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American Cuisine: And How It Got This Way
For centuries, skeptical foreigners—and even millions of Americans—have believed there was no such thing as American cuisine. In recent decades, hamburgers, hot dogs, and pizza have been thought to define the nation’s palate. Not so, says food historian Paul Freedman, who demonstrates that there is an exuberant and diverse, if not always coherent, American cuisine that reflects the history of the nation itself.
Combining historical rigor and culinary passion, Freedman underscores three recurrent themes—regionality, standardization, and variety—that shape a completely novel history of the United States.
From the colonial period until after the Civil War, there was a patchwork of regional cooking styles that produced local standouts, such as gumbo from southern Louisiana, or clam chowder from New England. Later, this kind of regional identity was manipulated for historical effect, as in Southern cookbooks that mythologized gracious “plantation hospitality,” rendering invisible the African Americans who originated much of the region’s food.
As the industrial revolution produced rapid changes in every sphere of life, the American palate dramatically shifted from local to processed. A new urban class clamored for convenient, modern meals and the freshness of regional cuisine disappeared, replaced by packaged and standardized products—such as canned peas, baloney, sliced white bread, and jarred baby food.
By the early twentieth century, the era of homogenized American food was in full swing. Bolstered by nutrition “experts,” marketing consultants, and advertising executives, food companies convinced consumers that industrial food tasted fine and, more importantly, was convenient and nutritious. No group was more susceptible to the blandishments of advertisers than women, who were made feel that their husbands might stray if not satisfied with the meals provided at home. On the other hand, men wanted women to be svelte, sporty companions, not kitchen drudges. The solution companies offered was time-saving recipes using modern processed helpers. Men supposedly liked hearty food, while women were portrayed as fond of fussy, “dainty,” colorful, but tasteless dishes—tuna salad sandwiches, multicolored Jell-O, or artificial crab toppings.
The 1970s saw the zenith of processed-food hegemony, but also the beginning of a food revolution in California. What became known as New American cuisine rejected the blandness of standardized food in favor of the actual taste and pleasure that seasonal, locally grown products provided. The result was a farm-to-table trend that continues to dominate.
“A book to be savored” (Stephen Aron), American Cuisine is also a repository of anecdotes that will delight food lovers: how dry cereal was created by William Kellogg for people with digestive and low-energy problems; that chicken Parmesan, the beloved Italian favorite, is actually an American invention; and that Florida Key lime pie goes back only to the 1940s and was based on a recipe developed by Borden’s condensed milk. More emphatically, Freedman shows that American cuisine would be nowhere without the constant influx of immigrants, who have popularized everything from tacos to sushi rolls.
“Impeccably researched, intellectually satisfying, and hugely readable” (Simon Majumdar), American Cuisine is a landmark work that sheds astonishing light on a history most of us thought we never had.
Combining historical rigor and culinary passion, Freedman underscores three recurrent themes—regionality, standardization, and variety—that shape a completely novel history of the United States.
From the colonial period until after the Civil War, there was a patchwork of regional cooking styles that produced local standouts, such as gumbo from southern Louisiana, or clam chowder from New England. Later, this kind of regional identity was manipulated for historical effect, as in Southern cookbooks that mythologized gracious “plantation hospitality,” rendering invisible the African Americans who originated much of the region’s food.
As the industrial revolution produced rapid changes in every sphere of life, the American palate dramatically shifted from local to processed. A new urban class clamored for convenient, modern meals and the freshness of regional cuisine disappeared, replaced by packaged and standardized products—such as canned peas, baloney, sliced white bread, and jarred baby food.
By the early twentieth century, the era of homogenized American food was in full swing. Bolstered by nutrition “experts,” marketing consultants, and advertising executives, food companies convinced consumers that industrial food tasted fine and, more importantly, was convenient and nutritious. No group was more susceptible to the blandishments of advertisers than women, who were made feel that their husbands might stray if not satisfied with the meals provided at home. On the other hand, men wanted women to be svelte, sporty companions, not kitchen drudges. The solution companies offered was time-saving recipes using modern processed helpers. Men supposedly liked hearty food, while women were portrayed as fond of fussy, “dainty,” colorful, but tasteless dishes—tuna salad sandwiches, multicolored Jell-O, or artificial crab toppings.
The 1970s saw the zenith of processed-food hegemony, but also the beginning of a food revolution in California. What became known as New American cuisine rejected the blandness of standardized food in favor of the actual taste and pleasure that seasonal, locally grown products provided. The result was a farm-to-table trend that continues to dominate.
“A book to be savored” (Stephen Aron), American Cuisine is also a repository of anecdotes that will delight food lovers: how dry cereal was created by William Kellogg for people with digestive and low-energy problems; that chicken Parmesan, the beloved Italian favorite, is actually an American invention; and that Florida Key lime pie goes back only to the 1940s and was based on a recipe developed by Borden’s condensed milk. More emphatically, Freedman shows that American cuisine would be nowhere without the constant influx of immigrants, who have popularized everything from tacos to sushi rolls.
“Impeccably researched, intellectually satisfying, and hugely readable” (Simon Majumdar), American Cuisine is a landmark work that sheds astonishing light on a history most of us thought we never had.
528 pages, Hardcover
First published October 15, 2019
64 people are currently reading
3776 people want to read
About the author
Paul Freedman
37 books114 followersPaul H. Freedman is the Chester D. Tripp Professor of History at Yale University. He specializes in medieval social history, the history of Spain, the study of medieval peasantry, and medieval cuisine.
His 1999 book Images of the Medieval Peasant won the Medieval Academy's prestigious Haskins Medal.
~~
Professor Freedman specializes in medieval social history, the history of Spain, comparative studies of the peasantry, trade in luxury products, and history of cuisine.
Freedman earned his BA at the University of California at Santa Cruz and an MLS from the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. He earned a Ph.D. in History at the same institution in 1978. His doctoral work focused on medieval Catalonia and how the bishop and canons interacted with the powerful and weak elements of lay society in Vic, north of Barcelona. This resulted in the publication of The Diocese of Vic: Tradition and Regeneration in Medieval Catalonia (1983).
