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Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal
We are what we eat, as the saying goes, but we are also how we eat, and when, and where. Our eating habits reveal as much about our society as the food on our plates, and our national identity is written in the eating schedules we follow and the customs we observe at the table and on the go.
In Three Squares, food historian Abigail Carroll upends the popular understanding of our most cherished mealtime traditions, revealing that our eating habits have never been stable—far from it, in fact. The eating patterns and ideals we’ve inherited are relatively recent inventions, the products of complex social and economic forces, as well as the efforts of ambitious inventors, scientists and health gurus. Whether we’re pouring ourselves a bowl of cereal, grabbing a quick sandwich, or congregating for a family dinner, our mealtime habits are living artifacts of our collective history—and represent only the latest stage in the evolution of the American meal. Our early meals, Carroll explains, were rustic affairs, often eaten hastily, without utensils, and standing up. Only in the nineteenth century, when the Industrial Revolution upset work schedules and drastically reduced the amount of time Americans could spend on the midday meal, did the shape of our modern “three squares” emerge: quick, simple, and cold breakfasts and lunches and larger, sit-down dinners. Since evening was the only part of the day when families could come together, dinner became a ritual—as American as apple pie. But with the rise of processed foods, snacking has become faster, cheaper, and easier than ever, and many fear for the fate of the cherished family meal as a result.
The story of how the simple gruel of our forefathers gave way to snack fixes and fast food, Three Squares, also explains how Americans’ eating habits may change in the years to come. Only by understanding the history of the American meal can we can help determine its future.
In Three Squares, food historian Abigail Carroll upends the popular understanding of our most cherished mealtime traditions, revealing that our eating habits have never been stable—far from it, in fact. The eating patterns and ideals we’ve inherited are relatively recent inventions, the products of complex social and economic forces, as well as the efforts of ambitious inventors, scientists and health gurus. Whether we’re pouring ourselves a bowl of cereal, grabbing a quick sandwich, or congregating for a family dinner, our mealtime habits are living artifacts of our collective history—and represent only the latest stage in the evolution of the American meal. Our early meals, Carroll explains, were rustic affairs, often eaten hastily, without utensils, and standing up. Only in the nineteenth century, when the Industrial Revolution upset work schedules and drastically reduced the amount of time Americans could spend on the midday meal, did the shape of our modern “three squares” emerge: quick, simple, and cold breakfasts and lunches and larger, sit-down dinners. Since evening was the only part of the day when families could come together, dinner became a ritual—as American as apple pie. But with the rise of processed foods, snacking has become faster, cheaper, and easier than ever, and many fear for the fate of the cherished family meal as a result.
The story of how the simple gruel of our forefathers gave way to snack fixes and fast food, Three Squares, also explains how Americans’ eating habits may change in the years to come. Only by understanding the history of the American meal can we can help determine its future.
344 pages, Hardcover
First published September 1, 2012
72 people are currently reading
1394 people want to read
About the author
Abigail Carroll
6 books28 followersAbigail Carroll is author of A Gathering of Larks: Letters to Saint Francis from a Modern-Day Pilgrim (Eerdmans 2017). Her poetry has appeared in the anthology Between Midnight and Dawn: A Literary Guide to Prayer for Lent, Holy Week, and Eastertide (Paraclete Press 2016) as well as in a variety of magazines and literary journals, including the Anglican Theological Review, The Christian Century, Crab Orchard Review, Midwest Quarterly, Sojourners, and Terrain. Her first book, Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal, was a finalist for the Zocalo Public Square Book Prize. Carroll serves as pastor of arts and spiritual formation at Church at the Well in Burlington, Vermont.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 78 reviews
March 31, 2014
With a suitably relentless editor, this could have been a terrific magazine article on how Americans came to eat what, when, and how we do. As it stands, it reads like a padded-out academic paper. Even though the book is a modest 219 pages (with a fat wad of endnotes and an extensive bibliography filling out another 80 or 90 pages), slogging through to the end became a chore.
Which is too bad -- I really had high hopes for this one. Setting aside the dry writing style and the tendency to repeat each point two or three times, there were two main problems, one structural, the other material.
Structurally, the book is intended to be a history. But instead of sticking with the straightforward chronological narration of the early chapters, the author veers off into a meal-by-meal breakdown, first telling us of the evolution in America of dinner, then of lunch, then of breakfast, and finally of snacks. Since one of the central themes of the book is the tale of dinner's development from a large, midday event into a large evening event, taking things meal-by-meal necessarily involves a lot of backtracking and repetition, and muddies some of the argument.
Materially, the author inexplicably shies away from the anecdotes that make popular non-fiction worth reading. I say 'inexplicably' because she repeatedly makes reference to people I wanted to hear more about -- the characters are there, but she doesn't explore them. For example, she might have dwelled a little longer on the prominent gentleman who didn't wish to be seen carrying a common lunch pail through the streets on his way to the office. The problem was solved by his wife, who hired a tinsmith to create a suitably non-proletarian lunchbox for her husband. The author conjures and dismisses this interesting pair in two sentences.
In sum, this could have been an interesting shorter piece if it were reorganized and edited down to the central argument, or it could have been an entertaining longer book if the author had given us fuller pictures of the dozens of interesting figures she cites and quickly dismisses. Instead, this is a bloated, dull historical work that doesn't take us anyplace particularly surprising.
