The Food of a Younger Land

The Food of a Younger Land

by Mark Kurlansky

Recommended by Chef José Andrés on The Drew Barrymore Show!

A portrait of American food--before the national highway system, before chain restaurants, and before frozen food, when the nation's food was seasonal, regional, and traditional--from the lost WPA files.
From the New York Times bestselling author who "powerfully demonstrates the defining role food plays in history and culture" ( Atlanta Journal-Constitution ).

In the throes of the Great Depression, a make-work initiative for authors-called "America Eats"-was created by the WPA to chronicle the eating habits, traditions, and struggles of local Americans. Mark Kurlansky, author of Salt and Cod , unearths this forgotten literary treasure, chronicling a bygone era when Americans had never heard of fast food or grocery superstores. Kurlansky brings together the WPA contributions-featuring New York automats and Georgia Coca-Cola parties, Maine lobsters and Montana beaver tails-and brilliantly showcases them with authentic recipes, anecdotes, and photographs.

Genres: Food, History, Nonfiction, Food History, Cooking, Audiobook, American History

480 pages, Paperback

First published May 14, 2009

About the author

Mark Kurlansky is an American journalist and author who has written a number of books of fiction and nonfiction. His 1997 book, Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World (1997), was an international bestseller and was translated into more than fifteen languages. His book Nonviolence: Twenty-five Lessons From the History of a Dangerous Idea (2006) was the nonfiction winner of the 2007 Dayton Literary Peace Prize.

Reviews

[Karla · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book cover says...."A portrait of American food - before the national highway system, before chain restaurants, and before frozen food, when the nation's food was seasonal, regional, and traditional". I was expecting a light read, with some humor thrown in - and I was blown away.

At the height of the Depression, the Works Progress Administration (WPA) was developed to put many of America's jobless to work doing things such as building parks (Eagle Point Park with gorgeous Frank Lloyd inspired architectural pavilions and ponds in Dubuque, Iowa)or painters such as Grant Wood (American Gothic) who has huge murals painted in the Iowa State Library, and many other creative projects to preserve America's rich history. One of the projects the WPA started was the Federal Writers' Project to help record and preserve for history the regional and ethnic foods that someone had the foresight to see were going to change, or disappear altogether with the increasingly easy transportation and influx of new ideas from different areas of the US and the world.

The book is broken down into regional areas and features short vignettes written about foods, food customs, recipes, and how they played a social role in a time now long past. Many of the short essays were written by authors who went on to become famous, others were written by average writers who simply had a tale to tell. What came out of it is a book that literally transports you back in time and enriches your sense of history in a very real way. Some of the foods talked about made my mouth water with anticipation, others made me cringe, but all showed just how much we've lost in the last century with the shift to frozen and shelf-ready standardized foods as well as the limited choices in drive-ins and chain restaurants. Many people have lost the knowledge and the eagerness of delayed gratification of biting into the first fruits and vegetables of a given season and the recipes that sprang from them, the delight of the special recipes that only a neighbor could make for the town festival, and the richness of choice and taste that came from each region's way of using what was produced close to home.

This book is a time transporter. Don't miss a chance to take the trip!

[Hester · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hot dog, this book was fun! It uses documents from the Federal Writer's Program(part of the WPA) to document regional American cooking after canning was introduced, but before fast food and frozen tv dinners became a way of life. I wish this book has been published before my father died. The first sections after the introduction are about Vermont and my father was born in Bennington in 1929. This is the food he grew up with. I remember him describing butternuts and stopped at elderly ladies' homes who sold Victorian style dinners from their living rooms. He said one winter night, on Valentine Street, when it was snowing, he say a man in a sleigh pulled by a horse. That was a rare sight, but it still happened.

Several of the dishes were really interesting and I would like to know how to cook them in modern kitchens. The Vermont picked pumpkin and pickled butternut recipes looked especially appealing. I wish I knew how the "Spanish" of the Southwest cooked their dried vegetables(esp pumpkin and cucumber). Lastly, I would like to know how to make the sourdough pancakes that show up over and over again.

There were all sorts of lost flavors I would like to try. I have never tasted a native persimmon and have only seen the Asian varieties for sale. My father used to hunt pheasant in Pennsylvania, which apparently was popular in Nebraska, but I have never tasted it.

There were plenty of other things that I am glad we have left behind, or are trying to. The extreme racism in the Southern sections turned my stomach. There was also a condescension and hostility towards outsiders epitomized in Eudora Welty's essay that I disliked. Men seemed to work very hard at proving they were men(see the multiple entries about `oysters').

