Status
Checked out
Publication
Viking Adult (2004), Edition: 1St Edition, Hardcover, 336 pages
Description
A narrative history of how American home cooking changed in the 1950s--from "anti-cooking" marketing to Julia Child. In this surprising history, Laura Shapiro recounts the prepackaged dreams that bombarded American kitchens during the fifties. Faced with convincing homemakers that foxhole food could make it in the dining room, the food industry put forth the marketing notion that cooking was hard; opening cans, on the other hand, wasn't. But women weren't so easily convinced by the canned and plastic-wrapped concoctions, and a battle for both the kitchen and the true definition of homemaker ensued. Full of wry observation, this is a fun and illuminating look back at a crossroads in American cooking.--From publisher description.
User reviews
LibraryThing member kd9
When I had collected over 700 cookbooks, somehow acquiring another book full of just recipes no longer seemed as thrilling as it once had. I turned my attention to food history and food culture and have started collecting books that are more essays than recipes.
This is an excellent book for those
This is not a book whose focus is on food, but Shapiro deftly shows how the cultural background effected the cooks of the day. And more importantly shows how the 1950's, far from being a prepackaged wasteland, was really a battleground between "from scratch" cooks and corporations with ever more convoluted packaged foods. I just wish that the book had a stronger ending. Although she proves her point that the '50s was still the purview of non-packaged cooking, we have succumbed over the last fifty years to soup can casseroles and frozen dinners. I would have liked to have seen further exploration of this theme.
This is an excellent book for those
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who are curious HOW and WHY certain recipes appear in certain books. Most of us have seen recipe pamphlets from corporate food companies, but it is interesting how much these corporate interests sway general cookbook writers (and how a reaction to these "meal in a can" recipes created a backlash emphasizing food from scratch).This is not a book whose focus is on food, but Shapiro deftly shows how the cultural background effected the cooks of the day. And more importantly shows how the 1950's, far from being a prepackaged wasteland, was really a battleground between "from scratch" cooks and corporations with ever more convoluted packaged foods. I just wish that the book had a stronger ending. Although she proves her point that the '50s was still the purview of non-packaged cooking, we have succumbed over the last fifty years to soup can casseroles and frozen dinners. I would have liked to have seen further exploration of this theme.
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LibraryThing member WittyreaderLI
This book is pretty dull, but a couple of the chapters contain interesting information about food history.
LibraryThing member keywestnan
Excellent, accessible history of cooking and food industry developments in the 1950s -- placed in the context of social change (postwar suburban householding but also women's increasing role in the workplace) -- all of it anticipating the near simultaneous debuts of Julia Child and Betty Friedan.
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This sounds like dry stuff but it isn't in Shapiro's hands -- she's definitely writing for the common reader, not academics. My favorite character in the book was Poppy Cannon, author of the Can-Opener Cookbook -- and, improbably, the friend of Alice B. Toklas. Show Less
LibraryThing member kristenn
This book is basically about the classic 1950s+ convenience meals and how what was marketed (and thus what we remember) doesn't entirely match what really happened. Women kept making things from scratch (and enjoying it) at a higher rate than pop culture history has you believe.
She does a ton of
Although the social history was really interesting, the best part was the food itself. The really weird recipes and products they tried to foist on consumers. Vichysoise : Frozen mashed potatoes stirred into Campbell's cream of chicken. A Harvest Luncheon: Vienna sausages broiled with canned peaches. Sprinkle cheese on tomatoes, top them with banana slices and mayo, and brown in the oven. Half a doughnut topped with a slice of cranberry sauce and a scoop of cottage cheese. A "sophisticated" dessert from Nestle: spread Saltines with cream cheese and top each with a sliced strawberry. Garden club salad: elbow macaroni, pineapple chunks, chopped cabbage, marshmallows, olives, Italian dressing.
The frozen and canned food industries did a lot of retooling after the war. It was clearly difficult to predict which new products would fail with consumers, especially when they were really similar to the products that were smash hits. Everyone loved frozen concentrated orange juice but no one bought frozen concentrated tomato juice (people preferred the canned to even fresh, and still do). Frozen coffee didn't work either. Ditto powdered just-add-water wine. Canned cooked hamburgers. Frozen baked beans. Frozen concentrated mineral water! Fish sticks were insanely popular, but no one then bought breaded sticks of chicken, veal, eggplant, or lima beans.
