Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the CenturyToasted marshmallows stuffed with raisins? Green-and-white luncheons? Chemistry in the kitchen? This entertaining and erudite social history, now in its fourth paperback edition, tells the remarkable story of America's transformation from a nation of honest appetites into an obedient market for instant mashed potatoes. In Perfection Salad, Laura Shapiro investigates a band of passionate but ladylike reformers at the turn of the twentieth century—including Fannie Farmer of the Boston Cooking School—who were determined to modernize the American diet through a "scientific" approach to cooking. Shapiro's fascinating tale shows why we think the way we do about food today. |
Contents
Toasted Marshmallows Stuffed with Raisins | 3 |
Drudgery Divine | 11 |
And the Kitchen Becomes the Workshop of the Skies | 32 |
Better Ways Lighter Burdens More Wholesome Results | 44 |
Perfection Salad | 67 |
The Mother of Level Measurements | 100 |
Whoever Knew a Dyspeptic to Be a Christian? | 120 |
Foes in Our Own Household | 160 |
An Absolutely New Product | 181 |
A Leaf or Two of Lettuce | 205 |
Afterword | 225 |
Acknowledgments | 233 |
Notes | 235 |
| 263 | |
| 277 | |
Other editions - View all
Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century Laura Shapiro No preview available - 1995 |
Common terms and phrases
American Kitchen Magazine appetite Atkinson Atwater baked beans Barrows boiled Boston Cooking School bread breakfast butter cake called calories Catharine Beecher century cheese chemistry committee Cook Book Cooking School Magazine cooking teacher Cooking-School Cook course cream Crisco culinary dainty desserts diet dietary digestion dinner dish domestic science domestic scientists domestic-science movement eating Edward Atkinson Ellen Richards England Kitchen Magazine Fannie Farmer female feminine flavor flour gelatin girls home economics home economists household housekeeping housework husband Ibid industry ladies Lake Placid lecture lessons lettuce Lincoln living luncheon meal meat menus Miss Bevier Miss Corson Miss Farmer's School moral never nutritional Perfection Salad potatoes protein pudding recipes reform Rumford Sarah Tyson Rorer scientific cookery scientific cooks served social soup stewed Table Talk taste teaching tion tomatoes vegetables white sauce woman Woman's Education Association Woman's Home Companion women wrote