There were long descriptions of Native American food traditions and the America of days gone by had a lot more seafood. New England ate more vegetables than I imagined. There were several dinners and suppers listed that were either vegetarian or used very little meat.

[Melody · Rating 2 out of 5]

Spotty is the kindest word I can use to describe this patchwork quilt of a book, drawn from source material gathered by FDR's Federal Writer's Project during the heyday of the Great Depression. It's great fun for the most part. Kurlansky's section and piece introductions are wonderful, of course. Eudora Welty's piece is, well, Eudora Welty. There are some passages from the Deep South that read as shockingly racist today. There are passages that make one understand how we have abused our fisheries, to the sorrow of the modern epicure. Parts made me laugh but there were also parts I flipped through in a hurry. The description of the Oregon Pioneer dinner was purely joyful and hilarious. Some of the recipes for beans sound better than anything modern. Mint julep recipes call for four ounces of bourbon, imagine drinking four ounces of bourbon. At breakfast. *shudder*

Overall it was a fascinating portrait, a moment in time, and well worth a read if you are at all interested in the junction between food and history.

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a pretty neat idea - publishing long forgotten works from the Federal Writers project . But, alas,, much of that work deserves to remain in the dust bin of history.

I did enjoy parts of the book quite a bit. A few of the vignettes, such as the Italian feed, are quite charming. Some of the recipes are hair-raisingly gruesome - Indiana pork cake, combining ground pork and molasses comes to mind as a prime example, though lutefisk is obviously a candidate as well.

Problems, however, almost outweigh the pleasures. The southern recipes written in dialect are offensive to the max, and while they illustrate a historical truth of how this was once acceptable writing, the modern reader should not have to endure large amounts of it. The point can be made rather quickly.

Another problem is the nature of the work - much was written by amateurs, and it shows.

Another problem is the editing. This could have been cut down even further. There is too much repetition in subject matter, and even the occasional anecdote is told more than once.

Finally, the audio version of the book - while well read - forced me to listen to recipes I would have normally scanned. And it was not always clear when it was Kurlansky's commentary, and when it was the source material.

Even so, this book is certainly worth a look-see. It does give a fascinating peek into another era.

[Teri · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Food of a Younger Land is a look at pre-WWII regional food in the United States. Kurlansky took a series of articles and recipes written under the Works Progress Administration's (WPA) Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) and compiled them into this gem of a book. These were articles and recipes intended for a project called America Eats but was abandoned around the time World War II broke out. The book is regionalized into the Northeast, South, Middle West, Far West, and Southwest areas of the US and has stories gathered through oral history as well as some old recipes you won't find in modern cookbooks like Nebraska Lamb and Pig Fries, Georgia Possum and Taters, and Montana Fried Beaver Tail. What you end up with is a wonderful look at life in the 30s and 40s, as well as details around the writers of the FWP, many who went on to have successful writing careers, like Eudora Welty and Zora Neale Hurston.

I particularly enjoyed the Introduction to the book that goes into details about the Works Progress Administration and the FWP. Kurlansky does a wonderful job of giving detailed background into the program and how he came upon the collection of writings. He also introduces each section to give you an idea of how the regional foods have changed over the years and what may still be used today.

[Samantha · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was an ambitious project and I commend Kurlansky for attempting to take it on, but the material simply didn't make for a good book.

Kurlansky's vignettes (which appear at the beginning of many of the WPA "author" segments) are often fun, mostly informative, and always well written.

The same cannot be said for the WPA essays that serve as the bulk of the content here. Most are droning and have little appeal outside of a niche audience. In many cases, the writing is so bad that they're rendered nearly unreadable.

Kurlansky clearly knew that (he tells us so directly in the introduction, warning us of the WPA's lack of proper talent vetting when hiring authors). So why, knowing that, attempt to build a book around them anyway? Perhaps a better approach might have been to springboard rather than work directly from the primary source material...collect one's own research on the topic, or ask established writers from each region to contribute.

I suppose this might appeal to serious Americana enthusiasts, but it's a flop for fan of literary foodie content, American history, and quality writing in general.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

Parts of this were very interesting but parts were not so well done; not surprising since the editor just included portions of the WPA files which were never published. Astonishing to read what some people used to eat. :-) One beef--the editor said that the Midwest had lost all connection with its regional food. Perhaps if one never ventures out of Omaha or Chicago or Kansas City. But lots of people out in the "real Midwest" still make their great-grandmother's potato salad recipe or fix pumpking bread or pie crust or cinnamon rolls from a handwritten copy of a recipe we insisted our grandmothers actually write down for us . . . it's still here. You just have to venture beyond the Applebee's and Chi-chi's and all that in the cities.

