Fashionable Food: Seven Decades of Food Fads

by Sylvia Lovegren

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.

Genres: Food, History, Nonfiction, Cookbooks, Food History, Cooking, Foodie

464 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 1995

Reviews

[Meg Powers · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the most fun books I've read in a long time. An in-depth history of the food trends 20th Century U.S. Citizens subjected themselves to, complete with recipes guaranteed to churn your stomach. The way food trends have illustrated the socio-economical health of our nation is both fascinating and upsetting. Unfortunately, because this was compiled in the early 90s, we get a lot of very dated health warnings and have to wade through a whole section on contemporary (for when it was written) South Western food trends.
Check this book out for a fun and fast-paced history of eating for fashion (and, for several decades) not for taste.

[Fishface · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not only a fascinating read, but it's a perfect gift for almost anyone. It's full of crazy, horrid and often delicious recipes, documenting all the food fads in America from the 1920s into the 1980s. The reminder of the food-in-flames-and-served-on-a-bed-of-ice fad from the Sixties brought a tear of nostalgia to my eye...Also full of recipes, both delicious and horrifying.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Unfortunately, my copy was not "delightfully illustrated".

I love food books. I love history of food books. I really love history of American food books.

This book is a quick read, mainly because so much of the book is recipes. I enjoyed Sylvia Lovegren's sense of humor - who can't resist poking fun at Spam and gelatin salads? Poke fun she does. It's a pretty quick history through the decades. Some of this stuff I knew, some I didn't know. I did like that she quoted from quite a few cookbooks that I actually own.

There were a few downsides for me.

1 - It was written in the mid-90's so there is still 20 more years of food history to cover! I'm missing the advent of the internet, of the Food Network, of America's Test Kitchens. She mentions that Tibetan food never caught on in this country. I can think of a few Tibetan restaurants but it could be my location or they could be more recent than this book. She would mention trends that have passed and I'd think - isn't that really IN right now? Maybe I'm wrong, or maybe certain foods have cycled in and out. 20 years is a long time. And with some trends that are decidedly passe (according to the author), I'm just now becoming aware of them. Maybe I'm out of touch?

2 - The first few decades focus on home-cooking and the last few decades focused on eating out. Admittedly, we started eating out more and more as the decades progressed. But I found the last few decades lacking as far as what was really happening in middle class households. I did not run in the circles that ate haute cuisine or nouveau cuisine and although she would mention how some high end fads made their way into home kitchens, I felt it wasn't truly representative of how I ate or how the people I knew ate. We learned about nachos in the early 80's at sporting events. There was Isadora and her avocado plant in the 1970's. There's a lot of little things on how I perceive food that wasn't touched on in this book.

3 - And what's with the hatred of the Baby Boomers? Is Sylvia Lovegren a different generation? I'm not sure. After her statement that the last of the Baby Boomers passed their 30 year milestone by 1980, I think she is a bit off in her dates. The last Boomers hit the big 3-OH about the time she was writing this book! And maybe the selfish, narcissistic, me-first Boomers did strongly influence the food from 1970 on, but the constant haranguing she gave those people was a little tiresome.

Anyway, the book was fun (generally) but it left me wanting so much more. She barely, barely mentioned that women had to go into the work force and food changed because of that. She didn't mention the advent of home freezers and the development of frozen foods, although she does mention frozen foods in her recipes. But I realize she had a lot to cover and she does say she has to skim over a few things.

[Stewart Tame · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fun book. It's equal parts cookbook and history lesson. Lovegren goes decade by decade through the 20th century--okay, she starts in the 20's and ends in the 90's; close enough--giving recipes and information about America's favorite food fads. I lost count of how many of these dishes provoked a shock of recognition as I saw familiar dishes from my childhood and even adulthood and realized how old my grandma or mom or aunt or whoever must have been when they learned that particular recipe. Some of these I want to try making myself. If you've ever wondered why we eat some of the things we eat, or even despaired of the latest food craze, this book will help put it all in perspective. The prose gets a little stodgy in spots, but it's still a rewarding read.