Campbell's marketed soup for breakfast and there were ads recommending chocolate bars get stirred into oatmeal and 7-up into milk. Betty Crocker pushed a late-night "fourth meal" fifty years before Taco Bell.
Fun stuff.
She does a ton of
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research. One really interesting contrast, as an example, are the articles and recipes in major newspaper food supplements (or magazines) compared to the reader recipe requests and submissions in the same publications.Although the social history was really interesting, the best part was the food itself. The really weird recipes and products they tried to foist on consumers. Vichysoise : Frozen mashed potatoes stirred into Campbell's cream of chicken. A Harvest Luncheon: Vienna sausages broiled with canned peaches. Sprinkle cheese on tomatoes, top them with banana slices and mayo, and brown in the oven. Half a doughnut topped with a slice of cranberry sauce and a scoop of cottage cheese. A "sophisticated" dessert from Nestle: spread Saltines with cream cheese and top each with a sliced strawberry. Garden club salad: elbow macaroni, pineapple chunks, chopped cabbage, marshmallows, olives, Italian dressing.
The frozen and canned food industries did a lot of retooling after the war. It was clearly difficult to predict which new products would fail with consumers, especially when they were really similar to the products that were smash hits. Everyone loved frozen concentrated orange juice but no one bought frozen concentrated tomato juice (people preferred the canned to even fresh, and still do). Frozen coffee didn't work either. Ditto powdered just-add-water wine. Canned cooked hamburgers. Frozen baked beans. Frozen concentrated mineral water! Fish sticks were insanely popular, but no one then bought breaded sticks of chicken, veal, eggplant, or lima beans.
Campbell's marketed soup for breakfast and there were ads recommending chocolate bars get stirred into oatmeal and 7-up into milk. Betty Crocker pushed a late-night "fourth meal" fifty years before Taco Bell.
Fun stuff.
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LibraryThing member ValNewHope
Overall it was a disappointment. Less about dinner in 1950's America, and more about the role of women in society. Lots of statistics on the percentage of women working. Also, lots of biographical info on real and imaginary cooking "authorities" - including Poppy Cannon and Betty Crocker. Included
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a section on women authors - such as Jean Kerr ("Please Don't Eat the Daisies") and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey ("Cheaper By the Dozen") - and how the life they wrote about differed from the life they lived. The last chapter profiles Julia Child and Betty Friedan, then asserts that they were similar forces - bit of a stretch, really. Other than highlighting some of the strangest dishes I have ever heard of - many involving canned pineapple - it really missed the mark for me. Show Less
LibraryThing member amelish
A fantastic book about the relationship between food and feminism in 1950s America. The actual period covered includes wartime and postwar habits of American home cooks, and ends with the nearly simultaneous and similarly explosive debuts of Julia Child's The French Cook and Betty Friedan's The
Shapiro takes a multi-pronged (can I get away with this word?) look at the 1950s housewife: as a woman with a veritable laundry list of a job description; as the target audience of the food industry’s advertising heavy artillery; as a deeply conflicted individual torn between mutually incompatible obligations yet eternally hopeful for reconciliation between work and family, or kitchen shortcuts and personal creativity, etc; as an imaginary figure constructed by (again) the food industry or by women writers whose “harried housewife” tales enjoyed a certain vogue in the late '50s.
Said housewife—sure enough, wearing many critical and symbolic as well as occupational hats—and her relationship with the kitchen provide plenty of material that is by turns hilarious, horrifying, exhilirating, and at times almost pathetic.
I really, really enjoyed this book, and by the time Julia Child and Betty Friedan enter the picture as the twin saviors of the American woman, was actually pretty fired up on behalf of the newly liberated "trapped housewives." Trapped, but not necessarily desperate.