Freedman taught for eighteen years at Vanderbilt University before joining the Yale faculty in 1997. At Vanderbilt, he focused on the history of Catalan peasantry, papal correspondence with Catalonia and a comparative history of European seigneurial regimes. He was awarded Vanderbilt’s Nordhaus Teaching Prize in 1989 and was the Robert Penn Warren Humanities Center Fellow there in 1991-1992. During that time he published his second book, Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia (1991).
Since coming to Yale, Professor Freedman has served as Director of Undergraduate Studies in History, Director of the Medieval Studies Program and Chair of the History Department. He has offered graduate seminars on the social history of the Middle Ages, church, society and politics, and agrarian studies (as part of a team-taught course).
Freedman was a visiting fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte in Göttingen in 2000 and was directeur d’Études Associé at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris in 1995. He also published his third book, Images of the Medieval Peasant (1999) and two collections of essays: Church, Law and Society in Catalonia, 900-1500 and Assaigs d’historia de la pagesia catalana (writings on the history of the Catalan peasantry translated into Catalan).
More recently Freedman edited Food: The History of Taste, an illustrated collection of essays about food from prehistoric to contemporary times published by Thames & Hudson (London) and in the US by the University of California Press (2007). His book on the demand for spices in medieval Europe was published in 2008 by Yale University Press. It is entitled Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination. Freedman also edited two other collections with Caroline Walker Bynum, Last Things: Death and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (1999) and with Monique Bourin, Forms of Servitude in Northern and Central Europe (2005).
A Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, Freedman is also a corresponding fellow of the Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona and of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His honors include a 2008 cookbook award (reference and technical) from the International Association of Culinary Professionals (for Food: The History of Taste) and three awards for Images of the Medieval Peasant: the Haskins Medal of the Medieval Academy (2002), the 2001 Otto Gründler prize given by the Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, and the Eugene Kayden Award in the Humanities given by the University of Colorado. He won the American Historical Association’s Premio del Rey Prize in 1992 (for The Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia) and shared the Medieval Academy’s Van Courtlandt Elliott prize for the best first article on a medieval topic in 1981.
His 1999 book Images of the Medieval Peasant won the Medieval Academy's prestigious Haskins Medal.
~~
Professor Freedman specializes in medieval social history, the history of Spain, comparative studies of the peasantry, trade in luxury products, and history of cuisine.
Freedman earned his BA at the University of California at Santa Cruz and an MLS from the School of Library and Information Studies at the University of California at Berkeley. He earned a Ph.D. in History at the same institution in 1978. His doctoral work focused on medieval Catalonia and how the bishop and canons interacted with the powerful and weak elements of lay society in Vic, north of Barcelona. This resulted in the publication of The Diocese of Vic: Tradition and Regeneration in Medieval Catalonia (1983).
Freedman taught for eighteen years at Vanderbilt University before joining the Yale faculty in 1997. At Vanderbilt, he focused on the history of Catalan peasantry, papal correspondence with Catalonia and a comparative history of European seigneurial regimes. He was awarded Vanderbilt’s Nordhaus Teaching Prize in 1989 and was the Robert Penn Warren Humanities Center Fellow there in 1991-1992. During that time he published his second book, Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia (1991).
Since coming to Yale, Professor Freedman has served as Director of Undergraduate Studies in History, Director of the Medieval Studies Program and Chair of the History Department. He has offered graduate seminars on the social history of the Middle Ages, church, society and politics, and agrarian studies (as part of a team-taught course).
Freedman was a visiting fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut für Geschichte in Göttingen in 2000 and was directeur d’Études Associé at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris in 1995. He also published his third book, Images of the Medieval Peasant (1999) and two collections of essays: Church, Law and Society in Catalonia, 900-1500 and Assaigs d’historia de la pagesia catalana (writings on the history of the Catalan peasantry translated into Catalan).
More recently Freedman edited Food: The History of Taste, an illustrated collection of essays about food from prehistoric to contemporary times published by Thames & Hudson (London) and in the US by the University of California Press (2007). His book on the demand for spices in medieval Europe was published in 2008 by Yale University Press. It is entitled Out of the East: Spices and the Medieval Imagination. Freedman also edited two other collections with Caroline Walker Bynum, Last Things: Death and the Apocalypse in the Middle Ages (1999) and with Monique Bourin, Forms of Servitude in Northern and Central Europe (2005).
A Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, Freedman is also a corresponding fellow of the Real Academia de Buenas Letras de Barcelona and of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans. He is a member of the American Philosophical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His honors include a 2008 cookbook award (reference and technical) from the International Association of Culinary Professionals (for Food: The History of Taste) and three awards for Images of the Medieval Peasant: the Haskins Medal of the Medieval Academy (2002), the 2001 Otto Gründler prize given by the Medieval Institute at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, and the Eugene Kayden Award in the Humanities given by the University of Colorado. He won the American Historical Association’s Premio del Rey Prize in 1992 (for The Origins of Peasant Servitude in Medieval Catalonia) and shared the Medieval Academy’s Van Courtlandt Elliott prize for the best first article on a medieval topic in 1981.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 53 reviews
September 3, 2019
It’s time for dinner and we have a decision to make. Should we have Chinese or Italian, or how about some Thai at that new little restaurant that just opened across the street? Maybe sushi or a sit-down at a fancy French restaurant? So many styles of cooking, but where is American in all this? That’s the question Paul Freedman has set out to answer and he does so admirably. Taking on the history of food in America, he gives us a 200-year course in everything from ethnic foods, to desserts, to great chefs and restaurants. So is there actually something that can be called American Cuisine? I’ll leave that for you to discover inside these pages. Have fun!
October 24, 2019
I felt he was a blowhard who has no idea that American Cuisine is a combination of our melting pot culture. He looked his nose down on the weird mid-century recipes & the simple foods of the working class. He completely ignores the midwest.. the land of farming & stockyards because of trains. He continued to go back to Southern foods of junior league women or the upscale restaurants of the east. I got through over half the book & if he didnt mention fried chicken then he mentioned fish of the eastern seaboard. My mother told me stories of bean sandwiches in the depression & the vegetables they grew during WW 2 in Chicago. He spoke of that period of unique food as if it was some kind quirk no its because what was available through either lack of money or ration. This author needs to stick to medieval times that is his forte in his fancy elitist eastern ivy school
December 27, 2020
I found the book to be very readable despite covering a broad array of U.S. culinary regions and time periods. Highly recommend, if you are a foodie and a history buff.
