Something From the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America

by Laura Shapiro

Something From the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America

book data

73 ratings, 3.82 average rating, 20 reviews (more data...)

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published

March 30th 2004 by Viking Adult

binding

Hardcover, 306 pages

isbn

0670871540 (isbn13: 9780670871544)

description

In this delightfully surprising history, Laura Shapiro—author of the classic Perfection Salad—recounts the prepackaged dreams that bo...more

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other reviews (showing 1-20 of 141)

All ratings | 5 stars (12) | 4 stars (36) | 3 stars (22) | 2 stars (1) | avg 3.82

all | this edition

Maryalice

Maryalice rated it:

(review of isbn 014303491X)

06/17/08

Read in June, 2008

How did the food manufacturers and Madison Avenue convince the American public that convenient food = desirable food? How did they get housewives -- who prided their cake-making expertise as an important work skill -- to accept cake mixes? What food (and foodstuff - gotta love that word) took off, and what fell like a home ec student's first souffle? And WHY? This book tackles these questions and more, in a very entertaining way.

If you are captivated by the idea of Cold War-era domesticity -...more

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Ellen

Ellen rated it:

(review of isbn 014303491X)

04/03/08

bookshelves: non-fiction

This book was interesting but reading it I felt manipulated by the food industry. Then annoyed that women's lib-ers seem to think that cooking is a waste of time or somehow not fulfilling for women. It mostly left me wanting to cook a lot and especially from scratch.

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Ginnie

Ginnie rated it:

05/25/08

bookshelves: culture, food, women

Rethought Review As a woman who had been a young bride in 1951 reading this was a genuine time machine. But don't take the subtitle too seriously because this book stretches into the 1960s with an current epilogue.

Her take on food books like Peg Bracken's I Hate To Cook Book which is included here even though it wasn't published until 1960 strikes me as spot on. As she characterized Bracket's message, "Let's get real."

The final chapter Now and Forever sta...more Rethought Review As a woman who had been a young bride in 1951 reading this was a genuine time machine. But don't take the subtitle too seriously because this book stretches into the 1960s with an current epilogue.

Her take on food books like Peg Bracken's I Hate To Cook Book which is included here even though it wasn't published until 1960 strikes me as spot on. As she characterized Bracket's message, "Let's get real."

The final chapter Now and Forever starts with a jolt. "Julia Child and Betty Friedan sprang up simultaneously as national icons. The French Chef began its long run on public television in February 1963; eight days later The Feminine Mystique was published. There was no time lag; an audience was waiting for both. The message they conveyed went straight to women's hearts and into women's history." The revolutions Child and Friedan would be credited with starting were well underway by the time the two women became famous. The ambitions and uncertainties that always fuel social and culinary progress had been churning out important changes for years. But a cause needs a conjurer to make it visible. Child's image in the kitchen, fearless and jovial at once, was precisely suited to its moment. Here was an activist who took full charge of the food, demonstrating over and over that the most important ingredient in her kitchen was conviction and the most useful shortcut was skill. Friedan, for her part, supplied the foundation for a feminist structure already inching skyward. She told the story women were ready to hear, the story they could take to heart and trust with with their lives. The future as Friedan and Child offered it took place on a wide-open frontier that invited lifelong exploration, and their appetites for it were as big and eager as a man's.

Women responded instantly to The French Chef, instantly to The Feminine Mystique. The inspiration they drew from these two books was as crucial as the how-to, and it altered the domestic legacy for all the generations that have come after. Not every woman who watched Child intently on TV, scribbling the recipe as fast as they could was a fan of Friedan's; and not every woman who tore excitedly through Friedan's book and found their own life on each page was a dedicated cook. But they were all hearing the same words. You can do this yourself, with your brains and your own two hands. You don't need to get it from a package. You can take charge. You can stand at the center of your own world and create something from scratch.

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Earlier Review - A well-researched history of the relationship between the American woman's domestic role as family cook and the American food industry. The book documents the food industry's attempt to reinvent cooking during the 1950s. Its marketing strategy centered on convincing women that purchasing unappetizing packaged food products would free them from the unpleasant chore of cooking. However, to the chagrin of food manufacturers, most American women saw house cleaning as the dreaded chore but enjoyed providing food for their family.

Simultaneously, another trend was vying for the attention of the sophisticated homemaker. Julia Child emerged and encouraged women to "take charge of their own world and to cook something very good from scratch." Shapiro argues that this second trend was indicative of women's search for greater independence not only from the food industry but from society's constrained gender roles. As someone who doesn't side with the "cooking is a chore" camp, I found Shapiro's book highly readable....less

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Kate

Kate rated it:

(review of isbn 014303491X)

05/13/08

bookshelves: foodwriting

This book is partly about food, and partly about the lives of women during the 1940s, 50s and 60s. It uses food and cooking to track the daily lives and expectations of women during those decades -- and also some of the marketing and media driving the status quo. But most entertaingly, it goes a long way towards explaining WHY it is that 50s food was so....weird.

[Take, for instance, "Red Crest Salad" -- chopped tomatoes, pickles, and strawberry Jell-O. Or an "unusual treat&qu...more

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amy

amy rated it:

(review of isbn 014303491X)

06/19/07

Read in June, 2007

A fantastic book about the relationship between food and feminism in 1950s America. The actual period covered includes wartime and postwar habits of American home cooks, and ends with the nearly simultaneous bursting onto the scene of Julia Child (The French Cook) and Betty Friedan (The Feminine Mystique) in 1963.

