Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America by Laura Shapiro

Jan 23, 2010 Bob Redmond rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: americana, food-and-farms

Shapiro writes a fairly engrossing book about domestic food culture in the 50's. Her prose alternates between breezy and academic--with uneven results--but her nose for a good story and compelling information wins out in the end.

She describes (to this reader's horror) how manufacturers of Army rations in WWII would, despite absolutely no demand, eventually win their way into the American kitchen with products like SPAM and vienna sausages. Even more disturbing, they changed public perceptions of...more Shapiro writes a fairly engrossing book about domestic food culture in the 50's. Her prose alternates between breezy and academic--with uneven results--but her nose for a good story and compelling information wins out in the end.

She describes (to this reader's horror) how manufacturers of Army rations in WWII would, despite absolutely no demand, eventually win their way into the American kitchen with products like SPAM and vienna sausages. Even more disturbing, they changed public perceptions of the kitchen with an Orwellian advertising campaign about how women had no time to cook and required new "convenience" foods. In reality, women (and some men) liked to cook and resisted the new foods. The manufacturers parried by helping re-configure grocery stores with new freezer sections, burying staples and bedazzling shoppers with sensory overload and false social pressure.

James Beard and Poppy Cannon waged a public debate around food preparation and menus, with Beard (Hors d'Oeuvres and Canapés) arguing for the epicures , and Cannon (The Can Opener Cookbook) leading the populists. Shapiro devotes a whole chapter to Cannon, whose story should be a major motion picture: much more than a pop-culture food columnist, she led a complex and intriguing life. For instance, she befriended Alice B. Toklas, a serious cook as well as Gertrude Stein's life partner and muse, and published a cookbook with Toklas--an effort that wrecked their friendship. The central event of Cannon's life was a nine-year affair with William White, the head of the NAACP. White--a black man married to a black woman--would leave his wife for Cannon--who was white--scandalizing blacks and whites alike. Despite such public adventures and misadventures, Cannon found herself ignored and killed herself by jumping off her balcony in 1975.

Shapiro also writes good sections on M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, the Pillsbury Bake-Off, TV dinners, and refrigerators, covering a lot of ground in under 300 pages and tracing a critical sub-plot of the role of women in culinary history. If the book were a meal, it came out a bit burnt, but it was an ambitious recipe all the same, and admirable for that.

*

WHY I READ THIS BOOK: I read a review in the NY Times Book Review citing this book, specifically the industrialization of domestic cooking post-WWII. The book being reviewed seemed less interesting than the citation (in fact, I've forgotten what book that was); I looked up the citation though and tracked down the book. It helped that I was also in the middle of watching early seasons of MAD MEN and was intrigued by the culture of the 50's and early 60's. My book group had also finished a project on sugar, and food was on my mind. This book proved to be an irresistible find.
(less)

like 2 likes · see review

Dec 05, 2008 Paula rated it 5 of 5 stars

Fascinating history of the food industry's determination to make women want packaged food. Manipulation at it's cleverest. Apparently even working women preferred homemade dinners until they were convinced otherwise. Shapiro is especialy good discussing food writers like Peg Bracken and M.F. K. Fisher. The section on the Julia Child phenomenon is great.

like 2 likes · see review

Jun 17, 2008 Maryalice rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 -- or...more

like 2 likes · see review

Apr 09, 2013 Nico Scheidemantel rated it 4 of 5 stars

One of my favorite genres to read is what I call "culinary anthropology." I think it's fascinating to explore food history, and this book leads the reader through several facets of food culture and the evolution of dinner in the 1950's. This decade is a favorite time for hip kids to wax nostalgic about, and anyone with a desire to delve into decoding that nostalgia would surely enjoy this book. Laura Shapiro seems to have a few favorite topics that she has researched and collected together for r...more One of my favorite genres to read is what I call "culinary anthropology." I think it's fascinating to explore food history, and this book leads the reader through several facets of food culture and the evolution of dinner in the 1950's. This decade is a favorite time for hip kids to wax nostalgic about, and anyone with a desire to delve into decoding that nostalgia would surely enjoy this book. Laura Shapiro seems to have a few favorite topics that she has researched and collected together for readers to think about, including the origins of the Pillsbury Bake-Off, Betty Crocker, and the life and times of Poppy Cannon.

Market research as we now know it seems to have been a relatively new idea during the era, as many of the solutions presented to housewives at the time were apparently not as welcome as advertising from the same time would lead one to believe. I was especially interested to read that cooking the family meals was actually the most favored chore of the typical housewife; it was only placed second when first time mothers had to care for their new infant. Companies that processed and produced convenience foods were providing products that people had to be convinced to use!

