Fashionable Food: Seven Decades of Food Fads - Hardcover

Lovegren, Sylvia

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0025757059 ISBN 13: 9780025757059

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc, 1995

Synopsis

Fashionable Food takes you on an outrageous trip through the culinary history of America in the twentieth century. Decade by decade, Sylvia Lovegren details the origins - and demise - of such curious gourmet delicacies as Banana and Popcorn Salad, Barbecued Bologna for Men a la Crisco, Baked Beans au Glow-Glow, and Tang Pie, alongside longer-lasting inventions such as Crepes Suzette, Quiche Lorraine, and Tiramisu.
Recipes for these "creations" and many more are extracted from classic cookbooks and family magazines of the past and present, and included here are both prewar working-class holiday dishes and fancy haute-cuisine feasts - as well as every food fad in between. Lovegren's humorous text also chronicles the influences of society and kitchen technology that have completely changed the way we live - and the foods we have eaten - since the 1920s, when gas ranges replaced wood- or coal-burning stoves, the mechanical refrigerator made the icebox obsolete, food processing became big business, and women went to work.

About this title

About the Author:

A culinary historian and food writer, Sylvia Lovegren is an avid collector and reader of old cookbooks and has contributed to American Heritage and the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America.

From Library Journal:

In recent years, the subject of food has been one primarily of seriousness verging on reverence. While that may be wholly justified, it's refreshing to have a good laugh (at ourselves) every now and then. Lovegren, an avid collector and reader of old cookbooks, brings us a history of America's eating fads from the 1920s through the 1980s. Unlike Harvey Levenstein's Revolution at the Table (LJ 2/1/88), which addressed U.S. gastronomy in relatively academic form, Lovegren's book is fanciful as she devotes herself to "some uniquely American culinary triumphs... and some uniquely American culinary disasters as well." Lovegren covers the effects on our tastes and eating habits of convenience products (e.g., kitchen appliances and canned foods) and of cultural events like Prohibition and the Depression. The book has many period-piece illustrations and well over 100 recipes, ranging from Blackened Redfish to "The Worst Salad of the Twenties" (Banana and Popcorn Salad). Useful as an idea source for theme parties and historical research on foods and their eras, this is recommended for popular culinary collections.?Wendy Miller, Lexington P.L., Ky.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0025757059
• ISBN 13: 9780025757059
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 464