Which is too bad -- I really had high hopes for this one. Setting aside the dry writing style and the tendency to repeat each point two or three times, there were two main problems, one structural, the other material.
Structurally, the book is intended to be a history. But instead of sticking with the straightforward chronological narration of the early chapters, the author veers off into a meal-by-meal breakdown, first telling us of the evolution in America of dinner, then of lunch, then of breakfast, and finally of snacks. Since one of the central themes of the book is the tale of dinner's development from a large, midday event into a large evening event, taking things meal-by-meal necessarily involves a lot of backtracking and repetition, and muddies some of the argument.
Materially, the author inexplicably shies away from the anecdotes that make popular non-fiction worth reading. I say 'inexplicably' because she repeatedly makes reference to people I wanted to hear more about -- the characters are there, but she doesn't explore them. For example, she might have dwelled a little longer on the prominent gentleman who didn't wish to be seen carrying a common lunch pail through the streets on his way to the office. The problem was solved by his wife, who hired a tinsmith to create a suitably non-proletarian lunchbox for her husband. The author conjures and dismisses this interesting pair in two sentences.
In sum, this could have been an interesting shorter piece if it were reorganized and edited down to the central argument, or it could have been an entertaining longer book if the author had given us fuller pictures of the dozens of interesting figures she cites and quickly dismisses. Instead, this is a bloated, dull historical work that doesn't take us anyplace particularly surprising.
June 24, 2018
اگه برای شما هم مثل من همیشه سوال بوده که چرا وقتی از خواب پا میشیم باید یک وعده غذا ( صبحونه!) بخوریم بعد چند ساعت نوبت ناهار و بعد از اون هم شام ؟؟؟ ما از کی و چطور این سبک سه وعده ای ( البته در بعضی جوامع چهار وعده ای یا بیشتر تحت عنوان برانچ ،عصرونه،میان وعده و..)رو قبول کردیم ؟ از اول اینجوری بودیم تو خورد و خوراک؟ آن تایم؟ یا نه بعداً اینطوری شدیم .
خب خانم ابیگیل کرول توی این کتاب به پاسخ این سوال ها میپردازند بیشتر از نقطه نظر تاریخی و فرهنگی و اقتصادی که نکات خیلی جالبن
خب خانم ابیگیل کرول توی این کتاب به پاسخ این سوال ها میپردازند بیشتر از نقطه نظر تاریخی و فرهنگی و اقتصادی که نکات خیلی جالبن
March 9, 2014
I will be moderating a talk with this author at the Newburyport Literary Festival in April. So while this was "assigned reading," chances are I would have picked this up on my own given my interest. Carroll takes a look at the three meals, plus snacking, with a historical look plus an eye to the future. The next time you sit down to dinner and start with salad and end with dessert, that is a nod to our French ancestors! I found it compelling and quite readable for readers not into history and/or food history.
December 21, 2013
I love to learn interesting facts about odd things and that is what keep me reading to the bitter end. Yet I found this to be one of the greatest books I ever read for insomnia. I could not get through a chapter without falling asleep. It was dry and it bounced all over the place. Lots of interesting facts but the format could of been much better.
May 1, 2022
dnf’ed around 90.
January 7, 2015
Unlike some food books that trace the story of a single food or ingredient, the book traces the story of what Americans eat from the arrival of the Europeans to New England to the present. Carroll states in the preface that she initially started to write a book on snacks, but it turned out that one can’t really talk about snacks without talking about meals. Thus the book spends quite a bit of time talking about dinner, lunch, and breakfast before getting the chapter (number 7 out of 8) about snacking. The take home from reading the book is that, despite all the rules and reasons we may have been exposed to about why we eat what when, it is all pretty arbitrary. At least, rules and reasons put forward may be less significant than changes in food production, work habits, and lifestyles of American eaters. I found particularly interesting the early chapters on colonial meals— chairs, tables, utensils were all pretty minimal for most people, and also the chapter on breakfast. It is fascinating to see how health claims were attached to such different patterns of eating! In fact, throughout the book one sees how food choices are closely attached to normative evaluations about what is healthy or moral or proper. It is no surprise that class strivings of the upwardly mobile are also tied to food choices. Although this is a subtext, it is one of the more interesting parts of the story.
December 12, 2022
I don’t remember how I found this book, but it was an easy read that I enjoyed. Unlike other historians, the storytelling was fluid, well-written, on point, and engaging. (Other historians seem to feel compelled to share every tidbit of research, making it too hard to read or enjoy and way unnecessarily long.)
I didn’t always see how she connected the dots though - like, I couldn’t understand on what basis she concluded the way we snack in the US is widely emulated abroad as a symbol of freedom and prosperity in the US. Some footnotes or examples would’ve helped.
I also thought she missed an opportunity to highlight George Speck, the inventor of the potato chip who was Black. She went into a lot of depth on the historical developments of certain foods and cultural evolutions, drawing from lots of European sources, so why skip the history and implications of a national snack having been invented by a relatively unknown Black man (unknown precisely because people like her, who have such opportunity, don’t take it to talk about him)???
I didn’t always see how she connected the dots though - like, I couldn’t understand on what basis she concluded the way we snack in the US is widely emulated abroad as a symbol of freedom and prosperity in the US. Some footnotes or examples would’ve helped.