I also enjoyed thinking about the difference between "man" food and "woman" food. It is strange to think that two separate cuisines exist for each gender, but even M F K Fisher presents the idea in "How to Cook a Wolf." The idea of a ladies' luncheon with such abominations as chopped tomatoes and pickles folded into strawberry gelatin gives one the idea that dainty food that looks pretty is more important to women than actually eating something tasty. This sounds like a dated concept to my modern ears, but companies used these ideas to sell sometimes ridiculous uses for their convenient products.

I certainly enjoyed the overview of each topic the book addressed, and it encouraged me to seek out additional reading on some of the subjects covered, which is always nice when learning about such a vast subject. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in food history. It might inspire a deeper look into one of the topics that are touched on here.(less)

like · see review

Jul 02, 2012 Emily rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: food-studies, school

I loved Shapiro's Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century and Something from the Oven continues the story, focusing on the 1950s. Equally well-researched and compulsively readable, I am nothing short of a fan.

In this work, she tackles both the larger themes and social trends going on during the 1950s -- such as, the rise of the convenience food industry, the increasing number of women in the workplace, and women's roles more generally -- and mini-biographies of some key f...more

like 1 like · see review

Jun 25, 2012 Stephen rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: food, history

The latter half of the 20th century saw the United States convulsed with social change. Millions of women and blacks who found their role temporarily elevated during the Second World War, when they were called upon to serve in uniform and in the factories, could not simply return to being second-class citizens after war’s end. In Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in the 1950s, Laura Shapiro covers the beginnings of women’s liberation and the feminist movement in the context of America...more The latter half of the 20th century saw the United States convulsed with social change. Millions of women and blacks who found their role temporarily elevated during the Second World War, when they were called upon to serve in uniform and in the factories, could not simply return to being second-class citizens after war’s end. In Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in the 1950s, Laura Shapiro covers the beginnings of women’s liberation and the feminist movement in the context of America’s changing food market, bookending the text with the question: do women like to cook?

Initial previews led me to believe this book’s subject was the changing food market itself: an industry that had to meet the demand for food that could be safely shipped around the world to follow the Allied armies found itself at war’s end with a lot of output and nowhere to sell it -- unless the civilian market could be expanded considerably. To do that, advertisers had to convince women to accept their TV trays as dinner, and their new confections as real food. They urged women to reconsider what cooking meant as a craft when women were already beginning to question what cooking and homemaking meant to their lives in general. What did it mean to be a woman?

Women were not altogether excited to adopt the new foodstuffs. Despite food magazines’ almost-triumphant declaration that old-fashioned cooking was dead, defeated by Scientific Progress, those same magazines’ letters reveal that women were still looking for traditional recipes. They added the novel products in sparingly, as substitutes for the “real thing”. It was not until the mid-to late fifties when another generation of women came of age – women who, as children, ate the new processed foods without judgment and regarded them as normal – that the substitutes started gaining more traction and replacing the ‘real thing’ in regular use. Similarly, women reappraising their own role in the home did so at first only reluctantly, until the publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminnine Mystique spotlighted the “problem with no name” – and gave women the courage to start speaking more stridently. Shapiro sees women as coming of age in this period, and their changing relationship with food reflected this. Cooking would not define their lives, but they would also not be patronized to by businesses which attempt to reduce their role in the house to that of simply warming up product from the grocery store. Cooking was a skill to take pride in, and ultimately women triumph in Shapiro's narrative by becoming the arbiters of both how to incorporate novelty and tradition, and of their own fates.

Something from the Oven is a bit like gazing through near-transparent stained glass. The food market is certainly an interesting lens to view the birth of feminism through, but unlike a telescope, here the lens -- like stained glass -- is visible, and sometimes it got in the way of the focus on women. This is a book about women and feminism, but culinary marketing and food culture sometimes overshadow the main subject, so the essential point of the book never comes into sharp focus despite appearing very interesting. It's fascinating, yet frustrating.(less)

like · see review

Jun 26, 2010 Karyl rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, non-fiction

