Beverly Bundy
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Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Gastronomy -> History
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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5
Average rating: 3.0 of 5
...others are more worthy... 1 out of 5 stars.
21 of 23 people found this review helpful.
I bought this book the same day it got a nice plug in the Washington Post's food section. This may have been a professional courtesy, as Beverly Bundy is food editor at the Fort-Worth Star-Telegram. However, as a longtime collector of books and pamphlets on American food history, I was shocked at the slapdash quality of this overhyped large-format book, which lists for the [$$$] I paid at my neighborhood bookseller. The type is hard to read, especially when it appears over dark color screens. Full pages are are devoted to banal recipes for things like pineapple upside-cake, or clam dip, that just about everyone has already seen. The author has plenty of space for graphics, but despite the generous page size, many of the ads reproduced are too small to read without squinting, surrounded by overgenerous margins. The design of this book is kitchen-table awkward, unusual for a book of this price.
The images include such non-food head-scratchers as a U.S. Navy recruiting poster and a photograph of prospective immigrants at Ellis Island having their eyes inspected for trachoma. Granted, women in the workforce and immigration have had an impact on American food, but American food is what we bought this book, ostensibly, to read about. Such padding is frustrating considering the incredibly rich subject matter, much of which is still hanging around our mothers' kitchens, if not our own.
Bundy credits a scant 30 sources, and she appears to have borrowed heavily--very heavily--from several of them. There are disturbing similarities both in recipe selection and even in text to some of the pre-existing books. My copy of "The Century in Food" is plastered with annotated Post-Its after just one reading.
[...]
Both "Fashionable Food" and "Kitchen Culture" are meticulously edited, put together with loving care and LOTS more content than Bundy's book. ... I also recommend "The Gallery of Regrettable Food" (2001) by James Lileks, which is less comprehensive but extremely funny.
"The Century in Food" is a big waste of money, with the exception of Bundy's photo of the seven-cent Doritos bag, an artifact of my childhood. Nice to see it again, but it isn't worth [$$$].
Editorial Review:
In 1900, most cooking was done in fireplaces; if you didn't have a servant, you most likely were one; and a slim figure was considered a mark of ill health. Economic conditions, attitudes, and tastes have changed a lot over the twentieth century, and The Century in Food examines the inventions, innovations, and ingenuity that have fueled American appetites for the past hundred years. Bacardi Double-Chocolate Rum Cake, Playboy Paella, Sausage-Stuffed Baked Apples, and Chicken Fillets In Tomato-Wine Sauce are just a sampling of the scrumptious recipes found here, but more than a simple cookbook, The Century in Food provides an enthralling history of American culture. This book is destined to become a classic amid food lovers and historians alike. Features popular recipes from each decade.
Timelines and sidebars provide historical background and fascinating reading.
Lavishly presented with over 400 full-color images.
