Cocktail writer and historian David Wondrich presents the colorful, little-known history of classic American drinks-and the ultimate mixologist's guide-in this engaging homage to Jerry Thomas, father of the American bar. Wondrich reveals never-before-published details and stories about this larger-than-life nineteenth-century figure, along with definitive recipes for 100 punches, cocktails, sours, fizzes, toddies, slings, and other essential drinks, plus twenty new recipes from today's top mixologists, created exclusively for this book. This colorful and good-humored volume is a mustread for anyone who appreciates the timeless appeal of a well-made drink-and the uniquely American history behind it.

    150 full-color photos.

    This literary feast includes classic accounts of iconic American foods: Henry David Thoreau on the delights of watermelon; Herman Melville, with a mouth-watering chapter on clam chowder; H. L. Mencken on the hot dog; M. F. K. Fisher in praise of the oyster; Ralph Ellison on the irresistible appeal of baked yam; William Styron on Southern fried chicken. American writers abroad, like A. J. Liebling, Waverly Root, and Craig Claiborne, describe the revelations they found in foreign restaurants; travellers to America, including the legendary French gourmet J. A. Brillat-Savarin, discover such native delicacies as turkey, Virginia barbecue, and pumpkin pie. Great chefs and noted critics discuss their culinary philosophies and offer advice on the finer points of technique; home cooks recount disasters and triumphs. A host of eminent American writers, from Nathaniel Hawthorne, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Walt Whitman to Thomas Wolfe, Willa Cather, and Langston Hughes, add their distinctive viewpoints to the mix.American Food Writing celebrates the astonishing variety of American foodways, with accounts from almost every corner of the country and a host of ethnic traditions: Dutch, Cuban, French, Italian, Jewish, Chinese, Irish, Indian, Scandinavian, Native American, African, English, Japanese, and Mexican. A surprising range of subjects and perspectives emerge, as writers address such topics as fast food, hunger, dieting, and the relationship between food and sex. James Villas offers a behind-the-scenes look at gourmet dining through a waiter's eyes; Anthony Bourdain recalls his days at the Culinary Institute of America; Julia Child remembers the humble beginnings of her much-loved television series; Nora Ephron chronicles internecine warfare among members of the "food establishment"; Michael Pollan explores what the label "organic" really means.Throughout the anthology are more than fifty classic recipes, selected after extensive research from cookbooks both vintage and modern, and certain to instruct, delight, and inspire home chefs.

    Food rationing was introduced in January 1940 after food shipments were attacked by German U-boat 'Wolf Packs'. The first food items to be rationed were butter, sugar, bacon and ham, with restrictions also placed on meat, fish, jam, biscuits, cheese, eggs and milk. The leaflets reproduced in Eating for Victory were distributed by the Ministry of Food and advised the general public on how to cope with these shortages. Typical contents included: recipes for steamed and boiled puddings; tips on how to use and prepare green vegetables; hints about how to reconstitute dried eggs and use; them as though they were fresh. Eating for Victory is a great gift book offering a nostalgic look back at one of the hardest and yet perhaps healthiest times in history, but is also a relevant guide on healthy eating for today.

    Ideal for the food scholar and food enthusiast alike, it is equally appetizing for anyone fascinated by Americana, capturing our culture and history through what we love most--food!Building on the highly praised and deliciously browseable two-volume compendium the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, this new work serves up everything you could ever want to know about American consumables and their impact on popular culture and the culinary world. Within its pages for example, we learn that Lifesavers candy owes its success to the canny marketing idea of placing the original flavor, mint, next to cash registers at bars. Patrons who bought them to mask the smell of alcohol on their breath before heading home soon found they were just as tasty sober and the company began producing other flavors.Edited by Andrew Smith, a writer and lecturer on culinary history, the Companion serves up more than just trivia however, including hundreds of entries on fast food, celebrity chefs, fish, sandwiches, regional and ethnic cuisine, food science, and historical food traditions. It also dispels a few commonly held myths. Veganism, isn't simply the practice of a few hippies, but is in fact wide-spread among elite athletic circles. Many of the top competitors in the Ironman and Ultramarathon events go even further, avoiding all animal products by following a strictly vegan diet. Anyone hungering to know what our nation has been cooking and eating for the last three centuries should own the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink.

    In this sweeping tour through the world of tea, veteran tea traders Mary Lou Heiss and Robert J. Heiss chronicle tea's influence across the globe and provide a complete reference for choosing, drinking, and enjoying this beverage.The Story of Tea begins with a journey along the tea trail, from the lush forests of China, where tea cultivation first flourished, to the Buddhist temples of Japan, to the vast tea gardens of India, and beyond. Offering an insider'­s view of all aspects of tea trade, the Heisses examine Camellia sinensis, the tea bush, and show how subtle differences in territory and production contribute to the diversity of color, flavor, and quality in brewed tea. They profile more than thirty essential tea varietals, provide an in depth guide to tasting and brewing, and survey the customs and crafts associated with tea. Sharing the latest research, they discuss tea's health benefits and developments in organic production and fair trade practices. Finally, they present ten sweet and savory recipes, including Savory Chinese Marbled Eggs and Green Tea Pot de Crâme, and resources for purchasing fine tea.Vividly illustrated throughout, The Story of Tea is an engrossing tribute to the illustrious, invigorating, and elusive leaf that has sustained and inspired people for more than two thousand years.

    More than that, however, Broomfield offers an introduction to the world of everyday dining, food preparation, and nutrition during one of the most interesting periods of English history. Food procurement, kitchen duties, and dining conventions were almost always dictated by one's socioeconomic status and one's gender, but questions still remain. Who was most likely to dine out? Who was most likely to be in charge of the family flatware and fine china? Who washed the dishes? Who could afford a fine piece of meat once a week, once a month, or never? How much did one's profession dictate which meal times were observed and when? All these questions and more are answered in this illuminating history of food and cooking in Victorian England.

    Augmented with an extensive bibliography, the book is also a wonderful guide to cooking with herbs and spices. A comprehensive glossary provides the origins and history of each grain and spice. Familiar with Western cooking methods, Ramachandran shows how to integrate these recipes into a Western-style menu and suggests ways for home cooks to expand their repertoire without having to create an entire menu of dishes. Culinary historians and home cooks alike will enjoy Ramachandran's treasured stories and recipes in "Grains, Greens, and Grated Coconuts,"" -Monica Bhide, Writer and Author of "The Spice is Right & Everything Indian Cookbook"""Grains, Greens, and Grated Coconuts" is a labor of love . offering both mouth-watering recipes and a personal account of an ancient matrilineal culture. Highly educational yet approachable, this is a must-have for anyone interested in the food and customs of the Indian subcontinent."-Suneeta Vaswani, Cooking School Teacher and Author of "Easy Indian Cooking

    Mayer Kirshenblatt, who was born in 1916 and left Poland for Canada in 1934, taught himself to paint at age 73. Since then, he has made it his mission to remember the world of his childhood in living color, "lest future generations know more about how Jews died than how they lived." This volume presents his lively paintings woven together with a marvelous narrative created from interviews that took place over forty years between Mayer and his daughter, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett. Together, father and daughter draw readers into a lost world—we roam the streets and courtyards of the town of Apt, witness details of daily life, and meet those who lived and worked there: the pregnant hunchback, who stood under the wedding canopy just hours before giving birth; the khayder teacher caught in bed with the drummer's wife; the cobbler's son, who was dressed in white pajamas all his life to fool the angel of death; the corpse that was shaved; and the couple who held a "black wedding" in the cemetery during a cholera epidemic. This moving collaboration—a unique blend of memoir, oral history, and artistic interpretation—is at once a labor of love, a tribute to a distinctive imagination, and a brilliant portrait of life in one Jewish home town. Copub: The Judah L. Magnes Museum

    It encompasses royal feasts and street food, the skinning of eels and the making of strawberry jelly, mixing tales of culinary stars with those of the invisible hordes cooking in kitchens across the land. Beginning before Roman times, the book journeys through the ingredients, equipment, kitchens, feasts, fads, and famines of the British. It covers the piquancy of Norman cuisine, the influx of undreamed-of spices and new foods from the East and the New World, the Tudor pumpkin pie that journeyed with the founding fathers to become America's national dish, the austerity of rationing during World War II, and the birth of convenience foods and take-away, right up to the age of Nigella Lawson, Heston Blumenthal, and Jamie Oliver. The first trade book to tell the story of British cooking-which is, of course, the history that led up to American colonial cooking as well-Taste shows that kitchens are not only places of steam, oil, and sweat, but of politics, invention, cultural exchange, commerce, conflict, and play.

    Banquets showcased a host’s wealth and power, provided an occasion for nobles from distant places to gather together, and even served as a form of political propaganda. But what was it really like to cater to the tastes and habits of high society at the banquets of nobles, royalty, and popes? What did they eat and how did they eat it?In The Banquet, Ken Albala covers the transitional period between the heavily spiced and colored cuisine of the Middle Ages and classical French haut cuisine. This development involved increasing use dairy products, a move toward lighter meats such as veal and chicken, increasing identification of national food customs, more sweetness and aromatics, and a refined aesthetic sense, surprisingly in line with the late Renaissance styles found in other arts.

    Trevathan, E. O. Smith, and James J. McKenna provide an up-to-date and thought-provoking introduction to the field with this new collection of essays. Ideal for courses in evolutionary medicine, medical anthropology, and the evolution of human disease, Evolutionary Medicine and Health: New Perspectives presents twenty-three original articles that examine how human evolution relates to a broad range of contemporary health problems including infectious, chronic, nutritional, and mental diseases and disorders. Topics covered include disease susceptibility in cultural context, substance abuse and addiction, sleep disorders, preeclampsia, altitude-related hypoxia, the biological context of menstruation, and the role of stress in modern life. An international team of preeminent scholars in biological anthropology, medicine, biology, psychology, and geography contributed the selections. Together they represent a uniquely integrative and multidisciplinary approach that takes into account the dialogue between biology and culture as it relates to understanding, treating, and preventing disease. A common theme throughout is the description of cases in which biological human development conflicts with culturally based individual behaviors that determine health outcomes. Detailed, evidence-based arguments make the case that all aspects of the human condition covered in the volume have an evolutionary basis, while theoretical discussions using other empirical evidence critique the gaps that still remain in evolutionary approaches to health. Evolutionary Medicine and Health: New Perspectives features an introductory overview that covers the field's diverse array of topics, questions, lines of evidence, and perspectives. In addition, the editors provide introductions to each essay and an extensive bibliography that represents a state-of-the-art survey of the literature. A companionwebsite at www.oup.com/us/evolmed offers a full bibliography and links to source articles, reports, and databases. Written in an engaging style that is accessible to students, professionals, and general readers, this book offers a unique look at how an evolutionary perspective has become increasingly relevant to the health field and medical practice.

    This fourth in Hippocrene's state series follows in the tradition of its New Jersey and New Hampshire cookbooks to bring more fresh farm fare to its readers. This time we visit the heartland of America and the source of much of the Midwest's healthful produce, journeying to the Buckeye State and exploring family farms such as the Hartzler Family Dairy and the Blue Egg Farm.

    to bring more than 100 traditional dumpling and filled-pie recipes from places as near as Flushing, Queens to as far away as Uzbekistan and beyond.Starting with the basics of dough making, steaming, and frying, Yarvin provides mouth-watering color photographs and step-by-step instructions so that anyone can recreate their grandmother's pierogi or street-food treat at home, using ingredients from the local supermarket. Also included are tips for where to buy hard-to-find ingredients, and—if you just can't stand the wait of making your own—ethnic neighborhoods where you can find dumplings ready-to-eat.

    Designed for cooks and consumers alike, The Oxford Companion to Italian Food covers all aspects of the history and culture of Italian gastronomy, from dishes, ingredients, and delicacies to cooking methods and implements, regional specialties, the universal appeal of Italian cuisine, influences from outside Italy, and much more.Following in the footsteps of princes and popes, vagabond artists and cunning peasants, austere scholars and generations of unknown, unremembered women who shaped pasta, moulded cheeses and lovingly tended their cooking pots, Gillian Riley celebrates a heritage of amazing richness and delight. She brings equal measures of enthusiasm and expertise to her writing, and her entries read like mini-essays, laced with wit and gastronomical erudition, marked throughout by descriptive brilliance, and entirely free of the pompous tone that afflicts so much writing about food.The Companion is attentive to both tradition and innovation in Italian cooking, and covers an extraordinary range of information, from Anonimo Toscano, a medieval cookbook, to Bartolomeo Bimbi, a Florentine painter commissioned by Cosimo de Medici to paint portraits of vegetables, to Paglierina di Rifreddo, a young cheese made of unskimmed cows' milk, to zuppa inglese, a dessert invented by 19th century Neapolitan pastry chefs. Major topics receive extended treatment. The entry for Parmesan, for example, runs to more than 2,000 words and includes information on its remarkable nutritional value, the region where it is produced, the breed of cow used to produce it (the razza reggiana, or vacche rosse), the role of the cheese maker, the origin of its name, Moli�re's deathbed demand for it, its frequent and lustrous depiction in 16th and 17th century paintings, and the proper method of serving, where Riley admonishes: One disdains the phallic peppermill, but must always appreciate the attentive grating, at the table, of parmesan over pasta or soup, as magical in its way as shavings of truffles. Such is the scope and flavor of The Oxford Companion to Italian Food.For anyone with a hunger to learn more about the history, culture and variety of Italian cuisine, The Oxford Companion to Italian Food offers endless satisfactions.

    In this fascinating book, Katherine Knight looks at how experiences of rationing varied between rich and poor, town and country, and how indigenous cooks often made a meal from poor ingredients.Charting the development of the rationing programme throughout the war and afterwards, Spuds, Spam and Eating for Victory documents the use of substitutions for luxury ingredients not available, resulting in delicacies such as carrot jam and oatmeal sausages. The introduction of Spam from America in the 1940s led to this canned spiced pork and ham becoming an iconic symbol of the worst period of shortage in the twentieth century.Nearly seventy years after the outbreak of the Second World War, this book hears from some of the people who were young during the conflict as they share their memories, both sad and funny, of what it was like to Eat for Victory.

    This complete field guide shows chefs and fungi aficionados how to forage for and identify the wide variety of truffles that grow in temperate forests throughout North America. Written by expert horticulturalists who have studied, classified, and enjoyed truffles for decades, the FIELD GUIDE TO NORTH AMERICAN TRUFFLES makes these celebrated underground jewels accessible to all.The first full-color illustrated guide to identifying North American truffles by their key features, including profiles of more than 80 species of truffles.Includes more than 80 photographs of rare and hard-to-find truffle species.Features flavor profiles, delectability index, and culinary tips for each species.Perfect size for carrying in a pocket or daypack.Reviews"It'¬?s the first book of its kind, complete with photographs, cross-sectional views of indigenous truffle varieties, guides to seasonal availability, and foraging tips for hundreds of kinds of truffles (both the edible and inedible kinds), as well as tasting notes and cooking tips."-Saveur

    The book examines the place of food and feasting in funerary rituals from the earliest period to the eleventh century, considering the changes and transformations that occurred during this time, drawing on a wide range of sources, from archaeological evidence to the existing texts. It looks in particular at representations of funerary feasting, how it functions as a tool for memory, and sheds light on the relationship between the living and the dead. CHRISTINA LEE is a lecturer in the School of English Studies at the University of Nottingham.