I also thought she missed an opportunity to highlight George Speck, the inventor of the potato chip who was Black. She went into a lot of depth on the historical developments of certain foods and cultural evolutions, drawing from lots of European sources, so why skip the history and implications of a national snack having been invented by a relatively unknown Black man (unknown precisely because people like her, who have such opportunity, don’t take it to talk about him)???
June 5, 2016
This will seem like an awful pun but this was a really meaty read. The book looks at the history of American meals and snacking and parallels the history of America itself. Meals met the needs to the times – from large, sustaining fueling for long farm days to quick, portable eats suitable for factory and other city workers. There were a few points where the work dragged a bit but I think that was less due to the writing then the fact there were sections that I already knew a bit about. Well research, super well documented (I reached the end of the book when my Kindle was only at 58% complete…the rest is footnotes and sources) and full of a lot of interesting information not only about the food we eat but the meaning and value Americans have attached to the details of how, when, and with whom we eat. Great read for anyone interested in cultural culinary history or who just likes reading about food.
October 4, 2018
I'm sure there are more in-depth cultural studies, but Carroll did a good job of tying in the cultural movements and philosophies of American society through the centuries and showing how it affected prevailing attitudes about food. The chapter about snacking was especially entertaining and interesting to me, including the fact that pretzel sales went way, way down in the years of Prohibition, or that the Victorians (well, whatever we would call Americans of that era) considered snacking outside of the prepared family meals to be a bit sinful, and disrespectful to the family. Three Squares was an enjoyable read, with titles like, "Why Colonial Meals Were Messy," "How Dinner Became American," and "Reinventing Breakfast."
September 9, 2014
The topic of this book is utterly fascinating - and there were some surprises in it, in regards to what you would assume to be a fact of history, but that isn't actually true.
However, this was written in a very dry and academic tone - it could have done with a co-author, one who is a bit better at writing narrative non-fiction.
However, this was written in a very dry and academic tone - it could have done with a co-author, one who is a bit better at writing narrative non-fiction.
October 19, 2013
Fantastically fun read full of food fact nuggets to share with friends.
September 7, 2025
#Binge Reviewing my previous Reads #Food History
Abigail Carroll’s *Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal* is one of those rare histories that takes something so familiar, so seemingly obvious, and makes you realise how artificial and constructed it truly is.
We think of breakfast, lunch, and dinner as timeless anchors of daily life, but Carroll shows how these three meals are in fact products of cultural negotiation, shifting economic realities, and evolving ideas about health, morality, and identity. To read this book is to unlearn what you thought was natural about eating and to see how profoundly America invented itself at the table.
Carroll begins with the colonial period, when European settlers encountered Indigenous foodways and began the long process of adapting their own Old World habits to New World conditions. The rigid mealtimes of Europe gave way to more fluid arrangements in frontier households, where survival mattered more than ritual. Cornmeal mush, johnnycakes, and whatever was hunted or gathered blurred distinctions between meals. What emerges in Carroll’s telling is that the “American meal” was never a simple inheritance but always a hybrid, a negotiation between old expectations and new environments.
The nineteenth century, with industrialisation and urbanisation, is where the story of three square meals really takes shape. Breakfast emerges as a substantial, often heavy meal, justified by the physical labour of the day. Dinner, once the midday feast in agrarian life, shifts to the evening as work pulls people into cities and away from home. Lunch—an almost accidental invention—fills the gap, shaped by the rhythms of factories and offices. Carroll reveals how each shift carried not only nutritional implications but also moral ones. A “proper meal” became a marker of respectability, a sign of discipline and domestic order. The family table was elevated as a symbol of American virtue, and deviations from it were often condemned as signs of moral weakness or social disorder.
Carroll is especially good at tracing how reformers, health experts, and entrepreneurs shaped American eating habits. The rise of breakfast cereals, for instance, was not just a matter of convenience but of ideology. Kellogg and Post didn’t simply market food; they sold moral visions of purity, health, and efficiency. Lunch counters and cafeterias democratised eating in cities, while also signalling anxieties about speed, modernity, and the breakdown of the family meal. Dinner parties and dining-out culture reflected aspirations to refinement and cosmopolitanism, even as fast food chains eventually democratised and standardised the evening meal in another way.
What makes the book fascinating is the way Carroll treats meals as cultural performances. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are not merely times to eat but scripts that Americans learnt, modified, and enforced. They embody ideals of productivity, family life, gender roles, and class. To skip breakfast was once considered almost criminal; to eat lunch at one’s desk signalled the triumph of work over leisure; to share dinner at a table reaffirmed the bonds of kinship. Meals, in this account, become mirrors of American anxieties and ambitions.
The prose is accessible but never shallow. Carroll has an eye for the telling detail—an advertisement, a reformer’s diary entry, a household manual—and she weaves them into a story that feels both intimate and sweeping. She shows how immigrants reshaped American meals with their own traditions, how African American foodways enriched and challenged mainstream expectations, and how global influences complicated the notion of “three squares”. The book is strongest when it shows how contested meals have always been: between abundance and restraint, tradition and innovation, family and individual, and work and leisure.
In the end, *Three Squares* leaves you with a new awareness of how much cultural work goes into something as simple as a plate of food at a given hour. Carroll doesn’t argue that three meals a day are bad or outdated; rather, she shows that they are historically contingent, products of industrial capitalism, gender ideology, and cultural performance. That recognition is liberating. If the American meal was invented, it can be reinvented. And in an age of snacking, flexible schedules, and blurred work-life boundaries, perhaps it already is.
