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Title: Something From the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America by Laura Shapiro ISBN: 0-670-87154-0 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: 25 March, 2004 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Peeling the Stale Images of the '50s
Comment: If Laura Shapiro does nothing more (and she does much, much more) it will have been a very valuable service to rescue Poppy Cannon and her Can-Opener Cookbook from the infamy of '50s dreck. The author, in Something From the Oven, does a superb job of taking the idea of a '50s dinner and making it a more complex and multi-layered idea than is usually represented. She peels away all the stereotypes the decade has been dragging behind it and shows the truth. Canned and frozen foods(including my mother's favourite, the TV dinner) make appearances but the author show how women did not blindly follow every marketing scheme tossed at them. And Poppy, along with such luminaries as Betty Crocker and Julia Child, help populate this rich tale with great personalities, in addition to the many anonymous readers and letter writers to women's magazines and food columns. This is a well researched, enjoyable book that makes the 1950s come alive.
Rating: 4
Summary: From Betty Crocker to Betty Friedan
Comment: Something From the Oven covers almost everything about American food culture during the post-World War II years until the mid 1960s. There are accounts of the advent of convenience foods, the literature of food, the rise of cooking shows on TV, and the phenomenon of cooking contests such as the Pillsbury Bake-Off. The topics seem loosely connected, with no particular conclusions drawn. But it's a pop history book, not an academic tome, so sit back and enjoy an entertaining look at food from several historical angles.
Shapiro talks about the post-war need for convenience food. At least, manufacturers wanted there to be a need for convenience foods, whether American cooks agreed or not. There were a lot of experiments in the first days. Successful products included concentrated frozen orange juice and fish sticks. Unsuccessful product proposals included canned deep-fried hamburgers and concentrated distilled water. (I suspect if Shapiro is having us on with that last idea.)
The section on domestic literature was especially fun, although a lot of it had little to do with food. Shapiro discusses Shirley Jackson, Erma Bombeck, Peg Bracken, Bette MacDonald, Jean Kerr, and the Gilbreths of Cheaper By the Dozen fame, among others. She reveals that there was often a big difference between their supposedly non-fiction works and their actual lives. I look forward to rereading these old favorites with this new information in mind, as well as looking up some authors Shapiro mentions that I was not aware of.
The mini-history of Julia Child's career is entertaining, and the extensive bibliography is a treasure trove of further reading ideas. Recommended!
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Title: Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century by Laura Shapiro, Ruth Reichl, Michael Stern ISBN: 0375756655 Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 20 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Lost Recipes: Meals to Share With Friends and Family by Marion Cunningham ISBN: 0375411984 Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Pub. Date: 14 October, 2003 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
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Title: Candyfreak: A Journey Through the Chocolate Underbelly of America by Steve Almond ISBN: 1565124219 Publisher: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill Pub. Date: 01 April, 2004 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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Title: Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet (California Studies in Food and Culture) by Harvey A. Levenstein, Harvey Levenstein ISBN: 0520234391 Publisher: University of California Press Pub. Date: 05 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told through Food, Recipes, and Remembrances by Laura Schenone ISBN: 0393016714 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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