Shapiro takes a fascinating look at the 1950s housewife: as a woman with a veritable laundry list of a job description; as the target audience of the food industry’s heavy advert...more

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Alex

Alex rated it:

09/22/08

bookshelves: history-general

Read in September, 2008

Excellent book on the delta-food in American culture from 1940ish to 1970. Frozen, canned, etc - the way the american table changed was complex and very corporate driven (perhaps this shouldn't be a surprise...) and Shapiro does an excellent job of laying out how it all happened with a focus on the women and men who drove the change and how they were well bought and sold in many cases. Since it's about food, tho, she doesn't just focus on the food but brings it out to encompass American cultural...more

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JulieK

JulieK rated it:

09/08/08

bookshelves: food

Read in September, 2008

This is mostly about the rise of "convenience foods" in the 1940s and 1950s and how they changed (and didn't change) Americans' cooking and eating habits - but also delves a bit into the growth of gourmet/good-food culture (Julia Child, M.F.K. Fisher), and even further afield into women's working lives and Betty Friedan. The latter diversions felt too unrelated to the rest of the book for me, but I enjoyed the book overall. The cringe-worthy recipes were an added bonus.

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Dave

Dave rated it:

(review of isbn 014303491X)

12/14/07

bookshelves: foodlore

This a very good book that analyzes the incredible sea change that occurred in American dining habits in the 1950s (and many of those changes are a strong part of American culture today). Technology, demographic changes and cultural attitudes, to mention a few, all had major roles in this transformation. It shows that what we eat for dinner and what we think about it is truly a nexus of so many factors (factors, that at first glance, seem totally unrelated).

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Jess

Jess rated it:

(review of isbn 014303491X)

04/19/07

Read in September, 2006

Laura let the sources speak in this book which is exactly why it's so good. She turned upside down the idea that all women in 1950s America were cooking from cans and boxed mixes. She makes the point that this is what the advertisers who tried to sell these products would have you believe. Underneath the images of the happy housewife baking cake from a mix were thousands of women cooking as they always had -- from scratch.

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Jessica

Jessica rated it:

(review of isbn 014303491X)

05/28/07

bookshelves: feminism, food, non-fiction

Read in January, 2005

"Something From the Oven" was a fun & easy read that was packed with lots of interesting factoids. This book discusses how the American food culture changed in the decade or two after World War II. There are chapters on how the media influenced the American housewives' food-buying decisions, the rise of convenience foods, the birth of cooking shows on TV, and the 1950's/1960's American cookbook scene.

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D. rated it:

(review of isbn 014303491X)

07/15/08

Read in July, 2008

I've always had a weird obsession with the 50s--the food, cocktail culture, the kitchenware--so I was excited to see this book. I found it quite interesting because it explained so much about why we eat the way we do, both on a national level and on a more personal level (my grandmother's ambrosia salad, casseroles, etc). The book is an entertaining mix of food history and feminism.

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Sara

Sara rated it:

(review of isbn 014303491X)

08/28/07

Read in August, 2007

What a great little book about that much-maligned decade, the 1950s. It's not clear that Shapiro ever really makes up her mind whether her main subject is American food or the American housewife, but her great affection for both makes this book a refreshing alternative to the many histories of the 1950s that barely try to disguise their authors' contempt for their subject.

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Ed rated it:

(review of isbn 014303491X)

06/08/08

bookshelves: cultural-criticism

Read in October, 2004

We're so accustomed to our food products being "everyday" items that is often shocking to discover, as in this book, the origin of many things we take for granted, such as the things that fill our freezers. The TV Dinner is stereotypically 50s, as are the "miracle" of a bag of frozen veggies. A nice 50s period piece.

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Curlita

Curlita rated it:

(review of isbn 014303491X)

03/16/07

bookshelves: 2007

Read in January, 2007

recommends it for: feminists, foodies, and social historians

Describes how the food industry and advertising changed the way people prepared food during the 1950s. The last chapter is the best -- it parallels the seemingly disparate philosophies of Julia Child and Betty Friedan, whose seminal works were released in the same week. Very, very readable and interesting.

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Jenna

Jenna rated it:

02/04/08

bookshelves: read-in-2008

Read in February, 2008

Half fascinating, half deathly dull, overall I think this would have held my attention better if I could identify everyone being profiled. 50 pages about someone I've never heard of is hard slogging, but I imagine that if everyone in the book had played a role in my life I would have enjoyed it more.

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Izzy

Izzy rated it:

(review of isbn 014303491X)

07/01/07

Read in May, 2007

I found it to be a bit disjointed and tangential. However the author's proposal that media and advertising companies had a role in our transition away from home-cooked, health meals is a well-stated. It has some GREAT cool-whip recipes!

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Linda

Linda rated it:

(review of isbn 014303491X)

02/08/08

bookshelves: non-fiction

Read in October, 2005

Very interesting look at food trends in the 50’s (with quite a few suprises) and the War’s impact on American eating habits with biographical information on some influential food writers and “personalities”.

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Allisonv

Allisonv rated it:

(review of isbn 014303491X)

01/18/08

This is essential to understanding what is in your fridge right now and why. Food in america changed fundamentally as recently the mid twentieth century.

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Heidi

Heidi rated it:

(review of isbn 014303491X)

07/22/08

bookshelves: non-fiction

Fascinating to my inner sociology nerd! Interesting how the more things change, the more they stay the same.

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kaveena

kaveena rated it:

(review of isbn 014303491X)

06/15/07

Not as good as Perfection Salad. Maybe, it was just overkill on my part. Too much of a good thing.

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