[Amy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another analysis of the essays that were meant to be compiled into one project for the WPA. Compared to America Eats, this one goes into a bit more detail about the writers and the events and food they were writing about. There is no attempt to find things going on currently, as in AE. This just presents the material as it was found in the archives, organized as it was originally intended to be. There is some overlap with AE as far as the chosen essays, but not a whole lot.

As I said in my review of AE, I really do enjoy reading the original works. It also blows my mind that the government subsidized this project. I have always known about the CCC and the infrastructure projects that were done. It is just somewhat surprising that they extended the project to writers and artists.

[Lynn Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this book so much! I love the history and what the different areas of our continent used to eat and how they prepared the food

[Kelly · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, way back during the Depression, did you know that the WPA also paid writers to write? One of their projects was to compile descriptions of regional foods and eating habits. The WPA disbanded before the project was completed, and the various drafts landed in the Library of Congress until Mark Kurlansky realized how badly they needed to be published.

I was a bit concerned about the size of the book -- a book 300+ pages long, full of unedited works has the potential to drag. Instead, the short length of the individual pieces, and the sheer variety of the content helped me speed right through. There are some poorly written pieces, but a page later you get to move onto some new snack in some new narrative voice. The other major drawback in this book is that some passages are unapologetically racist. Perhaps that is to be expected from the era, and Kurlansky provides some historical context, but it's still a bummer for the modern reader.

Finally, just to highlight some things I learned about in this book:
- Minnesota booya
- NY soda fountain jargon
- Parties focused around eggnog, coca-cola, maple sugaring or menudo

[Mindy Burroughs · Rating 5 out of 5]

I fucking love this book. I love that I work at a cafe and I’ve forced all my coworkers to learn what a pair of bulls eyes on a raft are, what an order of cat heads / murphies / or belly wash means, and how to dress a pig and make it cackle.

I dream of opening a greasy spoon where the service is angry and the orders are called out in old diner slang. And if you have a problem you can suck an egg ya bay state bum.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book is immensely disappointing on a variety of levels. Most of the book's problems result from the agenda of the writer, who seeks to find in the abortive federal project to collect local recipes some sort of lost innocence before the days of rapid travel and food techniques created a more homogenous American foodway. This would be well and good if the author was a genuine food historian whose interest was in obscure recipes and cuisines from various parts of the United States, but alas, the author has plenty of other less friendly agendas that derail the efforts. For one, the author is most fascinated by leftist politics, praising various socialist and communist efforts and neglecting the food in order to praise the grifters who were involved in this project and their careers. Unfortunately, a great many people got paid salaries to do little other than try to grouse about their job and work on getting their works published in other venues to allow themselves to no longer need to work for the government in a spot that most of them could see was a dead-end, just like this book. As a result, the author's work on the disorganized notes from the WPA project mostly remind the reader there is a reason why these documents are forgotten and neglected.

This book is nearly 400 pages long and it is divided by region, the same way that the Federal Writers Project was divided. The author begins with a short introduction and then moves on to discuss the food of the Northeast, which includes plenty of reference to New York and New England's culture as well as things like rabbit stew, lots of clam chowders, and baked beans. The author then talks about the South's eating habits, with things like African-American food, backwoods barbecues, and possum recipes as well as chitlins and a controversy over mint julep. This is followed by the foodways of the Midwest--not including Illinois--including popcorn, pork cake, lamb and pig fries, pheasants, and persimmon pudding. This is then followed by a look at the eating habits of the far west, including salmon feasts, geoduck clams, beaver tail, wild duck, and some unwarranted hostility to mashed potatoes by some Oregon wacko. This is then followed by some recipes from the Southwest, including tacos, prairie oysters, and a story of how John Walton became governor of Oklahoma. The book then ends with a brie and informal bibliography, acknowledgements, suggested reading, and an index.

