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110th out of 470 books
—
986 voters
Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century (California Studies in Food and Culture, 24)
This entertaining and social history of women and cooking at the turn of the 20th century is laced with sly humor and lucid insight. The author uncovers our ancestors' widespread obsession with food, and tells readers why we think as we do about food today.
Paperback, 304 pages
Published
February 20th 2001
by Modern Library
(first published 1986)
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I'd already read Shapiro's follow-up to this, Something From the Oven, and it was a hoot. This one was much drier. In part, probably, because it wasn't as goofy an era. I did bog down a few times, but then it would pick up again. There weren't as many specifics on the food as I would have liked. You heard over and over again what the home economists were assigning people to eat, but not much about what the public was eating instead and really not much about the reasoning behind those healthy sel...more
This is a very interesting historical account of the development of the domestic science movement, scientific cooking, and the often bizarre food that these leading women cooked. Rather than the home ec classes we experienced in school, the roots of the domestic science movement, which culminated in the field of home economics, focused on creating an academic home for women that had never before existed, applying scientific principles to work in the kitchen. Shapiro claims that the ultimate fail...more
Shapiro is sympathetic to the women who began the domestic science movement, but also debunks the movement's roots in gender-essentialist assumptions. The book is interesting and well-written; never condescending in tone, never pandering to the appetite for simplistic pop-history, the writing nevertheless flows smoothly and is enjoyable to read. Shapiro structures her book carefully, using a combination of chronology and concept to seamlessly outline the way the domestic science movement became...more
This was a re-read for me; I shouldn't have wasted time on books I've already read, but there it was, and it's fun to read. Horrified fascination, much like reading memoirs of bad families - the whole idea of scientific cooking, where taste and pleasure are not only unimportant, they are regarded as slightly dangerous, since they may interfere with getting people to eat a perfectly balanced diet - is sort of creepy, and the invention of the profession of home economics is certainly a horror stor...more
Loved this feminist/history/food book- so much fun to see how cooking and the kitchen were transformed by modernity at the turn of the century. Everything traditional, European, or made without recipes was thrown aside in favor of recipes which were standardized to always taste the same. Add ketchup and whipped cream to everything! This was really fun to read, not at all light reading but not too heavy. Could have gone a little more theoretical if she'd tried.
:-)
It makes me want to write a paper...more
:-)
It makes me want to write a paper...more
The story was pretty new to me - I knew the general story of women becoming active in professional reform organizations near the turn of the 19th Century, such as Jane Addams at Hull House, but I'd never heard much about this aspect of it. It certainly explains many things about American food - such as the weird propensity for mixing stuff with mayonnaise and calling it a salad - like the thing my mother-in-law calls Ambrosia Salad, which is some monstrous combination of canned fruit, nuts, and...more
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The current trend away from processed foods and toward the fresh, simple, and low-tech can make you wonder: how did we end up here in the first place? Why were canned vegetables ever even considered a good alternative to fresh when both were available? Shapiro's mini-history of early cooking schools, dieticians, and "food consultants" explores how Victorian values and Protestantism manifested themselves in the shaping of our country's ideas about food and its value.
She stays away from heavy theo...more
She stays away from heavy theo...more
What a fascinating little volume! In sort of a cross between sociology and history, Laura Shapiro reviews the views of cooking and domesticity that were popular around the turn of the 20th century. Turns out domestic science (later known as home economics) evolved as a way to get women into real university courses under the guise of having a legitimate career field for them. Domestic scientists wanted housewives to view their roles in purely scientific terms, learning topics like chemistry (for...more
This is an interesting look into the changing culture of cooking from the late-1800s to the mid-1900s. It also shows how the food industry changed with the times. Kind of interesting how people (okay, well, me...I know there are others but I don't want to speak for them) are moving back to a whole foods, home-cooked meal place, similar to the theory behind the original cooking schools.
An excellent discussion of cooking, the rise of home economics and its intersection with feminism and the education of women, and the changing way Americans eat. I found it completely fascinating.
I read this book a while ago, but I remember being really into it at the time. The recipes are really revolting. It makes you think.
Aug 10, 2011
Doug Ebeling
added it
Interesting to learn how we lost touch with the preparation of our food as the industrial revolution progressed.
A social history of changing attitudes towards cooking and other aspects of homemaking, specifically the emergence of domestic science aka home economics towards the end of the 19th century. The re-imagining and re-purposing of housework (women’s work) as a matter of scientific logic and precision (men’s work) had some interesting social and culinary consequences (some of which Shapiro covers in another excellent book, Something From The Oven).
The title comes from a recipe for chopped vegetables...more
The title comes from a recipe for chopped vegetables...more
America has been royally screwed up in how it relates to food for way longer than I ever imagined. Yikes!
This is one of the best books about food and women's history that I have ever read!
Not as good as I expected. Very repetitive at times. Most valuable insight was just how unscientific cooking used to be, before the days of gas ovens with temperature controls or standardized measurements. And, not that I'm supporting mass-production and distribution of food, it must have been even trickier to get predictable results when local ingredients like eggs, butter and flour varied greatly in style and quality. The relationship between the "scientific homemaking" and the feminist moveme...more
I would move this to my "read" or "2008" shelf, but that would be dishonest, because I couldn't finish the book. If I had been required to read it, for class or something, I might have gotten through more of it. I found the writing dense, much of the topical coverage uninteresting, and the 1/2 or 3/4 that I read largely scattered. I wish this book had lived up to its promise to "uncover[] our ancestors' widespread obsession with food [and] tell[] us why we think as we do about food today..." but...more
An interesting and informative history of the domestic science movement, a topic I did not have any interest in before reading this book. I saw a recommendation for this book in the reader comments of The Sweet Beet blog. I was surprised by the attitudes and aims of many of the early pioneers in this field. Now I want to go check out some more books in this series.
really great book.
This entertaining and social history of women and cooking at the turn of the 20th century is laced with sly humor and lucid insight. The author uncovers our ancestors' widespread obsession with food, and tells readers why we think as we do about food today.
A great book about a fascinating subject: the birth and early history of domestic science and home economics in the United States.
Of note: historically, jello (gelatin) was a SALAD.
[This book came up in a discussion of jello (dessert, salad, or other?) in Rav. Sounds interesting!]
Of note: historically, jello (gelatin) was a SALAD.
[This book came up in a discussion of jello (dessert, salad, or other?) in Rav. Sounds interesting!]
Clearly, I have thing with food writing, so my reviews on such topics might be biased. This one, though, should appeal to techie and history buffs, as well as foodies. Jello molded into banana peels to construct a big pea pod? Yes, people really once thought that was haute cuisine.
Highly recommend this for anyone interested in the social climate surrounding food during the turn of the century and/or the founding of the Boston Cooking School. Get the revised edition to read the afterward added in 2008.
This is a pretty fascinating look at how we as a culture got from boiled beef to aspic and beyond--and how that's all mixed up with feminism, essentialism, and all those other isms we thought we'd left back in undergrad.
Except I didn't like this book. I thought it would be interesting, but it was all about green jello. I am exaggerating here, really, green jello is not food.
Very entertaining - my review is here on my blog.
Very interesting history of the Domesitc Science movement and how it has shaped our domestic and culinary culture today.
Jun 14, 2013
Laura
marked it as to-read
Jun 14, 2013
Michaela Fischer
marked it as to-read
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Laura Shapiro is an award winning author who worked at Newsweek for over 15 years.
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