- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Modern Library; Reprint edition (Feb 20 2001)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0375756655
- ISBN-13: 978-0375756658
- Product Dimensions: 20.4 x 13.2 x 1.7 cm
- Shipping Weight: 200 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #902,786 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Perfection Salad, a dish that won its creator first prize in a 1905 cooking contest, consisted of pristine molded aspic containing celery, red pepper, and chopped cabbage. Laura Shapiro, author of this eponymous social history, part of the Modern Library Food series, takes the salad as a model for the domestic science movement, an intriguing women's crusade of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Bent on convincing housewives that the way to domestic order lay in cooking "dainty" nutritional meals from sanitary ingredients in "scientific" kitchens, the movement helped give birth to our mass-market food scene, with its reliance on home economics precepts, processed convenience foods, and no-cook cooking--our cuisine of boil-in bags and microwave frozen dinners. Entertaining and informative, but also unexpectedly moving, the book chronicles in numerous intriguing stories the ways in which an impulse to liberate women from the drudgery and imprecision of daily food preparation led to its debasement. It's a fascinating story, of interest to anyone who wonders why and how we cook and eat--and think about food--as we do.
Beginning with portraits of early domestic movement reformers such as Catherine Beecher and Mary Lincoln, and investigating institutions like the Boston Cooking School, home of Fannie Farmer, the Mother of Level Measurements, the book then pursues "scientific cookery" into its mid-20th-century manifestation. "With the help of the new industry of advertising," Shapiro writes, "the food business was able to reflect Mrs. Lincoln's values [of food-production uniformity] by keeping its achievements in packing, sanitation, convenience, and novelty at the forefront." But greater ills ensued: the effect of the reformers, Shapiro contends, was to encourage women to become docile consumers tethered to commercial interests--and to rob our vigorous cooking and eating traditions of their rich life. In making that point, Perfection Salad reveals its true subject: the cultural priorities that defined American 20th-century life and, finally, the sorry nature of the order they established. --Arthur Boehm
From Publishers Weekly
A journalist who has written extensively on aspects of feminism, Shapiro presents a well-researched history of women as nutritional revolutionaries during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. This serious study is lively entertainment, spiced by the author's wit and wry perceptions. Through her, we discover clues to the motives of women who turned American kitchens into laboratories, run according to the dicta of the Boston Cooking School and similar establishments that proliferated across the country. The most memorable of the culinary movers was Fannie Farmer, whose cookbook was published in a modest 3000-copy edition in 1896. Stories about Farmer and other domestic scientists of the period add strong appeal to Shapiro's report. So do the parallels between early feminists and today's advocates of equal rights. It is somber to realize, as the author emphasizes, that fear of significant power for women "even over themselves" kept their aims restricted. By 1900, they had settled for the status of experts in home economics instead of independence.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
fascinating,
By
This review is from: Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century (Paperback)
the late 19th century movement for scientific household management is an almost unbelievable amalgam of middle-class protestant social standards and religious impulses, intellectural curiosity and discipline, political thought (compare it with leninism--everything the same for everyone all the time, and the middle class knows better than the proletariat), and naivete. while having less influence on its time than its proponents would acknowledge (even when reporting its failure), the movement led, through corporate exploitation and perversion, to many of the problems with eating, cooking, and "food production" in america today. it also led to many improvements we take completely for granted.the author seems to be unaware that there was a comparable movement in britain. my british mother could remember horrific results from the school recipes she was forced to produce (one stew was so bad her friend's dogs refused it) and the british government published many educational pamphlets about "proper" methods of cooking, to the same indifference or resentment that met the domestic scientists' efforts. i was a bit disappointed that the author did not pursue the links to the Transcendental Movement, though she did mention the connection with american protestentism. of course, the attitude of the 19th century cooks (and twentieth century nutritionists) has a long history: a Classical philospher (i'm too lazy to look up his name) wrote: "a man should eat to live, not live to eat" before the christian era. the author does discuss some of the social attitudes towards women and physical pleasure and how the ideal of a woman's being without appetite encouraged the domestic scientists to ignore the actual food in the cooking process. while there is much to amuse in the domestic scientists' efforts and belief (and horrify--did anyone actually eat this way?), and while the author does acknowledge the dire state of production with reference to, for instance, the stock yards, i don't think she understands the appeal of predictable levening (how many of us want to make baking powder from wood ash?) preditable results (my british mother adored measuring cups and spoons--as a very short woman, she couldn't use the "two handsful of flour" recipes her family used and), and flour and sugar that are actually flour and sugar (the colonial housewife was warned by one contemporary author to make sure the sugar she bought in loaf form [and had to pulverize by hand] was not plaster of paris). the fact that 20th century corporations, especially after the second world war, {influended} their ideals into food which has caloric content without nutrition or taste should not detract from the real benefits the movement bestowed in its heyday. this is an enjoyable popular history. i wish there had been more analysis of the movement's origins. the book's main strengths are its demonstration of how the movement's ideals were subsumed by industry and the analysis of the attitudes of the movement's founders. the worst part is the description of the baked bean and celery "salad"--with dressing and whipped cream. that will live in my nightmares for years. and years.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Centu,
By A Customer
This review is from: Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century (Paperback)
While PERFECTION SALAD is certainly about food, it is also a rich cultural history of women and food. With a wonderful selection of resources, from a recipe for raisin stuffed marshmallows to a celebration of Fannie Farmer, this is a delightful and interesting treat. Introduction by Michael Stern, co-author of EAT YOUR WAY ACROSS THE U.S.A and Gourmet Magazine?s popular column "Roadfood."
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating and scholarly read,
This review is from: Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century (Paperback)
Foodies and feminists alike should read this book. As part of the Modern Food Library reprints, chosen by Ruth Reichl (who is known for her good taste and her own laudable literary contributions - "Tender at the Bone" and "Comfort Me with Apples"), "Perfection Salad" describes all the elements present at the turn of the century that combined to forever change the way Americans view food. Food, its preparation and presentation became a female obsession in an time where the kitchen was really the only arena in which a woman could rule. The female nutritionists and cooks from that era seemed bent upon exerting control on SOMETHING, and that something turned out to be food - with sometimes terrible consequences. After reading "Perfection Salad", I understood the recipes that my grandmother (born in 1898) and my mother after her learned and served. Don't be frightened by the scholarly look of "Perfection Salad" - there are hilarious nuggets in the text - like color-themed menus (everything green and white, for example), putting everything into gelatin for the sake of "daintiness" (no messy lettuce leaves hanging out of your mouth) and covering absolutely anything and everything with "white sauce". For more laughs, peruse "The Gallery of Regrettable Food" by James Lileks in which he has gathered some of the most revolting-looking photos of the consequences of "Perfection Salad".
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