Much of this would be easy enough to forgive if the food included was actually worthwhile, but that is perhaps the most disappointing aspect of this book is that it even fails the modest test of a cookbook in providing tasty and worthwhile recipes that someone might want to cook for themselves. It should not need to be said that the obvious purpose of trying to study relic foodways is to bring them back into existence through recording and writing recipes and techniques. This book does not have that in any great amount. The vast majority of the food included here is food that is biblically unclean to eat and thus unworthy of being brought back into existence. The author, as a Jew (whatever his practice of it), should have been aware of that fact, but deliberately chooses to write about foods that should not be eaten as a way of justifying the political interests of the author, which are, if anything, just as improper as the foodways that he manages to discuss from time to time. Unless you have a fondness for studying the ways that governments can waste taxpayer money by employing leftist writers to study areas outside of their competence to minimal result, this is a book that is best skipped.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m ashamed to admit I dropped my Kansas Folklore class in college. In some ways I think I was too young to really appreciate the topic, but in other ways I enjoyed it too much. Or I enjoyed it in the wrong way, rather. It was fascinating and fun, not academic, so I listened and read with rapt attention but never really took notes or consolidated my learning, and when it came time to take tests over facts and details I realized I was totally unprepared. To preserve my GPA, I dropped it halfway through the semester and stopped going. (But not before hearing how my professor became the foremost authority on the history of the cattle guard.)

Nevertheless, my interest in folklore has remained. Grown, if anything. Which made The Food of a Younger Land a great fit for me. This book is a portrait of the culture of the United States as seen through food practices before technology homogenized everything, when food was still local and eating had a very distinct regional personality. It’s history and anthropology and food and cooking and writing, all rolled into one package.

In some ways I could have quit after the lengthy introduction and been happy, because I learned about an aspect of U.S. history I was unaware of. A bit too much of that introduction follows, so I won’t belabor the point here, just say that it was fascinating reading. As was the rest of the book, although I approached it in the wrong way. It reminded me more than anything of travel food TV shows like Anthony Bourdain’s and Andrew Zimmern’s, where they use food to learn about cultures. Those are episodic in nature, and if you watch too many in a row you begin to lose track of anything practical you’ve learned. I listened to the audio of this book in marathon sessions and found myself too frequently losing focus on the string of essays, recipes, and whatnot, because this is best digested in bits and pieces since that’s what it’s composed of. I’d like to go back and reread much of the actual book when I get a chance. And try some of the recipes, even. Highly recommended.

From the introduction:

A few years ago, while putting together Choice Cuts, an anthology of food writing, I discovered to my amazement that government bureaucrats in Washington in the late 1930s were having similar thoughts. But these were not typical bureaucrats because they worked for an agency that was unique in American history, the Works Progress Administration, or WPA. The WPA was charged with finding work for millions of unemployed Americans. It sought work in every imaginable field. For unemployed writers the WPA created the Federal Writers’ Project, which was charged with conceiving books, assigning them to huge, unwieldy teams of out-of-work and want-to-be writers around the country, and editing and publishing them.

After producing hundreds of guidebooks on America in a few hurried years, a series that met with greater success than anyone had imagined possible for such a government project, the Federal Writers’ Project administrators were faced with the daunting challenge of coming up with projects to follow their first achievements. Katherine Kellock, the writer-turned-administrator who first conceived the idea for the guidebooks, came up with the thought of a book about the varied food and eating traditions throughout America, an examination of what and how Americans ate.

She wanted the book to be enriched with local food disagreements, and it included New England arguments about the correct way to make clam chowder, southern debate on the right way to make a mint julep, and an absolute tirade against mashed potatoes from Oregon. It captured now nearly forgotten food traditions such as the southern New England May breakfast, foot washings in Alabama, Coca-Cola parties in Georgia, the chitterling strut in North Carolina, cooking for the threshers in Nebraska, a Choctaw funeral, and a Puget Sound Indian salmon feast. It also had old traditional recipes such as Rhode Island jonny cakes, New York City oyster stew, Georgia possum and taters, Kentucky wilted lettuce, Virginia Brunswick stew, Louisiana tete de veau, Florida conch, Minnesota lutefisk, Indian persimmon pudding, Utah salmi of wild duck, and Arizona menudo. Ethnic food was covered, including black, Jewish, Italian, Bohemian, Basque, Chicano, Sioux, Chippewa, and Choctaw. Local oddities, such as the Automat in New York, squirrel Mulligan in Arkansas, Nebraska lamb fries or Oklahoma prairie oysters, and ten-pound Puget Sound clams, were featured. Social issues were remembered, as in the Maine chowder with only potatoes, the Washington State school lunch program, and the western Depression cake. There was also humor to such pieces, as the description of literary teas in New York, the poem "Nebraskans Eat the Weiners," and the essay on trendy food in Los Angeles.

Kellock called the project America Eats. . . .

