for chili beans from the 1965 cookbook.

Chili beans. Recipe from San Francisco Firehouse Favorites. Photo by Wendy Kramer.

For more photographs of our fire department, visit the San Francisco Historical Photograph Collection.