My biggest lesson from this book is how popular gelatin entrees and desserts had once been. Having been born in 1986, Jello meant "jigglers" to me, but I had clearly arrived in the later innings of Jello's assault on American cuisine (the Jello green salad was a headscratcher).
That said, I have a few serious criticisms, and one whimsical one. One the serious side, I cannot help but feel that the author begins to shift his focus from "home cooking" to restaurants beginning around the 1970s. It strikes me as an unfair comparison. I do think it is clear that a culinary movement took hold in the restaurant world moving us from a nation that valued "heavy" cuisine (think your traditional steakhouse) to one which began to value the process and origin of food (i.e. the local food movement). However, I am not sure if that revolution has truly taken hold in 90% of what folks eat. Convenience still reigns paramount in home cooking, and despite seeing a preponderance of local chicken at restaurants, not sure I've ever cooked a local chicken at home...In other words, he does not do justice to the larger point that the bulk of the nation's food system remains nationalized. Sure, there are farmers' markets, but those are maybe a 1-day a week supply of food. Secondly, he contends that during the 1950's, etc., food quality was eroded by convenience. He really squares-up against Wonder white bread. But there are other examples (homogenized peanut butter, bottled salad dressing, etc.). For one, measuring "quality" is impossible--perhaps folks like the soft texture of Wonder more than the rougher texture of an artisanal bakery loaf? And even if they don't, he needs to compare apples-to-apples. Yes, maybe bottled salad dressing is not as good as a world renowned chef's salad dressing...but for most people, it's either the bottled dressing or ma's canola oil mixed with some vinegar with too much oil and not enough seasoning. Point being, for many folks, convenience likely also brought with it an uptick in quality. My third issue is he forgets the hidden costs of "artisanal" food from scratch. It takes time. That "time" had been performed at one time period by unpaid labor—from slavery in antebellum South to the 1930's housewife. Perhaps the resurgence of labor-intensive restaurant cooking is a byproduct of a higher gini coefficient. If the top [10%] of the country has a high opportunity cost of labor relative to the bottom [10%], we're bound to see an increased willingness for the wealthy to pay the poor to prepare food, with less sensitivity to labor-time inputs. In other words, the very movement he applauds is likely made possible due the abundance of low-paid labor.
My final point (and whimsical criticism), is that he referenced The Sopranos while discussing sushi, but passed-over another great popular culture sushi moment (and one which certainly played into the mystique of sushi in American '90's consciousness)—The Simpsons' episode in which Homer decides to try something new and ends up eating a deadly blowfish at the sushi restaurant.
My biggest lesson from this book is how popular gelatin entrees and desserts had once been. Having been born in 1986, Jello meant "jigglers" to me, but I had clearly arrived in the later innings of Jello's assault on American cuisine (the Jello green salad was a headscratcher).
That said, I have a few serious criticisms, and one whimsical one. One the serious side, I cannot help but feel that the author begins to shift his focus from "home cooking" to restaurants beginning around the 1970s. It strikes me as an unfair comparison. I do think it is clear that a culinary movement took hold in the restaurant world moving us from a nation that valued "heavy" cuisine (think your traditional steakhouse) to one which began to value the process and origin of food (i.e. the local food movement). However, I am not sure if that revolution has truly taken hold in 90% of what folks eat. Convenience still reigns paramount in home cooking, and despite seeing a preponderance of local chicken at restaurants, not sure I've ever cooked a local chicken at home...In other words, he does not do justice to the larger point that the bulk of the nation's food system remains nationalized. Sure, there are farmers' markets, but those are maybe a 1-day a week supply of food. Secondly, he contends that during the 1950's, etc., food quality was eroded by convenience. He really squares-up against Wonder white bread. But there are other examples (homogenized peanut butter, bottled salad dressing, etc.). For one, measuring "quality" is impossible--perhaps folks like the soft texture of Wonder more than the rougher texture of an artisanal bakery loaf? And even if they don't, he needs to compare apples-to-apples. Yes, maybe bottled salad dressing is not as good as a world renowned chef's salad dressing...but for most people, it's either the bottled dressing or ma's canola oil mixed with some vinegar with too much oil and not enough seasoning. Point being, for many folks, convenience likely also brought with it an uptick in quality. My third issue is he forgets the hidden costs of "artisanal" food from scratch. It takes time. That "time" had been performed at one time period by unpaid labor—from slavery in antebellum South to the 1930's housewife. Perhaps the resurgence of labor-intensive restaurant cooking is a byproduct of a higher gini coefficient. If the top [10%] of the country has a high opportunity cost of labor relative to the bottom [10%], we're bound to see an increased willingness for the wealthy to pay the poor to prepare food, with less sensitivity to labor-time inputs. In other words, the very movement he applauds is likely made possible due the abundance of low-paid labor.
My final point (and whimsical criticism), is that he referenced The Sopranos while discussing sushi, but passed-over another great popular culture sushi moment (and one which certainly played into the mystique of sushi in American '90's consciousness)—The Simpsons' episode in which Homer decides to try something new and ends up eating a deadly blowfish at the sushi restaurant.
April 16, 2020
I actually first saw this book in a getpocket.com article suggested article. (https://getpocket.com/explore/item/ho...) I was intrigued by the article and saw that NYPL had this book so I checked it out.
I'm not that much of a foodie so I felt like a lot of the stuff just went in one eye and out the other. However, the historical bits and explanations of how American Cuisine came to be was absolutely fascinating and described in great detail. This was a great book to read over the past few months.
My notes from the book:
Variety and choice obscure blandness. They compensate for drawbacks of mass production
1st third of book was a little boring for me. The last 2/3rd was much better.
American attitude about food is seeing it as partially as a threat and partially as a resource. Something to be mastered by science rather than enjoyed.
Ethnic restaurants in the US don't reflect demand or demographics of those people.
Chinese Mexican and Italian combined account for 70% of ethnic food in the US
Xian famous foods once hired cashiers that didn't know English to seem more authentic
Burger King saved by angry founder
"Two eminent historians of food only half jokingly remarked that the so-called Mediterranean diet is essentially the summer food served at Italian peach resorts in the 1960s marketed to Americans"
It's promising that many big national food companies have made their products more organic and used simpler ingredients due to demand
I'm not that much of a foodie so I felt like a lot of the stuff just went in one eye and out the other. However, the historical bits and explanations of how American Cuisine came to be was absolutely fascinating and described in great detail. This was a great book to read over the past few months.