[Liquidlasagna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Amazone

Excellent Social History of American Recipes

Fashionable Food, Seven Decades of Food Fads by culinary historian and food writer, Sylvia Lovegren is a great addition to the social history of American culinary folkways, especially with its concentration on actual, tested recipes from each of the seven subject decades from the 1920s to the 1980s. It is an interesting contrast in approach to `Something from the Oven' by Laura Shapiro that deals more with narrative and less with recipes. The ideal book would have been a combination of the two techniques.

The most important thing to remember is that Ms. Lovegren is talking about things that were `fashionable', not with the demographics of food habits. As Ms. Shapiro points out in her book, the advent of the convenience foods after World War II did not permeate American cooking. They, along with their most vocal proponent, Poppy Cannon, got a lot of attention, but were always viewed as shortcuts and not necessarily a tectonic shift in American cooking habits.

Reading a version of this book revised and republished in 2005 makes me wonder why the author did not update the material in this book to cover the last 15 years, where the playing out of so many trends, and the origin of so many new ones would have added so much interesting material to the book. The advent of the Food Network alone may have warranted a chapter. In all, the coverage of food journalism, especially TV food journalism is just a little thin. Dione Lucas and Jeff Smith (the Frugal Gourmet) are mentioned briefly and Julia Child is given her due for her truly incredible influence on American eating, but there is no mention of, for example Martin Yan, the Galloping Gourmet, and local TV cooking shows. While I take the book at its word since my interest in culinary writing is no more than three years old, I get the sense that virtually everything the author says about the 1980s is still true today. There is little that was popular in 1985 that is not a hot item on today's cooking shows or in today's cookbooks.

On the other hand, I applaud the attention the author gives to M.F.K. Fisher's statements and writings. Ms. Fisher is too easily forgotten in the towering shadow of Julia Child and the leading current distaff celebs, Alice Waters and Deborah Madison. That doesn't mean Ms. Waters and Ms. Madison are not given their due. I especially like the fact that Ms. Lovegren has not taken sides on the issue of who originated the `California Cuisine'. The primary contenders are Alice Waters and Jeremiah Tower, Chez Panisse and Waters' first major chef who helped set the course for Chez Panisse along the lines laid out by Richard Olney's writings on `simple French food'.

Like all good social and cultural history, the book does its share of explaining interesting facts, such as why the Chinese ended up in so many tailor, laundry, and cooking jobs. It was, according to Ms. Lovegren, simply because these were women's occupations and therefore virtually the only ones open to former Chinese railroad workers.

In addition to the seven main chapters on the decades, there are two interludes, one covering early Chinese food and the other covering other oriental foods in America. Here again, we seem to miss any coverage of the increase of popularity in Thai and Vietnamese food. The focus on the `other oriental foods' highlights `Trader Vic' restaurants and their founder, Victor Bergeron.

The thing I like the best about this book is that it does not equate `fads' with `poor quality'. In fact, several `fads' later in the author's decades are the `foodie' movement toward more interesting food, the health food agenda which improved the quality of its regimen over the decades, and the still growing interest in locally grown foods. This is why it is so important for the book to include good working recipes.

The absence of a lot of analysis ties into another weakness with this book in that so many food trends did not recognize decade boundaries. Conventional wisdom, for example, commonly defines `the sixties' as being roughly between the assassination of President Kennedy / Arrival of the Beatles and the resignation of President Nixon closing out the Watergate scandal. I think it would have been more interesting and more accurate to follow individual food trends through the years rather than to chop up the trends into arbitrary decades.

I am struck, for example, by the fact that three major food trends important today had their origins in the sixties. The first and most obvious is the foodie movement with Julia Child as its fountainhead. The second is the health foods / organic food movement spearheaded by Adele Davis' writings plus the great influence of Rachel Carson's `Silent Spring'. I will go out on a limb here and say that the third major movement is in the influence of regional / cultural cuisines growing out of the `soul food' movement. As the author so accurately points out, people have been eating collards, okra, and black eyed peas for centuries, but it took the civil rights / black pride movement to make an icon of this aspect of black culture.

