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This classic barbeque of our foodways is as valid and as savory today as when it first tickled ribs a generation ago. Based on the superlative authority of John L. Hess, onetime food critic of the New York Times, and Karen Hess, the pioneering historian of cookery, The Taste of America is both a history of American cooking and a history of the advice smiling celebrity cooks have asked Americans to swallow.The Taste of America provoked the cooking experts of the 1970s into spitting rage by pointing out in embarrassing detail that most of them lacked an essential ingredient: expertise. Now "Kool-Aid like Mother used to make" has become "Kool-Aid like Grandmother used to make," and a new generation has been weaned on synthetic food, pathetic snobbery, neurotic health advice, and reconstituted history. This much-needed new edition chars Julia Child ("She's not a cook, but she plays one on TV"), chides food maven Ruth Reichl, and marvels at a convention of food technologists (whose program bore the slogan "Eat your heart out, Mother Nature"). Delectable reading for consumers, reformers, and scholars, this twenty-fifth anniversary reissue of The Taste of America will serve well into the new millennium. … (more)
User reviews
You know what? This book is well-researched, well-written and as fun to read as a supermarket tabloid. Karen Hess, John Hess's wife, worked on this book also. She is one of the more interesting food scholars around. Preachy? Yeah. Sometimes. But it is a page-turner.
Treat yourself. Read this one.
The authors very skilfully point out problems that continue to plague the
The strongest part of the book is the call into looking at traditional American cuisine from classic works and also from simply talking to those remaining outlying parts of the population who remember it. Very fascinating history of American foods.
The bad parts of the book is pretty well illustrated with a rather candid admissions. The authors talk about being in an area of France and being horrified at being served a certain wine where the bottle was in cold water and there was even some ice in the bucket. They returned it, disgusted. Then it turns out that's how they served that particular wine. They didn't seem to learn anything from this, as there seems to be an attitude that they know all the rules and that Americans be best listening to them, instead of the actual message was that people should trust their own palates.
The countless personal attacks seem to lower to the point of a personal vendetta. It's hard not to notice that some of their favorite targets were food writers for the same publications as they worked at. Like talking to a person who claims that the company they worked for would be so much better if it hadn't fired them.