Ironically, the chaotic pile of imperfect manuscripts has left us with a better record than would the nameless, cleaned-up, smooth-reading final book that Lyle Saxon was to have turned in. A more polished version would still be an interesting book today, a record of how Americans ate and what their social gatherings were like in the early 1940s. Like the guidebooks, it would have been well written and well laid out. And it would not have had frustrating holes and omissions. But we would have had little information on the original authors. There are among these boxes a few acknowledged masters, such as Algren and Eudora Welty, some forgotten literary stars of the 1930s, and authors of mysteries, thrillers, Westerns, children’s books, and food books, as well as a few notable local historians, several noted anthropologists, a few important regional writers, playwrights, an actress, a political speechwriter, a biographer, newspaper journalists, a sportswriter, university professors and deans, and a few poets. They were white and black, Jews, Italians, and Chicanos--the sons and daughters of immigrants, descendants of Pilgrims, and of American Indians. Typical of the times, there were a few Communists, a lot of Democrats, and at least two Republicans.

One thing that shines through the mountain of individual submissions is how well they reflect the original directive: “Emphasis should be divided between food and people.” It is this perspective that gives this work the feeling of a time capsule, a preserved glimpse of America in the early 1940s.

[Lisa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I should not have gone with the audiobook—lots of recipes, which are better read. 😬

[Dawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyed the history and recipes but not the bias.

[Claire Hall · Rating 3 out of 5]

“The Food of A Younger Land” provides an interesting glimpse at a United States not all that far in the past, but one that seems very, very far away. The materials for this book were generated by the Federal Writers Project (FWP) seventy years ago—a time still within memory for tens of thousands of Americans. Yet the food landscape of the land has changed immensely, due in large part to improved technology and transportation and the spread of restaurant chains.

Kurlansky’s introduction provides an explanation of how this effort came to be; it was the latest effort by the FWP to chronicle the life and times of the United States in the Depression era. The original concept was for the hundreds of FWP contributors to submit material that would then be edited into five major sections, corresponding to the five regions of the country as designated by the FWP. These essays would be supplemented by a few shorter pieces from each region.

By the dawn of the 1940s, the FWP was already seeing defections from its ranks, and the arrival of World War II put an end to the project originally titled “America Eats.” Kurlansky rediscovered these lost manuscripts, and set out to assemble a book from them. In addition to his opening essay, Kurlansky provides introductory commentary to most of the selections. The result is interesting but highly uneven. There are polished pieces, oral histories, recipes, translations of diner lingo and more. Much of it represents a snapshot in time—American food habits as they were, circa 1940—while there is some history dating back to early Colonial and Native American times. The result is worth a look, especially if you have an interest in the history of food—but would probably be more enjoyable as something to dip into from time to time, rather than a cover to cover read.

[Paige · Rating 3 out of 5]

Back before eating locally was trendy, it was a necessity. In Depression-era America, one of the WPA projects for out-of-work writers – including Eudora Welty, Saul Bellow and Zora Neale Hurston – was the documentation of regional food traditions. The bombing of Pearl Harbor cut the project short, and the unedited manuscripts were sent to the Library of Congress where they gathered dust for many years.
Fast forward several decades, and enter Mark Kurlansky (author of several outstanding books that examine history through the lens of food, including Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World and Salt: A World History). To create his (lengthily titled) book, The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of American Food – Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation’s Food Was Seasonal, Regional, and Traditional – from the Lost WPA Files, Kurlansky combed through the archive of WPA files and unearthed some fascinating writing about America’s early eating habits. He extracts essays, anecdotes and recipes from the original documents, and prefaces each regional section with his own historical analysis.
Far more than a cookbook, this book immerses the reader in bygone cultures by giving accounts of regional traditions such as Georgia Coca-Cola parties, Puget Sound salmon feasts and geoduck cookery, New York automats, Minnesota lutefisk suppers, and a Vermont maple sugaring party.
I listened to the audio book, and unfortunately I didn't particular like the voice of the reader (Stephen Hoye) - a bit clipped and condescending...

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you love food and love history and maybe also have a short attention span you will love this book. Mark Kurlansky is one of the best authors at books on food history and he did a spectacular job researching and writing Food of a Younger Land.

On the surface it may seem like an easy book, gather articles that were written for the Writers Project of America (one of the works projects around the time of the Great Depression) and put them into book form by the region where they were created.

However in many ways Kurlansky adds the context that makes each essay more understandable to a reader of modern times. As the front cover indicates, these essays, short stories, interviews, and recipes come from a time before the interstate highway system and fast food restaurants. They show an America just beginning to move from embracing the west to rapidly migrating towards it.