As befitting a book published by the University of Chicago press, this book has good scholarly accouterments, including careful references to the sources of all recipes plus proper cautions on recipes which were not tested by the author or her colleagues. I must give the copy editor a slap on the hand for missing the misspelling Jeremiah Tower's first name in the Preface, especially since Monsieur Tower's name is properly spelled later in the book.

This is an excellent, highly enjoyable book to read and an interesting source of `historical' recipes. It would be great to see it brought up to date.

B. Marold

[Kerith · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a treat! I've read this so many times. Lovegren discusses food "fashions" from the 20s to the early 90s (thus missing the enduring coffee shop phenomenon), sharing good "keeper" recipes and scarier ones that didn't last, like some of the 20s weirdo salads and other strange concoctions. It is such fun. A must read for anyone who loves reading about food and food history.

[Lilah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lots of fun historical info and recipes, but blanded out by a superficial writing style prone to repetition - author has maxed out her lifetime allotment of using the words "dainty" and "goofy."

[Jennifer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Note that it was written in the mid-90s, so the "modern" perspective isn't modern anymore. One line in the section on the 1990s, about how a certain fad was probably going to be a lasting one, made me laugh. Did you even read your own book???

I also wish the author hadn't substituted the ingredients in some of the recipes (or at least printed the originals for those she did modify).

I would love to see an update, with full sections on the 1990s, aughts, and 2010s.

[Amber Ray · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining read but I’d have left out the recipes unless they were illustrating a particular point or gathered them in one section. I preferred the discussion of the food trends.
I agree with another reviewer that women going to work and middle class food needed more detail. Convenience food and the backlash against it could have used more details.
A new rewrite with updates and expanded information would be fabulous.

[Colleen Criswell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really neat book with some very interesting recipes from bygone eras. would have loved photos of these foods, but sadly there weren't any.

[Donny Nelson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love food history books and really enjoyed this one, broken down by each decade from the 20’s through 80’s (and a little bit of 90’s).

[MargaretDH · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was a wonderful and detailed chronicle of 60 years of American food. Roughly two thirds text to recipes, the book traces the rise and fall of foods like marshmallows, fondue and granola. I appreciated the detail and the author's willingness to test almost every recipe (I'm happy to give her a pass on the one that calls for a live possum).

Lovegren looks mostly at middle class cooking here. Of course everyone has to eat, but she's focusing on the kinds of food people ate when they could afford to be choosy at the grocery store, and also had to cook it themselves. It also looks at the kind of food that people were eating at restaurants.

Though the book was complete as it was, I wish Lovegren had moved beyond simply chronicling the food fads into deeper historical argument and analysis. Here and there, she does offer some suggestions about why certain food was popular, but I wanted more. In the section about soul food, for example, she discusses the peak popularity of a certain kind of southern food, historically associated African Americans. There was a great deal she could have said about the intersection of race and class, and an analysis of why these foods began to appeal to groups that had formerly looked down on them. In addition, much of the food in the first half of the book is gendered, and while she touches on things like ladies menus and the masculine art of grilling, I wish she had gone deeper into what food can tell us about gender performance.

My only real critique is that Lovegren goes much easier on the green peppercorns of the 1980s than the party loaves of the 1950s. Given that the book was originally published in 1994, I suppose it makes sense. From the vantage point of 2015, the chapter on the 1980s highlights the ways in which food and the subjective way we conceptualize good taste (both flavour and discernment) are deeply coloured by the world around us and the culture that we are steeped in.

[Sheryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book considerable, but started getting skeptical when she hit the seventies and offered a recipe for "Heavenly Tea Tang" -- it's true that recipe was popular in the seventies, but I never heard of anyone calling it Heavenly anything; it was called Russian Tea in North Carolina and Colorado (the two states I lived in that decade), and also in the midwest states where I visited relatives and had it. Which horrifies any Russian who has ever run across it, granted, but there it is. I also heard it called Friendship Tea or Spiced Tea, but "Heavenly Tea Tang" was completely off my radar in the 1970s.

Still, aside from that title mis-step, she seems to be pretty accurate in terms of trendy foods. Brunch, frittatas, Zuchini bread, pumpkin bread, crepes -- I remember all those being big in the 1970s. Strongly suspect no one ever made Granola Fondue, but she offers that as a pretty far-out example, so whatever.