My notes from the book:
Variety and choice obscure blandness. They compensate for drawbacks of mass production
1st third of book was a little boring for me. The last 2/3rd was much better.
American attitude about food is seeing it as partially as a threat and partially as a resource. Something to be mastered by science rather than enjoyed.
Ethnic restaurants in the US don't reflect demand or demographics of those people.
Chinese Mexican and Italian combined account for 70% of ethnic food in the US
Xian famous foods once hired cashiers that didn't know English to seem more authentic
Burger King saved by angry founder
"Two eminent historians of food only half jokingly remarked that the so-called Mediterranean diet is essentially the summer food served at Italian peach resorts in the 1960s marketed to Americans"
It's promising that many big national food companies have made their products more organic and used simpler ingredients due to demand
April 7, 2020
Comprehensive nonfiction book about the history of American cuisine from the beginnings of the country to today, including the controversial question of is there even such a thing as "American cuisine".
If you're not that interested in the topic it might come off as a bit textbook-y, but I didn't find it dry at all and thought much of it was quite fascinating. I never heard of a "jonnycake", but it was a fundamental part of early-American New England cooking that has completely disappeared (it's like a pancake but made with cornmeal).
The book included lots of pictures including ads which now seem ridiculous ("drink a soda 1/2 hour before dinner and it will decrease your appetite!"), and blasts-from-the-past like what TV dinners used to look like (those rhombus-shaped compartments...).
It also reminded me about the gelatin salad phenomenon of the 70's. Oh my god. So people would suspend pineapple chunks, marshmallows, and apple chunks in Jello and call it "salad"?
There is loads of info about regional cuisine, the rise of fast food and convenience foods, what fancy dining and "ethnic" cuisine has meant over the years, and trends and fads over the decades/centuries. Lots of stuff you will remember, and lots you probably never knew.
If you're not that interested in the topic it might come off as a bit textbook-y, but I didn't find it dry at all and thought much of it was quite fascinating. I never heard of a "jonnycake", but it was a fundamental part of early-American New England cooking that has completely disappeared (it's like a pancake but made with cornmeal).
The book included lots of pictures including ads which now seem ridiculous ("drink a soda 1/2 hour before dinner and it will decrease your appetite!"), and blasts-from-the-past like what TV dinners used to look like (those rhombus-shaped compartments...).
It also reminded me about the gelatin salad phenomenon of the 70's. Oh my god. So people would suspend pineapple chunks, marshmallows, and apple chunks in Jello and call it "salad"?
There is loads of info about regional cuisine, the rise of fast food and convenience foods, what fancy dining and "ethnic" cuisine has meant over the years, and trends and fads over the decades/centuries. Lots of stuff you will remember, and lots you probably never knew.
January 26, 2022
I have been interested in food history since I fist began cooking. American Cuisine and How it Got this Way considers developments in recent history from 1900, and most particularly from 1970 to today. So, it was almost a revisiting of my own culinary heritage.
The story arc of food in American during this time period was away from the regional and local food sources and heritage and regional cuisine to the standardization and decline of food quality that came with mass production, grocery stores, and chain restaurants. More recently, the trend toward organic, local, and ethical foods has grown from its hippie 70s roots.
The author dives into menus, recipes, cookbooks, and advertising to find out what we were eating.
One pull out list I particularly enjoyed was Food Fads and Fashions from the Late Nineteenth to Early Twenty-First Centuries.
Mom's three-bean salad and love of grilling in the summer were 1950s fads. When I was first married, salad bars and Quiche Lorraine were all the rage, and we loved Chinese foods. Lemon bars were found at every potluck. Yep--fads. Our son grew up with salsa always in the house, and I made a lot of pasta salad, typical 80s fads. As a young man in college, the Asian fusion fad impacted how he cooks today. And in the 21st c, he has embraced craft beers, barbecued meats, Siracha, Kimchi, and quinoa, the new fads.
I enjoyed different chapters more than others. Since I have little experience eating out in top restaurants around the country, I skimmed the chapters detailing their impact. It was interesting to learn that there was really a Duncan Hines. I also enjoyed the social and economic aspect of the history in The Golden Age of Food Processing 1880-1970. Another chapter was on the rise of ethnic restaurants, mostly altered for American tastes.
I purchased a copy of this book.
The story arc of food in American during this time period was away from the regional and local food sources and heritage and regional cuisine to the standardization and decline of food quality that came with mass production, grocery stores, and chain restaurants. More recently, the trend toward organic, local, and ethical foods has grown from its hippie 70s roots.
The author dives into menus, recipes, cookbooks, and advertising to find out what we were eating.
One pull out list I particularly enjoyed was Food Fads and Fashions from the Late Nineteenth to Early Twenty-First Centuries.
Mom's three-bean salad and love of grilling in the summer were 1950s fads. When I was first married, salad bars and Quiche Lorraine were all the rage, and we loved Chinese foods. Lemon bars were found at every potluck. Yep--fads. Our son grew up with salsa always in the house, and I made a lot of pasta salad, typical 80s fads. As a young man in college, the Asian fusion fad impacted how he cooks today. And in the 21st c, he has embraced craft beers, barbecued meats, Siracha, Kimchi, and quinoa, the new fads.
I enjoyed different chapters more than others. Since I have little experience eating out in top restaurants around the country, I skimmed the chapters detailing their impact. It was interesting to learn that there was really a Duncan Hines. I also enjoyed the social and economic aspect of the history in The Golden Age of Food Processing 1880-1970. Another chapter was on the rise of ethnic restaurants, mostly altered for American tastes.
I purchased a copy of this book.
November 10, 2019
I won this Advanced Uncorrected Proof in a Goodreads Giveaway. As an Advanced Uncorrected Proof, it certainly needed more editing! That is my main reason for the 4 star rating. It still needs a bit of improvement! Still, I managed to get through it all and not lose sight of what was being said in the book. Likewise, I hope my review does not suffer from poor editing. I certainly apologize, in advance, if it does.