Included in the book, mainly in the Northeast, Midwest, and Southeast regions are recipes that will literally give you a chance to experience history first hand. If you love that subject this book is an opportunity to literally taste a different time and place without ever leaving the comforts of home and modern day devices.

[Lisa of Hopewell · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Interest

The subtitles says it all for me: A portrait of American food from the lost WPA files. In the Great Depression the Works Progress Administration, a jewel in the crown of FDR’s New Deal, gave work to my paternal great-uncles that involved big, heavy shovels, and gave work to all sorts of other outside the skilled trades. These included artists and writers. The Federal Writer’s Project, best remembered for the outstanding Baedeker-type guides to each of the then 48 states. Among the writers employed by the project were Saul Bellow, Eudora Welty, Richard Wright, and John Cheever among many others. Author Zora Neal Hurston, in the Florida office, was given only a lowly interviewers position due to the state’s horrific racism and entrenched segregation.
The Story

First, a little history.

This book, pulled together from the files of the Federal Writer’s Project is drawn from the manuscripts, such as they were, being developed at the time the Project ended for World War II. It is very much a document of it’s time, full of distasteful racial stereotypes in the discussion of Black cooking and Native American diets. The author does an excellent job of explaining why, uncomfortable though it may make the reader (parts were cringe-inducing as an audio), keeping to the original language of the author’s was essential both to see it through their eyes and to show us how hard those times were for various racial or ethnic groups. Remember, lynching was a huge problem in the 1930s. The 1920s featured a huge KKK revival that overtook my own home state, Indiana [I live in Ohio now–not much difference in Southern Ohio]. While FDR is remembered as a liberal, it is worth recalling that he was cowardly or practical (depending on your opinion) in not pushing for the anti-lynching bill needed, but left that to Eleanor and a few trusted assistants. Remember, too, that at the start of Social Security, domestics and farm workers were excluded–no need to spell out their races, is there?

Now the food.

About as Midwestern a meal as you could hope to find. Served on the dishes of my childhood, too! Photo source.

I normally read a few “foodie” books each year. This year I did read the humorously titled How to Cook Your Husband the African Way, otherwise I haven’t read any foodies this year. Reading about the food of each American region back in the time my grandmothers were young wives and mothers really sounded good to me. My Dad often recalled having popcorn with cream and sugar as breakfast cereal. The year he was born his family lived largely on apples and Cream of Wheat–or so he and his aunt both told me. That aunt found work as a “hired girl” on a farm cooking and cleaning alongside the farmer’s wife. That family became her lifelong friends and my Dad’s godparents. Very different from the life of most Black domestics of the era.

As the book journeys around the country we hear of dishes both familiar and forgotten. I wonder if anyone still makes Brunswick Stew or Burgoo with squirrel? Possum roast, anyone? How about fried beaver tail? No? The best by far was learning of the existence of the Geoduck clam–pronounced “Gooey Duck” which I wouldn’t introduce to a junior high school class for any amount of money.

The few exotics aside, most of the food is still here today: Fried chicken, hunks of beef or pork, fish and seafood on the coasts, as well as all the different styles of barbecue and and baked beans or clam chowder, corn bread or pancake-style treats. Coleslaw, green beans cooked with ham or bacon, hot salad of “wilted” greens, fish, stews and even health food fads are all still here. Some even still eat Lutefisk!

Still here are many of the traditional fundraising dinners–the Struts, the fish fries, the sugaring-offs and the others. Who could have guessed back then that the children in Washington state, given homemade hot lunches that sometimes were only hot cocoa, would today get two meals at school and sometimes a package of weekend food? While there is an overwhelming sameness in the chain restaurants of today, chefs have rediscovered regional and seasonal cooking to the benefit of us all. Farmer’s markets and CSA [Consumer Supported Agriculture] produce subscription services help us all to rediscover how to eat where we live.


The two things I found most interesting were the Basque culture in Idaho–the sheep farmers of the region. Mutton and lamb are not big selling meats where I live, except at 4-H lamb auction time. (In fact, the book points out, that they weren’t / aren’t big anywhere except Idaho and New York City). But the Basque’s brought sheep farming to that region and their influence was still there 50 years after the book when I visited that part of Idaho two summers in a row. Like the Portuguese in Connecticut and Rhode Island, the French Quebecois in Maine, this is an unexpected and interesting addition to our melting pot of American culture.