Carroll’s book is a beautifully researched, elegantly written history that makes you look differently at the clock and the plate. For readers of food history, cultural studies, or anyone curious about how something so mundane could be so historically rich, *Three Squares* is essential.
Abigail Carroll’s *Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal* is one of those rare histories that takes something so familiar, so seemingly obvious, and makes you realise how artificial and constructed it truly is.
We think of breakfast, lunch, and dinner as timeless anchors of daily life, but Carroll shows how these three meals are in fact products of cultural negotiation, shifting economic realities, and evolving ideas about health, morality, and identity. To read this book is to unlearn what you thought was natural about eating and to see how profoundly America invented itself at the table.
Carroll begins with the colonial period, when European settlers encountered Indigenous foodways and began the long process of adapting their own Old World habits to New World conditions. The rigid mealtimes of Europe gave way to more fluid arrangements in frontier households, where survival mattered more than ritual. Cornmeal mush, johnnycakes, and whatever was hunted or gathered blurred distinctions between meals. What emerges in Carroll’s telling is that the “American meal” was never a simple inheritance but always a hybrid, a negotiation between old expectations and new environments.
The nineteenth century, with industrialisation and urbanisation, is where the story of three square meals really takes shape. Breakfast emerges as a substantial, often heavy meal, justified by the physical labour of the day. Dinner, once the midday feast in agrarian life, shifts to the evening as work pulls people into cities and away from home. Lunch—an almost accidental invention—fills the gap, shaped by the rhythms of factories and offices. Carroll reveals how each shift carried not only nutritional implications but also moral ones. A “proper meal” became a marker of respectability, a sign of discipline and domestic order. The family table was elevated as a symbol of American virtue, and deviations from it were often condemned as signs of moral weakness or social disorder.
Carroll is especially good at tracing how reformers, health experts, and entrepreneurs shaped American eating habits. The rise of breakfast cereals, for instance, was not just a matter of convenience but of ideology. Kellogg and Post didn’t simply market food; they sold moral visions of purity, health, and efficiency. Lunch counters and cafeterias democratised eating in cities, while also signalling anxieties about speed, modernity, and the breakdown of the family meal. Dinner parties and dining-out culture reflected aspirations to refinement and cosmopolitanism, even as fast food chains eventually democratised and standardised the evening meal in another way.
What makes the book fascinating is the way Carroll treats meals as cultural performances. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner are not merely times to eat but scripts that Americans learnt, modified, and enforced. They embody ideals of productivity, family life, gender roles, and class. To skip breakfast was once considered almost criminal; to eat lunch at one’s desk signalled the triumph of work over leisure; to share dinner at a table reaffirmed the bonds of kinship. Meals, in this account, become mirrors of American anxieties and ambitions.
The prose is accessible but never shallow. Carroll has an eye for the telling detail—an advertisement, a reformer’s diary entry, a household manual—and she weaves them into a story that feels both intimate and sweeping. She shows how immigrants reshaped American meals with their own traditions, how African American foodways enriched and challenged mainstream expectations, and how global influences complicated the notion of “three squares”. The book is strongest when it shows how contested meals have always been: between abundance and restraint, tradition and innovation, family and individual, and work and leisure.
In the end, *Three Squares* leaves you with a new awareness of how much cultural work goes into something as simple as a plate of food at a given hour. Carroll doesn’t argue that three meals a day are bad or outdated; rather, she shows that they are historically contingent, products of industrial capitalism, gender ideology, and cultural performance. That recognition is liberating. If the American meal was invented, it can be reinvented. And in an age of snacking, flexible schedules, and blurred work-life boundaries, perhaps it already is.
Carroll’s book is a beautifully researched, elegantly written history that makes you look differently at the clock and the plate. For readers of food history, cultural studies, or anyone curious about how something so mundane could be so historically rich, *Three Squares* is essential.
June 14, 2022
The book is well researched and interesting, but average for this type of food history book.
Carroll goes into detail about the history of the American meal, from the porridges and stews of the first settlers which were shared sometimes from a single pot with few utensils or even chairs, to the modern scourge of endless snacking in place of meals that pervades modern eating. Lunch as we know it is entirely a fabrication of the Industrial Revolution, when people no longer had time to go home at noon for a large, long meal, driving the need for lighter, portable cold fare which could be eaten anywhere - such as sandwiches.
The author shows the path that American meals have taken since WWI, when 30% - 1 in three - recruits were so malnourished and underfed that they couldn't fight. This, coupled along with the discovery of vitamins, pushed Americans to eat more, to improve their health. By the 1950's, with industrialized modern convenience foods appearing in homes, Americans were starting their slide into obesity, vastly compounded by the age of television which brought all the fancy food advertising directly into homes. When the 70's added more sugars and fats, American was already showing signs of too much eating, and too many processed foods. Carroll lightly describes the biological processes that doom us to prefer Doritos and Hostess Cupcakes over celery. While snacking in the Victorian age was seen as a moral failure, most Americans now graze on snacks all day instead of eating actual meals, partly caused by the economic demise of the family through the need to work multiple jobs just to buy the disease-causing fast food that makes us work for our healthcare.