Reading this book really brought home why so few food history books discuss what people actually ate or what home cooks make -- too hard to document! Popular trends are fairly easy to track, especially when it comes to restaurant food, but what people were eating at home, not so much.

[Sarra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, especially if you like this sort of reading (I do). Focuses almost exclusively on the foods consumed by middle- and upper-class white people; aside from a few paragraphs on the popularity of soul food in the 1960s, there's no discussion of what poorer families and people of color were eating. I found that a major failing.
Also: she mentions Paul Prudhomme's size not once, but twice. I don't recall her doing that with any other chef in the book (perhaps she mentioned Julia Child's height?). I don't think that being fat is bad, obviously, but his size is irrelevant to the impact his cooking had. And when you make a point of "PAUL PRUDHOMME WAS SOOOO FAT" while mentioning the physique of no other chef in the book, you look like a sizeist jerk.

[PennsyLady (Bev) · Rating 4 out of 5]

hardcover

When I wanted to be entertained and learn a bit about American culinary history, Fashionable Food: Seven Decades of Food Fads (1995) was suggested

Beginning in the 1920s, the reader observes the food experience post WWI (the average man to upper crust).
It proceeds on, including domestic innovations that would allow the continual evolution of what Americans put on the dinner place.

Chapters cover decades (the twenties to the nineties) with an occasional exotic interlude chapter.

I found the book to be a culinary journey that is both lively and informative.

[Jessica · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book for the most part. The only thing I took issue with was when the author published the recipe examples that related to the history, in her notes often times she would say, the original recipe called for this, or the original recipe had half a cup of butter but I reduced it so it wasn't so fatty. I would have rather her publish the original recipes as is without her own preferences and tastes butting in. Otherwise I would have rated this a 4 star book

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

YES. This book is amazing. I loved sharing some of the ridiculous recipes with my friends while reading it. Recipes are sprinkled throughout Lovegren's well-researched (albeit brief) history of each decade's food trends. She covers the 1920s to the 1980s. There is a very small chapter on the 1990s, but it isn't nearly as informative as the others. (Keep in mind that she first wrote this in 1995). Highly enjoyable and entertaining.

[Bach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fashionable Food is a really rich read on the history of fads in America, everything from Americanized Chinese to more jello molds then you ever possibly wanted to know about. It's funny, thoughtful material that really highlights eccentricities of popular culture and the incredibly fast-changing attitudes on food in our America. Well worth a read, I really enjoyed it.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

When researching food online, I kept running into recommendations for this book. Man, oh, man, am I glad I bought it! It was a fascinating look at the food fads from the 1920s on, along with a few representative recipes. Fascinating and well-written.

[HadiDee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed this look at food trends since the 1920s. A book to be flicked through and dipped into, a reminder of where some recipe originated and some that that should never have been invented... banana and popcorn salad?

[Nicole C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fun romp. The author takes you on a culinary journey through popular food fads from the 1920s through the 80s, and the interesting, and sometimes disgusting, trends. I will never understand the idea of encasing everything in gelatin (yay, Fifties)!

[Carolyn Page · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oy Vey. This book is hilarious! And kind of gross. Just like remembering that those 40's starlets on the silver screen would have reeked of cigarette smoke, this book reminds you that old people made bad decisions too.

[Snail in Danger (Sid) Nicolaides · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book with lots of recipes: some terribly amusing (or just terrible), some that you'd actually want to make. Served up with a side of history.

[Hilary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting! Eugene really wants me to make some of the recipes and doesn't understand why some things like Frozen Cheese Salad sound kind of gross today :)

[Michele J · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am a big-time foodie so I thought that I would love this book. I did find the history of the recipes interesting but there are very few recipes I actually wanted to make.

[Pancha · Rating 3 out of 5]

History of food fads in America, interspersed with recipes. Fans of those gross pictures of jello salads will enjoy this book.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 1 out of 5]

Sadly, really just a collection of dated recipes from period cookbooks. No real context or discussion.