Casseroles, Can Openers, and Jell-O: American Food and the Cold War, 1947–1959 - Softcover

Aldrich, Elizabeth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 143849307X ISBN 13: 9781438493077

Publisher: State University of New York Press, 2023

Synopsis

An "all-you-can-eat" tour of American life in the postwar period, told through the foods we loved.

Silver Winner of the 2023 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Award in the Popular Culture category

Casseroles, Can Openers, and Jell-O provides insight on how American food culture developed during the early years of the Cold War. Highlighting gender roles, the promotion of democracy and capitalism, and the impact of mass market advertising, the book draws on cookbooks, popular magazines, television advertisements, government publications, and industry pamphlets to paint a vivid picture of what Americans ate and how food was enlisted as a symbol of America's postwar dominance. Featuring eighty recipes, the book shows how the food industry promoted new processed foods to an increasingly industrialized nation. For anyone wanting to better understand how America's food culture developed during the mid-twentieth century and for those who were raised on TV dinners and Campbell's soup, the book offers an engaging and evocative look at the story of American cuisine during the early years of the Cold War.

About this title

About the Author

Elizabeth Aldrich is Curator Emeritus of Dance at the Library of Congress. She is the author of From Ballroom to Hell: Grace and Folly in Nineteenth-Century Dance.

Edition details

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 143849307X
• ISBN 13: 9781438493077
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 392