Food. It is what brings us together, family and friends gathering around the table to share a meal. It is also what divides us. “You are what you eat.” This cliché, like many, is a profound one. Whether forced upon us by circumstance or a deliberate decision, the food we eat determines not just our physical welfare but is also reflective of our social and cultural beliefs and status.
A few years ago, I read an article in Gourmet magazine about a young woman who prepared a vegetarian Thanksgiving dinner for a group of friends in New York City.
To her dismay, each and every dish she had prepared was subjected to minute scrutiny — and each and every one was rejected by at least one of her guests for reasons political, social, cultural, dietary, or just plain whimsical.
Of course, those guests were New Yorkers. But the popularity of books like “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals,” by Michael Pollan, “Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating …” by Mark Bittman, and Barbara Kingsolver’s “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life,” certainly suggests that Americans are thinking more carefully about their food choices and are less likely to eat something just to be polite.
Vegetarianism is a part of many Eastern religions, but as those of us who read cookbooks know, it has a long history in the Western tradition as well. Darra Goldstein in “The Vegetarian Hearth” tells the story of Leo Tolstoy’s conversion to vegetarianism as part of his quest for moral perfection.
He was joining a well-established movement in 19th century Russia. There were also many adherents to a vegan diet or one of only raw foods. Concerns for the welfare of animals formed part of the motivation, but it was largely fueled by desires for egalitarianism and social justice.
In the United States, William Alcott (the father of author Louisa May) founded the first vegetarian society in 1850. The list of well-known American vegetarians since then is long and illustrious. Some of their quotes and other tidbits of culinary history may be found in Molly O’Neill’s “One Big Table: A Portrait of American Cooking.”
This is one big book, revealing the oft-cited yet still astonishing diversity of our country. O’Neill traveled 300,000 miles and collected 20,000 recipes, which she honed down to the 600 included in this book. Every recipe comes with a story, one of history, passion, and love. Despite the specter of The Fast Food Nation, Americans, O’Neill found, still cook from the heart.
“Locovores” represent another food-choice movement gaining traction in the United States. Locovores espouse greater self-reliance and attempt to live on foods locally grown and produced. Besides supporting the local economy, eating locally means knowing the full story behind the appearance of a meal on one’s plate.
Eating locally, and thus seasonally, can require planning, skill and ingenuity on the part of the cook. “Forgotten Skills of Cooking: The Time Honored Ways Are the Best” by Darina Allen aims to help. Self-reliance is not for the faint of heart and neither is this book. There is much work in food production and for the locovore, that means bringing it all back home.
Another look at the more recent history of American cuisine may be found in “The Essential New York Times Cookbook: Classic Recipes for a New Century” by Amanda Hessler. The New York Times has been publishing recipes for 150 years and Hessler set out to find the best of them. She sought reader input, scoured the archives, and tested innumerable recipes.
The 1,000 or so keepers range in date from 1895 to the present. Hessler updated the recipes as necessary and each one is annotated with additional suggestions and information. What I liked best, though, was that each chapter has a timeline of the recipes displayed against the relevant culinary and social issues of the day. The “arrival” of various diets, trends, chefs and authors is remarkably easy to spot.
“The Gourmet Cookie Book” takes a similar approach. Publishing the single best recipe from each year, 1941-2009, the editors found that cookies, too, “offer a fascinating window on history … (and) the way our appetites have evolved.”
Though less revealing than the Times book, it is still interesting to chart our course from the oat and honey concoctions of the war years through our tentative embrace of the “foreign” in the 1960s and on to the elaborate and more artful creations of recent times. The last cookie recipe in the book calls for edible gold luster dust. Gourmet ceased publication with its November 2009 issue.
Such wealth of choice: Bon appetit!
Photo by austinevan (Evan Bench) - Creative Commons
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