Eating History: 30 Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine

Food expert and celebrated food historian Andrew F. Smith recounts–in delicious detail–the creation of contemporary American cuisine. The diet of the modern American wasn’t always as corporate, conglomerated, and corn-rich as it is today, and the style of American cooking, along with the ingredients that compose it, has never been fixed. With a cast of characters including bold inventors, savvy restaurateurs, ruthless advertisers, mad scientists, adventurous entrepreneurs, celebrity chefs, and relentless health nuts, Smith pins down the truly crackerjack history behind the way America eats.

Smith’s story opens with early America, an agriculturally independent nation where most citizens grew and consumed their own food. Over the next two hundred years, however, Americans would cultivate an entirely different approach to crops and consumption. Advances in food processing, transportation, regulation, nutrition, and science introduced highly complex and mechanized methods of production. The proliferation of cookbooks, cooking shows, and professionally designed kitchens made meals more commercially, politically, and culturally potent. To better understand these trends, Smith delves deeply and humorously into their creation. Ultimately he shows how, by revisiting this history, we can reclaim the independent, locally sustainable roots of American food.

Author: Andrew Smith
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 06/28/2011
Series: Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary H
Pages: 392
Weight: 1.14lbs
Size: 8.75h x 5.83w x 0.93d
ISBN: 9780231140935
Language: English