California Gold Rush Cooking (Exploring History Through Simple Recipes)

Discusses the everyday life, cooking methods, common foods, and hardships and celebrations during the Gold Rush in California. Includes recipes.

Grade 3-6-Eight or nine recipes are interspersed throughout these informative texts. All include full-page period photographs and illustrations. In Nineteenth-Century Whaling Ships, the first meal is cabbage and Irish potatoes, because it calls for what would be the freshest ingredients on board. Not to worry: no recipes call for whale blubber or oil. Most tend toward the complicated and adult help will be needed (and appreciated). Phrase origins for the likes of "slush fund" (money paid for leftover grease in whaler speak) and "skid row" (initially skid road in logging parlance) are included. Students might find it interesting to compare the information in these titles. For example, while the whaling ship's cooks were among the lowest ranked on board, the lumber camp's cook was the most important crew member, after the foreman. These books are just as tempting, perhaps more so, for their historical ingredients as for the recipes. Palatable history.
Anne Chapman Callaghan, Racine Public Library, WI
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.