author
K. G. (Katherine Golden) Bitting
1869–1937
A pioneering food chemist and bibliographer, she helped shape early modern thinking about food preservation and safety while building one of the great collections of culinary literature. Her work joined laboratory science with a deep curiosity about how people have cooked, stored, and written about food across the centuries.
2 Audiobooks
The Olive
by K. G. (Katherine Golden) Bitting
Ketchup: Methods of Manufacture; Microscopic Examination
by A. W. (Arvill Wayne) Bitting, K. G. (Katherine Golden) Bitting
About the author
Born in Stratford, Ontario, on April 29, 1869, she moved to the United States as a child and went on to study botany at Purdue University, earning her degree in 1890. She later completed advanced study at the University of Chicago and became known for careful scientific work at a time when few women were recognized in food research.
She worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and later for the National Canners Association, focusing on food preservation, canning, and food safety. With her husband, food scientist Arvill Wayne Bitting, she published research that helped improve understanding of how foods could be safely processed and stored.
Beyond the laboratory, she became an important collector and scholar of culinary history. Her great bibliographic project, Gastronomic Bibliography, reflected years of collecting rare books on cooking and gastronomy; after her death in San Francisco on October 15, 1937, that collection became part of the Library of Congress and remained a lasting part of her legacy.