As a person who enjoys history and food, I found this book a delightful combination of these two subject matters! For the last 16 years, I have been on a quest to understand food, nutrition and its effect on human health and in particular, its role in both contributing to autoimmune disease and in preventing and helping to manage symptoms of autoimmune disease. I have been on this quest for personal reasons and not as a formal course of study.
For many years, I have searched and read many websites, history and food and nutrition books, and gotten many answers and solutions—(I do have multiple allergies and food intolerances). (For some people things like gluten, soy, sulfites, along with many other common and not so common allergy inducing foods/ingredients are indeed toxic and not just avoided due to personal choice). Still I wanted to learn more about how the American diet had gotten this way. I had the small picture and I wanted the bigger societal picture. Until this book none had ever promised to explain to me how our daily meals got this way. Needless to say, I was very intrigued when I saw this book listed in the Goodreads Giveaways! (Thank you for offering it Liveright!)
Having grown up a child of the 1970s, in what I felt was a modern time of great innovation and change, I had always felt that my generation had been the first "processed food generation." We had been the guinea pigs and were now suffering the ramifications of the modern society we were forced to grow up in or so I also believed. We lived through the era of moms heading off to work, of women rebelling against women's things like cooking and tending house and of a new found convenience in food distributed by giant corporations both in and out of the home.
I had never known how far back in history processed foods had taken a hold on the American diet. This was a very big eye-opener for me. I no longer see my parents or grandparents as most certainly being raised on "wholesome foods-back in the nostalgically idyllic good old day" that sometimes makes its way into my mind. Many factors dictated what people were able and chose to eat back then just as they do today. Many of those factors are not the same, while many more are: financial standing, exposure to outside influences in the various media forums, upbringing to name a few.
While reading this book, I remembered my college history professor saying that "these are the good old days." That is, today is always the idyllic good old day. Today we can look back at all that has come before us and make our own reality better, the caveat though is that we must know our past.
When it comes to food and nutrition, I know quite a bit. When it comes to American food history, I have to concede that while I did understand my family food history, to a great extent, I didn’t understand how many foods became a part of my family diet. It was very interesting for me to read the parts that dealt with the Basque Country, Catalonia, the American Southwest, and Northern Mexico since I have ancestors from all of those areas. It was a very nice addition to all my prior historical readings on the Iberian peninsula and Spain's later influence in the Western Hemisphere of which I am a direct product of.
While I can readily identify Pre-Columbian American fruits, vegetables, grains and animals due to my prior studies and due to the fact that I am both an avid cook and gardener. I was still able to learn a lot about American food history, that I didn't know. In the book, the author touched upon many food realities: the industrial food complex; the organic movement; obesity, the melting pot of America; the lack of “authenticity” of the “authentic”; the legitimate authentic; the blending of Old World and New World foods yesterday and today, and where it may be heading in the future; and the role media has played in creating American Cuisine to name a few. It was interesting, albeit a tiny bit too meandering and wordy in its attempt to cover just a bit too much—(like my prior sentence! Ha!).
All in all, I found American Cuisine And How it Got This Way to be a very educational and enjoyable read. I am very happy to have won this book. I really enjoyed reading it. I intend to apply the knowledge I learned in it in a very practical way. It is a book I will pass on to my daughters to read as they have been on my food knowledge quest along with me for as long as I am sure they can remember.
As a person who enjoys history and food, I found this book a delightful combination of these two subject matters! For the last 16 years, I have been on a quest to understand food, nutrition and its effect on human health and in particular, its role in both contributing to autoimmune disease and in preventing and helping to manage symptoms of autoimmune disease. I have been on this quest for personal reasons and not as a formal course of study.
For many years, I have searched and read many websites, history and food and nutrition books, and gotten many answers and solutions—(I do have multiple allergies and food intolerances). (For some people things like gluten, soy, sulfites, along with many other common and not so common allergy inducing foods/ingredients are indeed toxic and not just avoided due to personal choice). Still I wanted to learn more about how the American diet had gotten this way. I had the small picture and I wanted the bigger societal picture. Until this book none had ever promised to explain to me how our daily meals got this way. Needless to say, I was very intrigued when I saw this book listed in the Goodreads Giveaways! (Thank you for offering it Liveright!)
Having grown up a child of the 1970s, in what I felt was a modern time of great innovation and change, I had always felt that my generation had been the first "processed food generation." We had been the guinea pigs and were now suffering the ramifications of the modern society we were forced to grow up in or so I also believed. We lived through the era of moms heading off to work, of women rebelling against women's things like cooking and tending house and of a new found convenience in food distributed by giant corporations both in and out of the home.
I had never known how far back in history processed foods had taken a hold on the American diet. This was a very big eye-opener for me. I no longer see my parents or grandparents as most certainly being raised on "wholesome foods-back in the nostalgically idyllic good old day" that sometimes makes its way into my mind. Many factors dictated what people were able and chose to eat back then just as they do today. Many of those factors are not the same, while many more are: financial standing, exposure to outside influences in the various media forums, upbringing to name a few.
While reading this book, I remembered my college history professor saying that "these are the good old days." That is, today is always the idyllic good old day. Today we can look back at all that has come before us and make our own reality better, the caveat though is that we must know our past.
When it comes to food and nutrition, I know quite a bit. When it comes to American food history, I have to concede that while I did understand my family food history, to a great extent, I didn’t understand how many foods became a part of my family diet. It was very interesting for me to read the parts that dealt with the Basque Country, Catalonia, the American Southwest, and Northern Mexico since I have ancestors from all of those areas. It was a very nice addition to all my prior historical readings on the Iberian peninsula and Spain's later influence in the Western Hemisphere of which I am a direct product of.
While I can readily identify Pre-Columbian American fruits, vegetables, grains and animals due to my prior studies and due to the fact that I am both an avid cook and gardener. I was still able to learn a lot about American food history, that I didn't know. In the book, the author touched upon many food realities: the industrial food complex; the organic movement; obesity, the melting pot of America; the lack of “authenticity” of the “authentic”; the legitimate authentic; the blending of Old World and New World foods yesterday and today, and where it may be heading in the future; and the role media has played in creating American Cuisine to name a few. It was interesting, albeit a tiny bit too meandering and wordy in its attempt to cover just a bit too much—(like my prior sentence! Ha!).