The book is actually short (the bibliography is perhaps a third of the book), and was far more interesting than the novel I was also trying to read. Worth a read if you're into history or food, nutrition or sociology.
Carroll goes into detail about the history of the American meal, from the porridges and stews of the first settlers which were shared sometimes from a single pot with few utensils or even chairs, to the modern scourge of endless snacking in place of meals that pervades modern eating. Lunch as we know it is entirely a fabrication of the Industrial Revolution, when people no longer had time to go home at noon for a large, long meal, driving the need for lighter, portable cold fare which could be eaten anywhere - such as sandwiches.
The author shows the path that American meals have taken since WWI, when 30% - 1 in three - recruits were so malnourished and underfed that they couldn't fight. This, coupled along with the discovery of vitamins, pushed Americans to eat more, to improve their health. By the 1950's, with industrialized modern convenience foods appearing in homes, Americans were starting their slide into obesity, vastly compounded by the age of television which brought all the fancy food advertising directly into homes. When the 70's added more sugars and fats, American was already showing signs of too much eating, and too many processed foods. Carroll lightly describes the biological processes that doom us to prefer Doritos and Hostess Cupcakes over celery. While snacking in the Victorian age was seen as a moral failure, most Americans now graze on snacks all day instead of eating actual meals, partly caused by the economic demise of the family through the need to work multiple jobs just to buy the disease-causing fast food that makes us work for our healthcare.
The book is actually short (the bibliography is perhaps a third of the book), and was far more interesting than the novel I was also trying to read. Worth a read if you're into history or food, nutrition or sociology.
October 25, 2022
Three Squares: The Invention of the American Meal is the type of history I like to read about. Starting with the first settlers and working her way to the 21st century, author Abigail Carroll unpacks various diets, some designed out of necessity, others due to changing trends.
All the usual culprits that changed the American diet from one of subsistence with one big meal around to noon to our current one, with its emphasis on snacks and family dinner at 6 p.m. are present. Do you eat cereal for breakfast, have a cold sandwich on the go for lunch, and treat your evening meal as special all the while refueling with prepackaged yogurts and granola bars? Thank industrialization, technology, women joining the workforce, world wars, improvements in nutritional knowledge, religiosity, and a plain old desire to emulate other cultures for why your meals unfold they way do.
While the history is interesting, I found Carroll's writing to be dutiful and dry. I often wished for someone like Bill Bryson to come in with some colorful anecdotes and witty writing.
All the usual culprits that changed the American diet from one of subsistence with one big meal around to noon to our current one, with its emphasis on snacks and family dinner at 6 p.m. are present. Do you eat cereal for breakfast, have a cold sandwich on the go for lunch, and treat your evening meal as special all the while refueling with prepackaged yogurts and granola bars? Thank industrialization, technology, women joining the workforce, world wars, improvements in nutritional knowledge, religiosity, and a plain old desire to emulate other cultures for why your meals unfold they way do.
While the history is interesting, I found Carroll's writing to be dutiful and dry. I often wished for someone like Bill Bryson to come in with some colorful anecdotes and witty writing.
November 7, 2022
There's a cool concept propelling this book along--feverish American capitalism and industrialization completely changed the way that this country viewed meals and even the eating altogether--but the writing was a little too dry for me. I respect that a work that feels this academic doesn't necessarily need to be punchy to be valuable but since this isn't a subject I'm that invested in, I needed more zip to keep me interested. Also I was low-key annoyed that the structure of this book meant that we started roughly at dinner and worked our way backwards to breakfast when it would have been more narratively satisfying to go the other way.
June 4, 2019
It was a fine read, but it was sprawling. It seemed as though it was intended to be chronological in how it followed the trajectory of how meals evolved, but somehow became organized by type of meal. A bit rushed and not well laid out, but there were some interesting tidbits.
January 31, 2023
This was pretty much a sociological study on the evolution of meals in America. Sadly, I felt like I got the gist of it pretty early on and so much of the book felt like it was just repeating themes. If it had been pared down, it would have made a great essay or longer article.
August 29, 2017
Interesting content, but a pretty unexciting narrative style. The author really needed a better editor.
April 9, 2019
Good lunch reading but a little slow in places
Read
October 23, 2022the absence of any mention of the ways in which race or gender played into this evolution did a disservice to the subject
April 17, 2023
Important info, but not always easy to read. Important for historians of food in the U.S.
November 2, 2025
Big takeaways: early American lunches used to be just pies. Not meat pies either.
Lunch stems from the word “clutch”, and was what could be held in a hand.
Lunch stems from the word “clutch”, and was what could be held in a hand.
October 11, 2022
I thought this was so interesting!
February 24, 2015
Over-long academic thesis on the "American" meal. This seemed like a great topical book about the meals that US (or "American" as the author uses). Why three meals? How did it become to be? How will the meal change? It started off really well, apparently as a project on the concept of the "snack." The author chose to expand it on the history of meals, mealtimes and more in the US.
Unfortunately while this could have been so much more, this book really reads like an too long thesis or magazine article that had been padded to fill out the book. I knew it was bad when I began flipping pages and seeing just walls and walls and walls of text. More pictures scattered throughout the book (instead of the usual set in about midway through the text) would have been helpful. For example, the author discusses the evolution of bowls and plates from bread to actual wooden pieces. However, they don't look like what we use today, obviously, so some sort of illustration would have been great.
