Americas Collectible Cookbooks

Americas Collectible Cookbooks is a wonderful concoction of gossipy morsels and serious reflection about cookbooks and cookbook authors. Although the names Fannie Merritt Farmer, Eliza Leslie, Sarah Josepha Hale, and Irma Rombauer are familiar to generations of American books, few know how really extraordinary these women were. In Mary Anna DuSablons look at the two hundred-year evolution of American cookbooks, these authors receive their duenot simply as recipe peddlers, but as shapers of American culture. The book describes how government and industry joined forces to woo women back into the kitchen after the world wars. And it hails the role of the cookbook as a fund-rasier during the many years of social reform. Some other tantalizing topics include: What did New Yorks Inelligence Offices have to do with cookbooks? Where can one find John Steinbecks recipe for Tortilla Flats, or Joan Crawfords Surprise? Graham crackers are a descendant of which important New England cookbook author? Which famous chef (who was not a chef) wrote a cookbook but could not cook? What cookbooks still found in many American homes are collectible treasures? Who were the women (and men) behind Betty Crocker, the most successful, but nonexistent, cookbook autor in America? The reach is invited to savor twelve-course dinners, Pork Chops with Truffle Sauce, Pompkin Pie, and the wholesome gourmet delicacies of Molly Katzen (The Moosewood Cookbook) and Marian Morash (The Victory Garden Cookbook). In Americas Collectible Cookbooks, we find that DuSablon convincingly reclaims American cuisine as the invention of, who else? American women.