All in all, I found American Cuisine And How it Got This Way to be a very educational and enjoyable read. I am very happy to have won this book. I really enjoyed reading it. I intend to apply the knowledge I learned in it in a very practical way. It is a book I will pass on to my daughters to read as they have been on my food knowledge quest along with me for as long as I am sure they can remember.
abandoned-couldn-t-bear-to-finish
November 26, 2019Just abandoned. It was a little academic and I struggled to get through it before it was due back to the library. Interesting, though not what I thought it would be. Biggest takeaway? There was once vegetable-flavored Jell-O.
May 29, 2019
Excellent book!!!
December 11, 2019
Thanks to W.W. Norton & Company and the Liveright imprint for giving me an advanced readers copy of this book!
This food history dates from colonial times (but focuses mostly on the 1890s and the beginnings of mass food production onward) and provides necessary complications to a number of simple notions about American cuisine. Over the decades, our national cuisine has been conceived of as being traditionless, as consisting of regional dishes, or as reflecting a melting pot of immigrants, and it turns out that none of these notions stands on its own, although they each have some root in reality and color each other. In addition, our relationship with European traditions about what constitutes haute cuisine is much more fraught than I expected.
The best chapter, "Women and Food in the Twentieth Century," also does the most cultural work, showing how convenience foods were driven far more by corporate priorities than homemakers' preferences, although the exact opposite was perceived, leaving female consumers and their supposedly timid tastes with the blame for the blandness of mass produced foods. It turns out that the notion that women have a pronounced "sweet tooth" or otherwise different culinary tastes than men is one that Freedman is unable to find before the twentieth century, and American women actually provided a fair amount of resistance to the products they are supposed to have greeted as their liberators from the kitchen. I wanted to see some more analysis like this with regards to race; Freedman acknowledges that slaves' intellectual contributions in particular have been systematically ignored through centuries of food writing, but he doesn't uncover much to correct the record.
The last hundred pages or so, bringing us through the seventies into the present, are largely concerned with the renaissance in local terroir and simple presentation of ingredients most famously identified with the work of Alice Waters. It's an interesting exploration of some important work, but it's also frustratingly unsatisfying: an alien reading those chapters could be forgiven for thinking that Americans had rejected processed and fast food altogether in favor of healthy and flavorful alternatives. It's not until the afterward that Freedman corrects the impression, but he explains the continuing prevalence of McDonalds as a result of the slowness of cultural change rather than, to my mind, more interesting and likely economic phenomena including wealth inequality and problems of scalability. Freedman credits millennials with shifting significant market share from traditional companies like Nestlé to smaller manufacturers like Amy's Kitchen but doesn't question how different Amy's is, beyond consumer perception, from those longstanding behemoths. And he cites the spread of Whole Foods as a reflection of Americans' shifting values but, again, ignores the economics. Is Whole Foods really part of a healthier and more ecologically responsible food infrastructure, or is it a cynical profit grab for the sector of the market wishing for such a thing? (You can guess where my own suspicions lie.) Still, the genuinely good news, even if much of it is priced beyond many of our means, is good to read about.
This food history dates from colonial times (but focuses mostly on the 1890s and the beginnings of mass food production onward) and provides necessary complications to a number of simple notions about American cuisine. Over the decades, our national cuisine has been conceived of as being traditionless, as consisting of regional dishes, or as reflecting a melting pot of immigrants, and it turns out that none of these notions stands on its own, although they each have some root in reality and color each other. In addition, our relationship with European traditions about what constitutes haute cuisine is much more fraught than I expected.
The best chapter, "Women and Food in the Twentieth Century," also does the most cultural work, showing how convenience foods were driven far more by corporate priorities than homemakers' preferences, although the exact opposite was perceived, leaving female consumers and their supposedly timid tastes with the blame for the blandness of mass produced foods. It turns out that the notion that women have a pronounced "sweet tooth" or otherwise different culinary tastes than men is one that Freedman is unable to find before the twentieth century, and American women actually provided a fair amount of resistance to the products they are supposed to have greeted as their liberators from the kitchen. I wanted to see some more analysis like this with regards to race; Freedman acknowledges that slaves' intellectual contributions in particular have been systematically ignored through centuries of food writing, but he doesn't uncover much to correct the record.
The last hundred pages or so, bringing us through the seventies into the present, are largely concerned with the renaissance in local terroir and simple presentation of ingredients most famously identified with the work of Alice Waters. It's an interesting exploration of some important work, but it's also frustratingly unsatisfying: an alien reading those chapters could be forgiven for thinking that Americans had rejected processed and fast food altogether in favor of healthy and flavorful alternatives. It's not until the afterward that Freedman corrects the impression, but he explains the continuing prevalence of McDonalds as a result of the slowness of cultural change rather than, to my mind, more interesting and likely economic phenomena including wealth inequality and problems of scalability. Freedman credits millennials with shifting significant market share from traditional companies like Nestlé to smaller manufacturers like Amy's Kitchen but doesn't question how different Amy's is, beyond consumer perception, from those longstanding behemoths. And he cites the spread of Whole Foods as a reflection of Americans' shifting values but, again, ignores the economics. Is Whole Foods really part of a healthier and more ecologically responsible food infrastructure, or is it a cynical profit grab for the sector of the market wishing for such a thing? (You can guess where my own suspicions lie.) Still, the genuinely good news, even if much of it is priced beyond many of our means, is good to read about.
November 24, 2021
It turns out that it has always been fashionable among culinary snobs to assert that there is no such thing as American cuisine. And that snobbery has always been false.
In Paul Freedman's American history of food, "American Cuisine: And How It Got This Way," the author boils US food history down to two competing urges. On one hand, American food has been marked by a futuristic technological urge towards the efficient, the fast, and the (relatively) healthy. On the other hand, there is a nostalgic, curious desire for variety and authenticity. This struggle is in the background of all of American food history. For every down-home restaurant, there is a powdered mix. For every fast-food restaurant, there is a local delicacy. And this tension continues today in the push-and-pull between concepts like "farm to table" and "regional cuisine" and ideas like "molecular gastronomy" and "fast-casual."
Personally, I think this is a rather compelling thesis, but even if it weren't such a convincing argument, there would be a lot here to keep your interest. Freedman drops fascinating tidbits about the history and development of food in the US all over the place: Nashville hot chicken is relatively new, ranch dressing wasn't popularized until the 1980s, Heinz really is one of 57 flavors, and on and on. No matter how much you know about food, you will leave with a better sense of American cuisine.
