Title: From hardtack to home fries : an uncommon history of American cooks and meals /
Authors: Haber, Barbara.
Publisher: Free Press,
Year: 2002
Subjects: Feeding Behavior; Food; Diet; Cooking; Diet United States History.; Cooking United States History.; Food habits United States History; United States; United States
Abstract: 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.