It also would have been helpful if the approach had been different: for some reason the author sticks mostly meal by meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack) and mostly a historical retelling. As other reviewers note, there is a focus on how the British and French influenced meals but very little discussion about immigrants and how the foods and customs they brought changed and developed mealtimes and the content of the meals themselves. "Fast food" gets mentioned, but mostly prior to the rise of McDonald's and the like--McDonald's itself has an entry in the index that redirects the reader to another topic (!).
I couldn't help but compare this to another recent food book I read, Soul Food. I liked how the author there compared specific items of soul food, but organized it by the history, the changes over time, and how they were cooked. And while in this book takes a much broader view (instead of one specific cuisine within the American diet) I thought author Carroll could have really taken a page or two from there (although Soul Food was published one month before).
It's really too bad, because as a concept this would be a fantastic read. But it really needs more research in some areas, and perhaps dividing the entire book into thirds (or more) for each meal). As a resource this probably isn't a bad book to consult, but if you're looking for how fast food/food trucks changed how the regular worker gets their lunch or the movement towards natural/organic/non-GMO foods have influenced buying and eating habits, etc. the reader will have to go elsewhere.
Got it from the library and would recommend someone do the same unless they need it for a paper.
Unfortunately while this could have been so much more, this book really reads like an too long thesis or magazine article that had been padded to fill out the book. I knew it was bad when I began flipping pages and seeing just walls and walls and walls of text. More pictures scattered throughout the book (instead of the usual set in about midway through the text) would have been helpful. For example, the author discusses the evolution of bowls and plates from bread to actual wooden pieces. However, they don't look like what we use today, obviously, so some sort of illustration would have been great.
It also would have been helpful if the approach had been different: for some reason the author sticks mostly meal by meal (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack) and mostly a historical retelling. As other reviewers note, there is a focus on how the British and French influenced meals but very little discussion about immigrants and how the foods and customs they brought changed and developed mealtimes and the content of the meals themselves. "Fast food" gets mentioned, but mostly prior to the rise of McDonald's and the like--McDonald's itself has an entry in the index that redirects the reader to another topic (!).
I couldn't help but compare this to another recent food book I read, Soul Food. I liked how the author there compared specific items of soul food, but organized it by the history, the changes over time, and how they were cooked. And while in this book takes a much broader view (instead of one specific cuisine within the American diet) I thought author Carroll could have really taken a page or two from there (although Soul Food was published one month before).
It's really too bad, because as a concept this would be a fantastic read. But it really needs more research in some areas, and perhaps dividing the entire book into thirds (or more) for each meal). As a resource this probably isn't a bad book to consult, but if you're looking for how fast food/food trucks changed how the regular worker gets their lunch or the movement towards natural/organic/non-GMO foods have influenced buying and eating habits, etc. the reader will have to go elsewhere.
Got it from the library and would recommend someone do the same unless they need it for a paper.
July 6, 2015
This was an intriguing read. I love social histories and have often wondered how we arrived at the structure of meals we have today. For some time I thought it was due to the changing nature of the family unit and that is true to a point. Author Carroll provides evidence that it was business (agrarian to urban jobs) more than anything that influenced what we now call breakfast, lunch and dinner.
She sets out to prove or bust the popular assumptions about the way we eat. Indeed, she points out that it is not...you are what you eat...but rather...we are how we eat. The book is replete with interesting facts and figures. We make over 200 food decisions a day and are influenced by many things including aromas, menu design, packaging along with the "the depth of a mug, and the radius of a plate." Carroll observes, "Though we spend far less time cooking than previous generations, we spend more time reading, talking, and watching shows about food."
The book is a chronological narrative. It is comes from sound research, is well written and hugely entertaining. The author points out that she first started to write a book on snacking but the research led her to a more holistic telling. That is why one chapter is dedicated to the evolution of the snack. I was surprised to find that the first chapter on Colonial America held my interest more than the others. The evolution of how we dine is rooted here.
Other parts that were fascinating include the ongoing tension between meat and both vegetables and fruit. America has largely favoured meat as the cornerstone of every meal. Once lunch was the hot and significant meals of the day, the movement of the larger repast to the evening established a change in social manners. It became the family meal and improved conversation and intellectual discourse. Evening meals became a highly ritualized event for the one hundred years roughly between 1860 and 1960.
There is much more to enjoy within the pages including the impact of the sandwich, the packaging of breakfast, the growth in portion sizes, vegetarianism (been around longer than one would think), automats, picnics, and cafeterias. Though not exhaustive, the book is comprehensive but teases in some areas that needed more attention. Finally, the author shies away from making any predictions on where we are heading with the exception of suggesting how we conduct business will continue to play the dominant role in how we consume and that screens too will influence the dining experience.
She sets out to prove or bust the popular assumptions about the way we eat. Indeed, she points out that it is not...you are what you eat...but rather...we are how we eat. The book is replete with interesting facts and figures. We make over 200 food decisions a day and are influenced by many things including aromas, menu design, packaging along with the "the depth of a mug, and the radius of a plate." Carroll observes, "Though we spend far less time cooking than previous generations, we spend more time reading, talking, and watching shows about food."
The book is a chronological narrative. It is comes from sound research, is well written and hugely entertaining. The author points out that she first started to write a book on snacking but the research led her to a more holistic telling. That is why one chapter is dedicated to the evolution of the snack. I was surprised to find that the first chapter on Colonial America held my interest more than the others. The evolution of how we dine is rooted here.
