Cookbooks Show American Culture
Are you interested in food, United States history, and the English language? If so, American cookbooks provide wide information in all three subjects. The first, published in 1796, started a market that continues in the 21st century with online publications of such works. And, the literature offers more than just recipes.
Megan Elias is the director of food studies at Boston University and the writer of Food on the Page: Cookbooks and American Culture. She says that cookbooks do help teach us how to prepare food. But they provide more than that, too.
“The concept of meals, how many meals a day that people expect to eat? What do they expect to have in those meals?” Elias said.
They also inform readers about discoveries, equipment and technology related to food making.
Elias said, “What are the objects that are necessary to make the things and what exists? So, are you being asked to do something over an open fire or are you being asked to use an electric stove? Is it something that can be done in the microwave? If you see a lot of recipes for things that are preservedfor pickles, you know that you are looking at a time without refrigeration.”
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