"American Cuisine" takes you from the origins of our country with oysters and drop biscuits through the era of celebrity chefs and small plates with a thoughtful eye towards how food shapes culture and vice versa. And no matter how much you agree or disagree with Freedman's points, you will never again tolerate someone claiming that America doesn't have a cuisine all its own.
In Paul Freedman's American history of food, "American Cuisine: And How It Got This Way," the author boils US food history down to two competing urges. On one hand, American food has been marked by a futuristic technological urge towards the efficient, the fast, and the (relatively) healthy. On the other hand, there is a nostalgic, curious desire for variety and authenticity. This struggle is in the background of all of American food history. For every down-home restaurant, there is a powdered mix. For every fast-food restaurant, there is a local delicacy. And this tension continues today in the push-and-pull between concepts like "farm to table" and "regional cuisine" and ideas like "molecular gastronomy" and "fast-casual."
Personally, I think this is a rather compelling thesis, but even if it weren't such a convincing argument, there would be a lot here to keep your interest. Freedman drops fascinating tidbits about the history and development of food in the US all over the place: Nashville hot chicken is relatively new, ranch dressing wasn't popularized until the 1980s, Heinz really is one of 57 flavors, and on and on. No matter how much you know about food, you will leave with a better sense of American cuisine.
"American Cuisine" takes you from the origins of our country with oysters and drop biscuits through the era of celebrity chefs and small plates with a thoughtful eye towards how food shapes culture and vice versa. And no matter how much you agree or disagree with Freedman's points, you will never again tolerate someone claiming that America doesn't have a cuisine all its own.
October 31, 2025
This unimpressive history spends too much time mourning the loss of obscure regional dishes and too little time explaining how the cuisine of actual modern Americans came to rule the roost.
The central question of “American Cuisine” is compelling (what constitutes American cuisine and how did it evolve to what we see today?), but the author spent so much time complaining that the book felt more like a polemic and less like a history.
I get the impression that the author wants to extol the virtues of American high cuisine to prove it is on par with other high cuisines. But that isn’t an argument worth making, in my opinion. American food doesn’t need to be equivalent; it just needs to be distinctive. I believe it is and I believe the author does too. But this book is not a good representation of that belief.
The central question of “American Cuisine” is compelling (what constitutes American cuisine and how did it evolve to what we see today?), but the author spent so much time complaining that the book felt more like a polemic and less like a history.
I get the impression that the author wants to extol the virtues of American high cuisine to prove it is on par with other high cuisines. But that isn’t an argument worth making, in my opinion. American food doesn’t need to be equivalent; it just needs to be distinctive. I believe it is and I believe the author does too. But this book is not a good representation of that belief.
July 2, 2022
There are some interesting sections of this book. Some feel like they are summaries of things I've already read about historic foodways and I really would have liked a deeper dive into community cookbooks. I did like the discussion of the various cookbooks that have attempted to document popular foods in America. The last section is a discussion of current food trends, mostly as it relates to fine dining and the rise of the Food Network. I took me a long time to read, not just because I was only reading it on the train during my commute but because the book is quite dense with information.
July 10, 2024
A bit dry, but helpful all the same. American Cuisine provides an overview of American food history and argues that what demarcates American cuisine is not any particular dish but rather the American value for efficiency and eclecticism.
July 2, 2022
This is a very comprehensive history of food in America, so it reads a bit like a textbook. I found it interesting though, and learned a lot about how palates have changed over the years. Who knew jello could be used for almost anything - including main dishes!
May 15, 2020
A long and winding account of the development of modern American cuisine. There’s liberal amounts of social history covered during the journey, from racism to immigrant issues to the feminist movement but it does eventually always come back to food. There are some interesting trivia bits, such as the fact that Duncan Hines was an actual person, but overall I found it a long journey for very little payoff. I’m not sure Freedman ever really proves his thesis—that there is, and always has been, a distinctly American cuisine.
December 13, 2020
3.5. It’s fine.
January 17, 2022
Really enjoyable look at American taste and food habits over time …. Except the bits where I felt too called out 😬 but very worth the time if you have an interest in food or history
June 22, 2022
The author can not get through a Chapter without shoving some Lefty/Woke propaganda into every topic. If you want to read another book on how bad White people are and how man created climate change, this might be for you.
And, addendum: to be extremely clear: I have had (and still do) Black friends since birth, both U.S. and African-born. This guy, coming from the home of the Woke, needs to cause division both in class and race as part of his food history? He needs to write a different book.
Does he even like food? I can not imagine sitting across from this smug turd and being able to lift a fork.
Update: I re-read the parts that angered me. They are worse then I thought. This guy has no love of food. He is obviously deep into Theory. Food as a power play. Something is deeply wrong when a person like this writes about food. Was it a plan to de-romanticize food and use food to create division? I guess this must be the backroom payment deal, the Yale social engineering project, that floated this flotsam up to the good folks trying to enjoy themselves at the swim-up bar.
Thanks, but no thanks. Good thing you have tenure in times when tenure rewards this type of hatred of the normal (regardless of colour) populace. Enjoy your insect burgers and Rx Tacos in the Davos Crypt.
And, addendum: to be extremely clear: I have had (and still do) Black friends since birth, both U.S. and African-born. This guy, coming from the home of the Woke, needs to cause division both in class and race as part of his food history? He needs to write a different book.
Does he even like food? I can not imagine sitting across from this smug turd and being able to lift a fork.
Update: I re-read the parts that angered me. They are worse then I thought. This guy has no love of food. He is obviously deep into Theory. Food as a power play. Something is deeply wrong when a person like this writes about food. Was it a plan to de-romanticize food and use food to create division? I guess this must be the backroom payment deal, the Yale social engineering project, that floated this flotsam up to the good folks trying to enjoy themselves at the swim-up bar.
Thanks, but no thanks. Good thing you have tenure in times when tenure rewards this type of hatred of the normal (regardless of colour) populace. Enjoy your insect burgers and Rx Tacos in the Davos Crypt.