Other parts that were fascinating include the ongoing tension between meat and both vegetables and fruit. America has largely favoured meat as the cornerstone of every meal. Once lunch was the hot and significant meals of the day, the movement of the larger repast to the evening established a change in social manners. It became the family meal and improved conversation and intellectual discourse. Evening meals became a highly ritualized event for the one hundred years roughly between 1860 and 1960.
There is much more to enjoy within the pages including the impact of the sandwich, the packaging of breakfast, the growth in portion sizes, vegetarianism (been around longer than one would think), automats, picnics, and cafeterias. Though not exhaustive, the book is comprehensive but teases in some areas that needed more attention. Finally, the author shies away from making any predictions on where we are heading with the exception of suggesting how we conduct business will continue to play the dominant role in how we consume and that screens too will influence the dining experience.
September 11, 2013
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The modern demise of the family dinner is much bemoaned these days. But how long has this really been a tradition? When did it start? Why did it happen? These and other questions are answered in fascinating detail in Three Squares.
Caroll takes a historical view of thr American meal, beginning with pilgrim pottages and moving thru Victorian dinner parties and factory lunch pails to TV dinners and our current dinner habits. She draws on first-hand accounts of recipes and menus for a glimpse into what was considered acceptable dining across centuries of American gastronomic history.
This book gives a broad view of dinner's development, illustrated with many interesting details. For example, did you know most pilgrims would've subsisted largely on one-pot meals of grain, suet and greens all boiled together (sounds awful!) Or that Thomas Jefferson was considered a bit odd for the variety of fruits and vegetables he grew at Monticello? Victorians threw elaborate dinner parties as measures of class and wealth but believed enjoying food too much was a moral weakness. Up until 100 years ago, steak was a popular breakfast food. All of these facts and more fit into an informative big picture story.
Along the way, Caroll also writes about the roles of women/housewives towards food preparation. Our ideal of Mom making dinner for Dad when he comes home from work and the kids when they come home from school is actually a relatively recent concept, albeit a logical conclusion of the past 300 years of eating habits in America.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes food or books about food- or is just curious and wanting to learn something new. I certainly learned a lot, and enjoyed myself in the process. Now let me make myself a snack...
The modern demise of the family dinner is much bemoaned these days. But how long has this really been a tradition? When did it start? Why did it happen? These and other questions are answered in fascinating detail in Three Squares.
Caroll takes a historical view of thr American meal, beginning with pilgrim pottages and moving thru Victorian dinner parties and factory lunch pails to TV dinners and our current dinner habits. She draws on first-hand accounts of recipes and menus for a glimpse into what was considered acceptable dining across centuries of American gastronomic history.
This book gives a broad view of dinner's development, illustrated with many interesting details. For example, did you know most pilgrims would've subsisted largely on one-pot meals of grain, suet and greens all boiled together (sounds awful!) Or that Thomas Jefferson was considered a bit odd for the variety of fruits and vegetables he grew at Monticello? Victorians threw elaborate dinner parties as measures of class and wealth but believed enjoying food too much was a moral weakness. Up until 100 years ago, steak was a popular breakfast food. All of these facts and more fit into an informative big picture story.
Along the way, Caroll also writes about the roles of women/housewives towards food preparation. Our ideal of Mom making dinner for Dad when he comes home from work and the kids when they come home from school is actually a relatively recent concept, albeit a logical conclusion of the past 300 years of eating habits in America.
I highly recommend this book to anyone who likes food or books about food- or is just curious and wanting to learn something new. I certainly learned a lot, and enjoyed myself in the process. Now let me make myself a snack...
March 24, 2015
Unlike eating, this book isn't really a pleasure, guilty or not. But it's a fascinating pantry of history, morsels that have held true since the arrival of the pilgrims. Remarkably, the way Americans ate and how their eating habits have evolved have parlayed into Westernized societies that have developed since.
Carroll writes with the earnestness of a food historian, but not the ravenous aplomb of a food writer. Feast on the first three-quarters of her book - how baked beans and pies came to be in the New World, how French cuisine came to influence American multi-course meals, how lunch was invented. When she starts on how Americans got fat is when the information you can glean from the book becomes slim pickings, because it's nothing we (or most of us... or the well nutritionally heeled) didn't already know about the commercialization of the food industry and the selling of sugar, proceessed ingredients and everything else you shouldn't put into your body. She stops short of where magazines like Bon Appetit and Saveur are picking up, which is the glamourization and re-maturation of home cooking, seasonal produce and fresh flavors, but she highly approves of this return to when the concept of dinner was the most important meal of the day. Breakfast may be for champions, but the evening repast is for fortifying the soul.
It's striking to discover so many food pattern similes persisting for the last few centuries - the low nutrition of school meals, too much reliance on meat, orange juice and vitamin mania, and dyspepsia, the mother of today's obesity. If only we learn from eating history - take the sound nutritional ABCs, discard the tasteless XYZs. This book would be a great start to better understanding how we chow.
