From the earliest tomes on the art of cooking to the latest works by today's celebrity chefs, cookbooks have always reflected more than just passing culinary fads. As historical artifacts, they offer a unique perspective on the cultures that produced them. Twentieth-century America, which witnessed profound social, technological, and economic changes in only a few decades, is no exception, and in Manly Meals and Mom's Home Cooking, Jessamyn Neuhaus looks at how the content and tone of cookbooks published between the 1890s and the 1960s reveals America's cultural assumptions and anxietiesparticularly about women and domesticity. From Fannie Farmer to Julia Child, Neuhaus undertakes an in-depth survey of twentieth-century American cookbooks, analyzing the new ideals of food preparation and presentation they introduced to help readersmainly white, middle-class womenbecome effective, modern-age homemakers who saw joy, not drudgery, in their domestic tasks. (The phenomenal popularity of Peg Bracken's 1960 cookbook, The I Hate to Cook Book, attests to the limitations of this kind of indoctrination.) At the same time, she explores the proliferation of cookbooks aimed at ''the man in the kitchen'' and the biases they display about male and female abilities, tastes, and responsibilities. Neuhaus also chronicles the impact of World War II rationing on homefront cuisine; the introduction of new culinary technologies, gourmet sensibilities, and ethnic foods into American kitchens; and developments in the cookbook industry since the 1960s. More than a history of the cookbook, Manly Meals and Mom's Home Cooking provides an absorbing and enlightening account of gender and food in modern America.
Contents: Acknowledgments Introduction ""The Purpose of a Cookery Book""PART ONE ""A Most Enchanting Occupation"": Cookbooks in Early and Modern America, 17961941One From Family Receipts to Fannie Farmer: Cookbooks in the United States, 17961920 Two Recipes for a New Era: Food Trends, Consumerism, Cooks, and Cookbooks Three ""Cooking Is Fun"": Women's Home Cookery As Art, Science, and Necessity Four Ladylike Lunches and Manly Meals: The Gendering of Food and CookingPART TWO ""You are First and Foremost Homemakers: Cookbooks and the Second World WarFive Lima Loaf and Butter Stretchers Six ""Ways and Means for War Days"": The Cookbook-Scrapbook Compiled by Maude Reid Seven ""The Hand That Cuts the Ration Coupon May Win the War"": Women's Home-Cooked PatriotismPART THREE The Cooking Mystique: Cookbooks and Gender, 19451963Eight The Betty Crocker Era Nine ""King of the Kitchen"": Food and Cookery Instruction for Men Ten The Most Important Meal: Women's Home Cooking, Domestic Ideology, and Cookbooks Eleven ""A Necessary Bore"": Contradictions in the Cooking MystiqueConclusion From Julia Child to Cooking.comNotes Essay on Sources Index
""This is a fascinating history that delves into the world of home cooking, cookbooks, and changing perceptions about males and females in food production, and is recommended for any college-level American history or culinary arts program.""
