Food on the page : cookbooks and American culture / Megan J. Elias.

ISBN:

9780812249170

Title:

Author:

Elias, Megan J., author.

Personal Author:

Elias, Megan J., author.

Edition:

1st edition.

Physical Description:

vi, 296 pages ; 24 cm.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: 1. The Best-Fed People in the World: American Cookbooks in the Nineteenth Century -- 2 .An Appetite for Innovation: Cookbooks Before the Second World War -- 3. Gourmet Is a Boy: Midcentury Cookbooks and Food Magazines -- 4. Mastering the Art of American Cooking: Julia Child and American Cookbooks -- 5. Oppositional Appetites: Cookbooks and the Counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s -- 6. The Palate of Personality: Chefs and Cookbooks at the End of the Twentieth Century -- 7. Origin Stories: A New Discourse in Twenty-First-Century Cookbooks.

Subject Term:

Food writing -- United States -- History.

Food -- United States -- History.

Food habits -- United States -- History.

Cooking, American -- History.

Format:

Books

Publication Date:

2017

Publication Information:

Philadelphia

University of Pennsylvania Press,

[2017]

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
641.300973 ELI	Book	1	Standard shelving location	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

What is American food? From barbecue to Jell-O molds to burrito bowls, its history spans a vast patchwork of traditions, crazes, and quirks. A close look at these foods and the recipes behind them unearths a vivid map of American foodways: how Americans thought about food, how they described it, and what foods were in and out of style at different times.
In Food on the Page , the first comprehensive history of American cookbooks, Megan J. Elias chronicles cookbook publishing from the early 1800s to the present day. Following food writing through trends such as the Southern nostalgia that emerged in the late nineteenth century, the Francophilia of the 1940s, countercultural cooking in the 1970s, and today's cult of locally sourced ingredients, she reveals that what we read about food influences us just as much as what we taste.
Examining a wealth of fascinating archival material--and rediscovering several all-American culinary delicacies and oddities in the process--Elias explores the role words play in the creation of taste on both a personal and a national level. From Fannie Farmer to The Joy of Cooking to food blogs, she argues, American cookbook writers have commented on national cuisine while tempting their readers to the table. By taking cookbooks seriously as a genre and by tracing their genealogy, Food on the Page explains where contemporary assumptions about American food came from and where they might lead.

Author Notes

Megan J. Elias is Associate Professor of the Practice and Faculty Coordinator in Gastronomy at Boston University. She is the author of numerous books, including Stir It Up: Home Economics in American Culture, also available from the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Reviews (2)

Booklist Review

More than just collections of recipes, cookbooks are a product of their times and offer a clear reflection of an era's cultural trends and attitudes. In this carefully researched book, Elias traces the history of American culinary publishing from antebellum days to the present. The author provides context for each development, such as early community cookbooks that sought to elevate social status, Age of Progress corporate cookbooks that extolled the virtues of new kitchen technology, and, post-WWII, the emergence of a gourmet movement fixated on French cuisine. Elias covers more-recent cookbook authors such as James Beard, Julia Child, and Edna Lewis, as well as essayists and food journalists like Ruth Reichl and Michael Pollan. Ultimately, the book ably shows the thread connecting each stage in cookbooks and convincingly demonstrates that as Americans found their footing and identity, first as a young nation and later as a global power, so did their foodways find confidence and develop their own voices.--Neumer Lara, Alison Copyright 2017 Booklist

Choice Review

In her fifth book about American food history, cultural historian Elias (Boston Univ.) uncovers the meaning and value placed on food that Americans communicated through cookbooks from the Colonial era to the 21st century. This is the first comprehensive history of American cookbooks to date. Elias shows particular fascination with the nostalgia for Southern cooking that emerged after the Civil War; American openness toward French culture and cuisine in the 1940s; the rise of feminist, vegetarian, and macrobiotic cooking in the 1970s; and the 21st-century obsession with local ingredients. She provides a complete list of special culinary collections and archives she visited while conducting her research and an extensive bibliography of cookbooks featured and cited in the book. Though she writes about Julia Child as the first major "celebrity chef" to impact American cooking and food culture, Elias seems to forget that Child became famous through her television show, not her cookbooks. With the rise of television and YouTube culinary celebrities, it is possible that other forms of media do more to shape contemporary American food culture than cookbooks do. Elias would have done well to address this evolution rather than propose that cookbooks have had universal popularity over time. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. --Rachel S. Wexelbaum, Saint Cloud State University

Introduction. Words About Food	p. 1
1 The Best-Fed People in the World: American Cookbooks in the Nineteenth Century	p. 9
2 An Appetite for Innovation: Cookbooks Before the Second World War	p. 43
3 Gourmet Is a Boy: Midcentury Cookbooks and Food Magazines	p. 73
4 Mastering the Art of American Cooking: Julia Child and American Cookbooks	p. 107
5 Oppositional Appetites: Cookbooks and the Counterculture in the 1960s and 1970s	p. 145
6 The Palate of Personality: Chefs and Cookbooks at the End of the Twentieth Century	p. 183
7 Origin Stories: A New Discourse in Twenty-First-Century Cookbooks	p. 213
Epilogue. What Should We Read for Dinner?	p. 239
Notes	p. 245
Selected Bibliography	p. 275
Index	p. 281
Acknowledgments	p. 295

Available:*

Bound With These Titles

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Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (2)

Booklist Review

Choice Review

Table of Contents