Carroll writes with the earnestness of a food historian, but not the ravenous aplomb of a food writer. Feast on the first three-quarters of her book - how baked beans and pies came to be in the New World, how French cuisine came to influence American multi-course meals, how lunch was invented. When she starts on how Americans got fat is when the information you can glean from the book becomes slim pickings, because it's nothing we (or most of us... or the well nutritionally heeled) didn't already know about the commercialization of the food industry and the selling of sugar, proceessed ingredients and everything else you shouldn't put into your body. She stops short of where magazines like Bon Appetit and Saveur are picking up, which is the glamourization and re-maturation of home cooking, seasonal produce and fresh flavors, but she highly approves of this return to when the concept of dinner was the most important meal of the day. Breakfast may be for champions, but the evening repast is for fortifying the soul.
It's striking to discover so many food pattern similes persisting for the last few centuries - the low nutrition of school meals, too much reliance on meat, orange juice and vitamin mania, and dyspepsia, the mother of today's obesity. If only we learn from eating history - take the sound nutritional ABCs, discard the tasteless XYZs. This book would be a great start to better understanding how we chow.
December 4, 2014
It's easy to think that the way we eat, with some minor variatios, is just the way things have always been. This informative little book shows that the concept of the American meal has changed greatly over the past two centuries. Some of our modern meals didn't exist then (lunch), some have moved to different times of day (dinner) and the third has been renovated beyond recognition in several forms (breakfast). And what goes around comes around; it seems that in the past few decades we've re-adopted the indigenous habit of eating what we can, when we can -- although with very different nutritional results.
Carroll writes that she admittedly started to write about just about the history of snacking, but found that this was hard to do since it's hard to talk about "non-meals" without considering "meals". Hers is a balanced approach that takes into account all aspects of meals and meal making, including available ingredients through the last few centuries, changing cooking implements and techniques, cultural and class influences, and the rise of processed food and its accompanying advertising. This all makes it sounds rather sweeping and possibly stuffy, but be assured that this is quite readable.
I especially enjoyed the earlier parts of the book that discussed early cookery and meal practices in American, but I got more than I expected out of the later chapters, too. A lot of the changes I've seen in meals and eating over the last 40-something years are outlined toward the end. Her overview of the rise of packaged foods, especially breakfast cereals, is really enlightening.
Carroll writes that she admittedly started to write about just about the history of snacking, but found that this was hard to do since it's hard to talk about "non-meals" without considering "meals". Hers is a balanced approach that takes into account all aspects of meals and meal making, including available ingredients through the last few centuries, changing cooking implements and techniques, cultural and class influences, and the rise of processed food and its accompanying advertising. This all makes it sounds rather sweeping and possibly stuffy, but be assured that this is quite readable.
I especially enjoyed the earlier parts of the book that discussed early cookery and meal practices in American, but I got more than I expected out of the later chapters, too. A lot of the changes I've seen in meals and eating over the last 40-something years are outlined toward the end. Her overview of the rise of packaged foods, especially breakfast cereals, is really enlightening.
October 31, 2016
The book reviews the history of meals (primarily in the US). The first chapters (about the evolution of the main/largest meal moving from the middle of the day to the evening) was poorly written, the author skips around so much time-wise (1700s, 1900s, back to the 1800s, etc.) and country-wise (US, Europe, back to the US, etc.), I almost stopped reading the book. However, I did slog through, and found the later chapters on lunch, breakfast, and snacks much more interesting (and readable).
Most interesting was the creation of lunch- the period when most people in the US were shifting from eating the biggest meal of the day at noon to evening, primarily due to people moving from farms to factories (which often didn't have facilities for a large, hot mid-day meal), which also meant that kids who in the past went home for lunch now had lunch at school (which also often didn't have facilities for a large, hot, mid-day meal-hence the creation of the "dinner pail" or lunch box). Apparently this led to some confusion in the late 1800s when people went to a restaurant (or other people's homes) in the middle of the day and were never sure if they would be getting a big (dinner) or small (lunch) meal until around the turn of the century or so when "dinner" finally most commonly meant the largest meal of the day for most people.
Most interesting was the creation of lunch- the period when most people in the US were shifting from eating the biggest meal of the day at noon to evening, primarily due to people moving from farms to factories (which often didn't have facilities for a large, hot mid-day meal), which also meant that kids who in the past went home for lunch now had lunch at school (which also often didn't have facilities for a large, hot, mid-day meal-hence the creation of the "dinner pail" or lunch box). Apparently this led to some confusion in the late 1800s when people went to a restaurant (or other people's homes) in the middle of the day and were never sure if they would be getting a big (dinner) or small (lunch) meal until around the turn of the century or so when "dinner" finally most commonly meant the largest meal of the day for most people.
March 5, 2015
The history of food and its cultural significance fascinate me. I was excited to read and had high hopes for this book. Indeed, the information is interesting, but Carroll presents it in the least engaging way possible. This book desperately needs a good editor. I caught everything from redundancy and poor sentence structure to completely lazy spelling errors. She would bring up something that sounded fascinating, but dedicate no more than a parenthetical to mentioning it, let alone explaining how it worked (how on earth did early Americans teach dogs to rotate the food in their ovens? I want to know!!). At other points, she over-explained things that were painfully obvious. These are issues I worked on and overcame while writing my undergraduate capstone paper. If someone with only a bachelor's degree and virtually no editorial experience can see these things, why couldn't the professional editor have? WHERE WAS HE OR SHE??? I wanted to finish the book and learn as much as I could, but, sadly, the writing was so distracting in its mediocrity that I could not continue. Very disappointing.
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