From hardtack to home fries : an uncommon history of American cooks and meals Barbara Haber

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Haber, Barbara.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Diet--United States--History.

Cooking--United States--History.

Food habits--United States--History.

Food habits.

Genre:

History.

Cookbooks.

Physical Description:

vii, 244 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Free Press, ©2002.

Summary:

As any cook knows, every meal, and every diet, has a story--whether it relates to presidents and first ladies or to the poorest of urban immigrants. Cultural historian Haber has spent years excavating stories of the ways in which meals cooked and served by women have shaped American history. This book brings together the best of those stories, from the 1840s to the present, focusing on a remarkable assembly of little-known or forgotten Americans who determined what our country ate during some of its most trying periods. Women's work and women's roles in America's past have not always been easy to recover. Haber's secret weapon is the cookbook. She unearths cookbooks and menus from rich and poor, urban and rural, long-past and near-present. She shows us that a single, ubiquitous lens can illuminate a great deal of this other half of our past. Includes sample recipes and photographs.--From publisher description.

Contents:

Follow the food

Feeding the great hunger: the Irish famine and America

Pretty much of a muchness: Civil War nurses and diet kitchens

They dieted for our sins: America's food reformers

The Harvey girls: good women and food food civilize the American west

Home cooking in the FDR White House: the indomitable Mrs. Nesbitt

Cooking behind barbed wire: POWs during World War II

Sachertorte in Harvard Square: Jewish refugees find friends and work

Food keeps the faith: African-American cooks and their heritage

Growing Up with Gourmet: what cookbooks mean.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-236) and index.

Local Notes:

HSP Culinary Arts Collection.

ISBN:

0684842173

9780684842172

0470843713

9780470843710

OCLC:

48515722