By far my favorite chapter of the book was on New York–specifically on that now-vanished New York institution, the automat. Growing up in “diner-land” in the Midwest, we did not have these. I learned of them in old movies like Cary Grant and Doris Day’s wonderful film, That Touch of Mink. I dreamed of visiting one for years. Imagine–put in nickles and get a chicken pot pie, move along, put in more nickles, pullout jello!


But for the life of me, I’ve never, ever heard of an Indiana Pork Cake! Wow–that one came right out of midair. Probably the writer heard about it from a neighbor and thought it would be a good human interest story. Imagine baking a cake today with intentionally fatty ground pork? At least they included Hoosier Persimmon Pudding. There is nothing as wonderful in the late fall as a homemade persimmon pudding–especially when the persimmons were grow in your best friend’s parents yard and the recipe is from her sister. Delicious!

Food of a Younger Land by Mark Kurlansky

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Food of a Younger Land provides a fascinating glimpse back in time to the American of the 1930s (and earlier). The book, which is comprised primarily of original, unpublished manuscripts collected as part of a WPA project in the late 1930s and early 1940s (last submissions: December 11, 1941) is essentially a glimpse of what and how Americans ate in the opening decades of the 20th century. The impetus for the government collecting this information - and the project lasted for nearly a decade, beyond the whole Great Depression thing, was the appearance of bottled salad dressings in grocery aisles. As Mark Kurlansky, who really did a wonderful job of stitching piles of 70-year-old papers into a highly readable book, writes in his introduction: “What could better spell the beginning of the end than the manufacture of bottled salad dressing, a product that was so easy to make at home?”

In 1930s America, Italians ate ravioli and Mexicans ate tacos and these foods needed to be described in detail for anyone else. Ravioli, by the way, are “diminutive derbies of pastry, the crowns stuffed with a well-seasoned meat paste,” or at least that is how the WPA writer described them in the late 1930s. Also, tourists in Virginia who do not find the “Virginian foods” along the highway are advised to “knock at some farmhouse door, register [their] complaint against American standardization, and be served after a manner that conforms to the ancient rules of hospitality.” As Kurlansky notes, if that instruction isn’t evidence that this book is about a different country as much as different foods, I don’t know what is.

Given what people in this earlier version of America ate, it’s amazing they didn’t all die of coronary disease at age 35 (of course, I suppose one could make the same argument today)... Primarily, they ate meat and they ate corn. Baked, fried, broiled, and barbecued, they started with hearty helpings of country ham in the morning, plates of fried chicken at noontime, and slabs of beef at night. That, of course, is when they weren’t eating squirrel, possum, rabbit, bison, duck, venison, the intestines of any and all animal, or my personal favorite, beaver tails. Also beans, biscuits, and the omnipresent corn, as a vegetable, a bread, or often a gruel. Whatever Oregon Trail taught me, I wouldn’t have made a good pioneer.

[taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

My third book from this prolific author.

After the depression the government created odd jobs for people in order to stimulate the economy and give people a purpose. One of these jobs was offered to writers (mostly journalists) to report (write) on how and what people ate. The gig ended with WWII, and the project ended. This book summarizes many of the findings into geographical regions. Not so much recipes, but materials and process. Think "render fat from bacon on hot stove..."

So how did American's eat before fast food, the interstate, and the microwave. Well if you don't cook, then most likely you are the subject to over-processed junk. I think this was the theme of the book.

But if you do cook, well then you have a bonanza available year round. I don't have cured deer meat in the winter, and well possum can't be that good because it's not available in the grocery store. I can get almost any fruit or vegetable year round due in part to the interstate system.

I enjoyed the southern recipes because they rhyme with what I cook today. I start many a dish with rendering bacon, adding onions, protein and serve with rice. I also thought it was interesting they put Northern California in with Washington state, and Southern California in with the South Western states.

It was interesting, but not sure I learned anything.

Of course the arguments about how to prepare some regional food is part of history. From the book
"New England arguments about the correct way to make clam chowder, southern debate on the right way to make a mint julep, and an absolute tirade against mashed potatoes from Oregon."

My favorite quote "The Midwest is often thought of as the part of the country that isn’t a part of anywhere else"

[Moonkiszt · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Food of a Younger Land:
The WPA’s Portrait of Food in Pre-World War II America
by Mark Kurlansky


It is an education all its own to see the wide-ranging scope of Roosevelt’s WPA projects. When one of them was the subject of one of my favorite authors, I was thrilled! If Mark Kurlansky thought it was worth writing about, then I will read it. Ok, for this one I listened, but in a rare admission – this is one of those smorgasbooks that I will find a print copy, as that will more likely to better justice to the substance of the work.