November 16, 2019
3.5 stars. This is a fun introduction to American cuisine. It's midway between a popular work and an academic work. A good place to start--when you get to a part that particularly interests you, look in the footnotes and see what books were referenced and then read those to go more in depth. The author repeats himself in parts, not just with info but with throwaway jokes, and I think more editing would have gone a long way. Occasionally there are sections where important info seemed to be left out. I found myself re-reading paragraphs wondering, "surely he must have mentioned the name of the restaurant being referenced" and such. Sample recipes were an entertaining touch. Overall I found it a bit too general, too much of an overview without enough details or analysis beyond the most obvious. As an example--by chance I started to read the section on "the Mediterranean diet" just after reading about the same topic in Bill Bryson's recent book on the human body. Bryson goes into much more detail on the topic than Freedman, and while I wouldn't expect Freedman's book to go too deep into the controversies or science related to the diet a bit more context and info would have helped.
February 27, 2022
Would serve as a good textbook on a survey of American culinary history, but is a bit dry. Also important to note that this is America in the sense of political entity of the USA as little is said about the traditions and influences of indigenous people.
There are pockets of interest, especially when Freedman relates the foods back to historical events and the influence of non-white groups during various points. Admittedly it’s a Herculean task to survey something as ubiquitous as food over a stupidly large country (with multiple areas of agricultural climates). I also enjoyed the discussion of socioeconomic development of food production in the US and the effect of trends. In particular, the point that the availability of foods in supermarkets and the way non urban areas are set out actually limits food diversity as Americans buy things in bulk to save a trip (verses purchasing fresh foods daily).
The audiobook format, admittedly, is perhaps not the best way to consume this book as some sections end with a recipe which are read in a jarring way.
There are pockets of interest, especially when Freedman relates the foods back to historical events and the influence of non-white groups during various points. Admittedly it’s a Herculean task to survey something as ubiquitous as food over a stupidly large country (with multiple areas of agricultural climates). I also enjoyed the discussion of socioeconomic development of food production in the US and the effect of trends. In particular, the point that the availability of foods in supermarkets and the way non urban areas are set out actually limits food diversity as Americans buy things in bulk to save a trip (verses purchasing fresh foods daily).
The audiobook format, admittedly, is perhaps not the best way to consume this book as some sections end with a recipe which are read in a jarring way.
January 23, 2022
"Does America have a cuisine the way France and Italy do?" is an old question. Freedman's answer is yes, but starting in the 19th century it was defined by convenience, processed food and mediocre taste, though offering multiple choices within that range (Campbell's may not be exciting, but there's lots of soups you can pick). More recently, there's been an emphasis on regaining flavor and better quality, though that coexists along the mass-market model rather than completely displacing it.
Freedman does a good, necessarily sprawling job of showing how our food evolved: regional and season stuff in the colonial years and antebellum days, the growth of big food companies that went with the blandest possible taste, the ethnic restaurants (he also discusses the influence of African American cooking on mainstream American food and how it's often airbrushed out of history) and the Food Network's success. Dry, but very informative.
Freedman does a good, necessarily sprawling job of showing how our food evolved: regional and season stuff in the colonial years and antebellum days, the growth of big food companies that went with the blandest possible taste, the ethnic restaurants (he also discusses the influence of African American cooking on mainstream American food and how it's often airbrushed out of history) and the Food Network's success. Dry, but very informative.
February 21, 2021
Dr. Freedman's entertaining, fact-filled, well-developed narrative of how American food and food culture has evolved over the past 150 years is a treat. His clear, vivid prose is adjacent to wonderful artifacts (menus, ad copy) that help illustrate the changing way Americans encountered, produced, bought, and sold food. I now have a better understanding of why American culture was so ready to adopt standardized, mass-produced products that provided variety at the expense of product integrity/quality. This book is not critique of American cuisine - it's a balanced exploration of the tradeoffs food and taste makers and consumers have made over the past centuries that have created what we identify as American cuisine.
February 5, 2020
Meticulously and impressively researched, and written with deep and obvious love for the subject. A thoroughly fascinating read that doesn't suffer much from its intentionally broad scope. That said, I do feel the author dropped the ball in one area - imagine speculating about the impacts climate change might have on American cuisine in the future and utterly failing to mention the obscene resources demanded by all forms of animal agriculture? Not wondering how the utter, undeniable unsustainability of meat, poultry, eggs, dairy, and fish might impact American cuisine in the near and distant future? It's a glaring oversight.
December 18, 2019
If you've already read fairly extensively about American food ways, you probably won't learn all that much by reading this title. However, it is a knowledgeable and comprehensive overview of the subject of just what constitutes "American cuisine" [and read "United States" for "American"] which, according to the author, is characterized by regional cooking styles, standardization compliments of large industrial food companies, and a never ending quest for variety and new taste experiences.
June 2, 2021
At first, the organization of this book was a little difficult to understand and there is a bit of going back over the same ground, as if chapters were written independently of each other. However, having finished the book, I enjoyed it a lot and I did come away with a sense of what American food means and why. I very much appreciated that this book didn't skim over the contributions of minority and marginalized groups.
October 6, 2024
American Cuisine is a languid stroll through what does, or doesn’t, constitute American food. Like the country it is, American cuisine is complex, influenced by all sorts of factors, and can be highly polarizing. Freedman doesn’t attempt to get to the bottom of it all. He wisely hits the larger influences. This is not an exhaustive history but it whets the palate. It’s engagingly written and informative too.
January 13, 2021
Overall this book was pretty interesting and full of tons of information, but occasionally I felt like his points got muddled because he was trying to make so many points with so much information about such a huge topic. I'm definitely glad I picked up the paper copy for the pictures. The ebook is just too wonkily formatted.
January 13, 2021
Before this book, I knew there wasn't really an "American cuisine" and after this book, I still feel that way. Freedman argues, among other things, that American cuisine is convenience, but I'm not sure he really convinced me. Regardless, I did enjoy the book. I learned a lot of interesting tidbits.
September 4, 2022
A good history, however it is a bit haphazard.
Begins with home cooking since that's where American lives began and then shifts to restaurants. It almost feels like there are too many trends at once to keep track of. The fast food vs casual vs formal vs at home dining are different aspects that are somewhat addressed but also missed opportunities.
Begins with home cooking since that's where American lives began and then shifts to restaurants. It almost feels like there are too many trends at once to keep track of. The fast food vs casual vs formal vs at home dining are different aspects that are somewhat addressed but also missed opportunities.
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