Delicious from start to finish, with only a very few lumps along the way.
A new history of American eating guaranteed to tempt all foodies.
Why don’t Americans eat blood pudding? Who created pumpkin pie, popcorn and rum, and how did such tasty treats come to be staples of the national cuisine? McWilliams (History/Texas State Univ.) details the history of cooking and eating from the early colonies through the Revolutionary War. Colonists, he shows, spurned Native American agriculture and tried to reestablish English gardens in Massachusetts. They did, however, adopt Indian corn; the son of the Massachusetts Bay Colony governor even traveled to London to argue its benefits before the Royal Society. In the Chesapeake Bay area, colonists wanted to fix fancy food that could be served at elegant and impressive dinner parties. Not content merely to regale us with culinary curiosities, the author constantly connects cooking and eating to other political and social matters. An infusion of British cookbooks in the early and middle 18th century, for example, helped instill a sense of belonging in a diverse and disparate group of colonists. Reverse logic prevailed during and after the Revolution, when Americans championed simpler fare. Their tables mirrored their politics; plain eating was a concrete rejection of European cuisine and European society, which Americans perceived as luxurious and effete. McWilliams tells a story of change and adaptation. Newcomers to the colonies brought culinary expectations with them, but eating inevitably evolved as Americans settled in their new home. The author earns points for inclusiveness by attending to the ways in which Native American, African-American and European-American cooking interacted to create a new cuisine. Meanwhile, an inconsistent tone—academic jargon like the anthropological term “foodways” butts heads with self-consciously casual lingo (“This discovery is more than a neat connection”)—is this delightful book’s only flaw.
Delicious from start to finish, with only a very few lumps along the way.Pub Date: July 30, 2005
ISBN: 0-231-12992-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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