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Feminine Mystique, in 1963.Shapiro takes a multi-pronged (can I get away with this word?) look at the 1950s housewife: as a woman with a veritable laundry list of a job description; as the target audience of the food industry’s advertising heavy artillery; as a deeply conflicted individual torn between mutually incompatible obligations yet eternally hopeful for reconciliation between work and family, or kitchen shortcuts and personal creativity, etc; as an imaginary figure constructed by (again) the food industry or by women writers whose “harried housewife” tales enjoyed a certain vogue in the late '50s.
Said housewife—sure enough, wearing many critical and symbolic as well as occupational hats—and her relationship with the kitchen provide plenty of material that is by turns hilarious, horrifying, exhilirating, and at times almost pathetic.
I really, really enjoyed this book, and by the time Julia Child and Betty Friedan enter the picture as the twin saviors of the American woman, was actually pretty fired up on behalf of the newly liberated "trapped housewives." Trapped, but not necessarily desperate.
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LibraryThing member dms02
This book was ok. I have other books on the food industry and cooking in America that were more to my liking. This book did contain some gems though. I was irate over what the ad execs were able to do to change the roll of food and cooking in this country. It is a look at how we ended up with such
I thought that the portions about some of the cookbook writers of the time carried on a bit too long.
Reads like a sociology text on the history of food and feminism (perhaps it is).
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high obesity rates and other degeneration due to eating/cooking habits and convenience.I thought that the portions about some of the cookbook writers of the time carried on a bit too long.
Reads like a sociology text on the history of food and feminism (perhaps it is).
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LibraryThing member BookConcierge
I couldn't even finish this. It had such promise. It could have been interesting, but it reads more like a sociology text book. I gave up after 90 pages.
LibraryThing member mstrust
From the difficulties of getting consumers to buy frozen dinners, the rise of food advice newspaper columns and the emergence of famous female cooks who specialized in home cooking, as opposed to the trained male chefs showing how to do professional dishes who had been nearly the only experts until
There's a chapter on the beginnings and entries of The Pillsbury Bake-Off, and a bio of a long-forgotten cookbook author named Poppy Cannon, author of The Can Opener Cookbook and several others, who became famous even though she had little culinary skill and was called out for publishing recipes that didn't work. She once recommended serving Campbell's tomato soup topped with canned fish cakes as the first course at an elegant dinner party.
There's a chapter called "Is She Real?" that addresses product spokeswomen such as Betty Crocker and Aunt Jemima, and another chapter that is half Julia Child, and the other half is a bio of Betty Friedan, which is sort of out of place and seems like it's there just because the author wanted to write about her.
Overall, lots of interesting and hard to find information.
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the 1950s. The book focuses on the female cook as the one who traditionally cooked for the family.There's a chapter on the beginnings and entries of The Pillsbury Bake-Off, and a bio of a long-forgotten cookbook author named Poppy Cannon, author of The Can Opener Cookbook and several others, who became famous even though she had little culinary skill and was called out for publishing recipes that didn't work. She once recommended serving Campbell's tomato soup topped with canned fish cakes as the first course at an elegant dinner party.
There's a chapter called "Is She Real?" that addresses product spokeswomen such as Betty Crocker and Aunt Jemima, and another chapter that is half Julia Child, and the other half is a bio of Betty Friedan, which is sort of out of place and seems like it's there just because the author wanted to write about her.
Overall, lots of interesting and hard to find information.
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LibraryThing member JessicaReadsThings
I'm giving this four stars because I really enjoyed Laura Shapiro's writing. Clear, precise, easy to read, storytelling. The subject matter was interesting. There was a nice push and pull between the home-cooking aspect vs. The packaged foods aspect. The marketing of these convenience foods was
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interesting too. It gives one a lot to think about seeing how the convenience food revolution has reverberated down through the years. Show Less
LibraryThing member PattyLee
Interesting, BUT it could have used an editor. For example, there were lots of opportunities for more photographs, but the density of the text and the size of the print made the book more difficult to read. Looks matter. There is one illustration of the first Betty Crocker, but none showing how she
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changed through the ages. There is a discussion of how much fruit and vegetables Americans ate in the 40's, but not information on how much they consume now and how that has changed. However, it was still an interesting look at the role of women in the kitchen over the past 50 years. Show Less
Subjects
Language
Original publication date
2004
Physical description
336 p.; 9.76 inches
ISBN
0670871540 / 9780670871544
Local notes
food