Fashionable Food: Seven Decades of Food FadsThough the Roaring Twenties call to mind images of flappers dancing the Charleston and gangsters dispensing moonshine in back rooms, Sylvia Lovegren here playfully reminds us what these characters ate for dinner: Banana and Popcorn Salad. Like fashions and fads, food—even bad food—has a history, and Lovegren's Fashionable Food is quite literally a cookbook of the American past. Well researched and delightfully illustrated, this collection of faddish recipes from the 1920s to the 1990s is a decade-by-decade tour of a hungry American century. From the Three P's Salad—that's peas, pickles, and peanuts—of the post-World War I era to the Fruit Cocktail and Spam Buffet Party loaf—all the rage in the ultra-modern 1950s, when cooking from a can epitomized culinary sophistication—Fashionable Food details the origins of these curious delicacies. In two chapters devoted to "exotic foods of the East," for example, Lovegren explores the long American love affair with Chinese food and the social status conferred upon anyone chic enough to eat pu-pu platters from Polynesia. Throughout, Lovegren supplements recipes—some mouth-watering, some appalling—from classic cookbooks and family magazines, with humorous anecdotes that chronicle how society and kitchen technology influenced the way we lived and how we ate. Equal parts American and culinary history, Fashionable Food examines our collective past from the kitchen counter. Even if it's been a while since you last had Tang Pie and your fondue set is collecting dust in the back of the cupboard, Fashionable Food will inspire, entertain, and inform. |
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LibraryThing Review
User Review - pennsylady - LibraryThingWhen I wanted to be entertained and learn a bit about American culinary history, Fashionable Food: Seven Decades of Food Fads (1995) was suggested Beginning in the 1920s, the reader observes the food ... Read full review
LibraryThing Review
User Review - Meisje - LibraryThingA great review of cultural and technological development in the US from the 1920's to the '90's and how this has been reflected in popular foods. Also recipes! Read full review
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1/2 teaspoon American baking beans Beat became beef boil Book bowl bread brown butter cake called cheese chef chicken chili Chinese chocolate chopped cocktail coffee cookbook cooking cool corn course Cover dessert dinner dish drained Eighties exotic Fashionable Food Fifties flavor flour French fresh frozen fruit garlic garnish gelatin gourmet Grand Marnier grated green ground heat heavy ingredients Italian juice lemon lettuce meat melted menu milk minutes mixture mushrooms olive onion oven party pasta pepper pieces pineapple popular pork potatoes pound powder Preheat recipe refrigerator Remove restaurants rice roll salad salt sandwiches sauce seasoning served Seventies sides Sixties skillet slices soft soup steak stir sugar sweet tablespoons taste teaspoon teaspoon salt tomatoes turn Twenties vanilla vegetables warm whipped whipped cream wine York
Bibliographic information
| Title | Fashionable Food: Seven Decades of Food Fads |
| Author | Sylvia Lovegren |
| Edition | illustrated, reprint |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press, 2005 |
| ISBN | 0226494071, 9780226494074 |
| Length | 455 pages |
| Subjects | › › › Cooking / History Cooking / Regional & Ethnic / American / General History / General History / Modern / 20th Century |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |