hipcook's Reviews
Cookbook Reviews
The Food of a Younger Land: A Portrait of American Food--Before the National Highway System, Before Chain Restaurants, and Before Frozen Food, When the Nation's Food Was Seasonal
By Mark Kurlansky
Riverhead Hardcover - 2009
I expected more of a "cookbook", but this is really a collection of essays and oral histories about American food in the 1930s. The essays are certainly uneven (and Kurlansky does a good job of explaining why), but they provide an interesting picture of the time. Unfortunately, as far as recipes go, very few of them are ready to be recreated in the home kitchen - frequently the author only gives a generic list of ingredients, and the ingredients and techniques, or at least the names used in the '30s for them, were sometimes unfamiliar to me.
So, a good book for understanding a period in American food history, but not a good "cookbook."