The project’s original name was “America Eats,” and every state had a WPA worker or workers that would spread out over the land and gather the foodways from the rural cracks and crannies, along with the populous urban centers. The oddest things were disclosed – who knew that the indigenous people had no use for salt in their cooking – they hated it, according the researcher reporting back (this is in the midwest – maybe other regions did use it). Recipes are present – got squirrels? Arkansas can offer you a way to use them: Squirrel Mulligan. Like food fights? Oregon was morally and ethically opposed to mashed potatoes! (Probably has something to do with borders shared with Idaho.)

As a project of that time, our national bigotry and prejudices hang out and are present. The WPA administrator of this effort was Katherine Kellock, and I think a book about her is part of my next hunt – if you have any direction or guidance for me, please let me know!

I listened all at once. . .a print copy would allow that luxurious encylopedia reading method, bits and pieces, a spot here, a spot there. I suspect this book would lend itself perfectly to this type of reading.

[Caren · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is necessary to read this book's introduction, which explains that the short essays in the book come from a trove of unpublished reports done for the WPA in the late 1930s. When World War II intervened, the project was abandoned and never completed or published. The editor of this book has dug into dusty archives to retrieve these varied accounts of what people were eating in different parts of the USA in the 1930s. The book has a scattershot feel because, after all, it really was a work left incomplete. For example, the Southern region has nine essays on Kentucky foods and none, yes---not a one!---from Tennessee. Still, many of the essays are amusing and interesting. Mr. Kurlansky kept the regional divisions which the original project had assigned: Northeast, South, Middle West, Far West, and Southwest. Each section lists the states it includes. I find the idea of the WPA and its writing projects fascinating. It had previously commissioned a guide book for each state. Not only did this government project provide work during the Great Depression, it saved a verbal picture of this country at a certain point in its history. The New Deal enabled a project like this, but we can still enjoy its fruits. I think it was money well spent, don't you?

[Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading about food this time of year is somehow always cozy and I enjoyed this way more than I thought I would. It’s a portrait of how Americans ate prior to WWII, divided up by regions according to the Federal Writers Project in the 1930s. The New England and Southern sections are pretty robust and were my favorite sections. The last couple regions in the book weren’t as detailed as the Northeast and South but that’s more owing to how the project was run in those regions at the time. Not every piece is polished or written by a professional writer and for me this only adds to the charm of the book.

I love reading about gardening, agriculture, food and the food system and this one ranks as one of my favorite books I’ve read this year. Great historic “food porn” for anyone into that sort of thing— I know I always loved all the food descriptions in the Little House books, LoTR, The Hobbit, Harry Potter, etc.

[Eileen · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great book to turn to in bits and bites and for repeat reads. Kurlansky puts pieces in helpful context, so each read is a combined lesson in and journey to another kitchen in another place and time. Excellent for readers who like to learn about history by reading of the real lives (and meals) of people who lived it. Also helps put a lot of our current food climate in the USA into perspective, as so much of our abundance, variety, and the standardization of them is (relatively) recent.

[Summerfire · Rating 4 out of 5]

Man, things were different. This book isn't for everybody. A lot of it is recipes that I for one don't understand because we just cook differently now. But it's still so cool to look back at how much simpler yet deeper our food was. The work put into it would be nearly impossible today with how we work and live our lives, but it all sounds incredible. This little window of nostalgia is both a joyous reflection on American food and a sad reminder of what we've lost.

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

super interesting read and honestly got more out of paying attention to the different writing styles and variations by region rather than the actual food/recipes/culture - but a great way to learn about food culture in general during 1930s. favorite piece, from the midwest section (duh), "Nebraskans Eat the Weiners" by Hans Christensen. runner up: "Colorado Superstitions" author unlisted.

[Julia Langeway · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a lot of fun to learn more about the quahog and why some weirdos here call lunch dinner and dinner supper. I also appreciated the focus on seafood in the south, it is so much more diverse than barbecue and grits, and probably my favorite regional eats. The inclusion of centuries old recipes from local cookbooks was cool too. Even menudo gets a shoutout.

[beladozer (gretchen) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Abandoned. Not a good book for audiobooking - I might try again with a physical copy that I can skim. The history of the Federal Writers' Project was interesting.

[AJNels · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took me forever to get through, but ultimately really enjoyed it. Would recommend if you’re interested in American foodways and/or like reading vintage cookbooks.