I found myself hardly able to put this book down! Something From the Oven is a fascinating look at what it meant to be a 1950s housewife and therefore the preparer of meals for most households. From reading this book, I have learned that just about everything we have been taught about 1950s housewives is utterly inaccurate. By looking at advertisements from that era, we can surmise that most women were using all kinds of convenience foods to help streamline their time in the kitchen, when in rea...more

like 1 like · see review

Aug 29, 2011 Zack rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2011

French farmers bulldozing McDonald's restaurants to protest Globalization. Activists organizing tomato boycotts in solidarity with modern-day slaves employed by unscrupulous Florida farmers. Genetic engineers seeking a cure for famine by tinkering with the DNA of grains and fruits. Locavores pursuing a low-carbon lifestyle by switching to a 100-mile diet. To coin a new platitude, Food is Politics these days. It's enough to make one nostalgic for a mythical time in American cultural history, when...more French farmers bulldozing McDonald's restaurants to protest Globalization. Activists organizing tomato boycotts in solidarity with modern-day slaves employed by unscrupulous Florida farmers. Genetic engineers seeking a cure for famine by tinkering with the DNA of grains and fruits. Locavores pursuing a low-carbon lifestyle by switching to a 100-mile diet. To coin a new platitude, Food is Politics these days. It's enough to make one nostalgic for a mythical time in American cultural history, when the family all ate dinner around the same table, when every suburb could boast scores of home-made apple pies cooling on identical window sills, and when stay-at-home mothers employed the skills they learned from their mothers and their high school Home Economics classes to keep their husbands and children well fed and happy: the 1950s. Of course, nostalgia has a tricky way of standing in place of real history, and the years between 1945 and 1962 were not marked with so much homogeneity and domestic goddess-ness as we might think.

Laura Shapiro aims to cover a lot of ground with this book: from the rise of frozen prepared dinners (created by food companies looking for a way to maintain cost-effective wartime production methods) to the first episode of The French Chef, the author provides a timeline of how American foodways changed in the mid-20th century. Vitally intertwined is her exploration into the changing identity of the American housewife, and the struggles that women faced as they valiantly juggled marriages, children, household chores, part-time jobs, and personal growth. Shapiro profiles notable celebrities like Julia Child, Alice B. Toklas, and Betty Friedan, whose lifestyles and careers resonated with an audience of homemakers trying to make sense of the meaning of their domestic lives. Just as fascinating, I thought, were the chapters about the creation of Betty Crocker (the celebrity spokesperson and the brand-name) and the biography of Toklas' one-time friend Poppy Cannon, who made a career in food writing and cookbooks despite having no aptitude or even real enthusiasm for cooking.

A cultural landscape portrait of gender roles and food in the 1950s seems an awful ambitious task, and at times I felt like Shapiro was trying to cover too much ground in too few pages: there are some sections that went by in a blur of statistics that meant little to me, while other parts I felt could have used greater elaboration. Nevertheless, it is a very interesting and at times even amusing read (two words: canned hamburgers), and good enough to make me want to pick up her earlier book, Perfection Salad. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the postwar years, food culture in America, feminism, or any combination of the above.(less)

like · see review

Apr 03, 2008 Ellen rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: 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.

like 1 like · see review

Jan 31, 2010 Dina rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shapiro tackles a metric TON of material her 254 page (with 30 additional pages of notes!) book on the cooking revolution of the 1950s, a time she frames from the early years after the War to round about the mid 1960s. From the food industry to cookbook trends, from 'harried housewife' fiction to the women that wrote it, Something from the Oven is something of a magnum opus and I'm a little jealous I didn't get around to writing it first.

Shapiro does a great job of describing the lengths gone...more Shapiro tackles a metric TON of material her 254 page (with 30 additional pages of notes!) book on the cooking revolution of the 1950s, a time she frames from the early years after the War to round about the mid 1960s. From the food industry to cookbook trends, from 'harried housewife' fiction to the women that wrote it, Something from the Oven is something of a magnum opus and I'm a little jealous I didn't get around to writing it first.

Shapiro does a great job of describing the lengths gone to and the methods used by food manufactures to market convenience foods to women and, while their hard-headed grit and determination to make a sale is no sort of surprise, the women's responses to these items was something I found particularly fascinating. It's easy to assume, myself growing up in an era of Pop-Tarts and meals-in-a-box, that these products received nothing less than a warm welcome to the table; something housewives were indeed excited by and everyone adopted with little question. But both myself and the industry were proven wrong. Convenience and partially prepared meals were fine, so long as you didn't take too much skill out of the equation. Something as simple as requiring the cracking of an egg for a box of cake mix would make all the difference between one brand and another just-add-water variation. Perhaps more intriguing than the reactions to the food were women's reactions to others who used these items. One study in particular presented women with two shopping lists, each identical save for one containing instant coffee and the other fresh ground, and asked them to describe the women who made the lists, given only this information. While the woman brewing fresh coffee was seen as a good, clean and tidy housewife who obviously cared for her husband and family, the woman with instant coffee was seen as an old hag who certainly kept an unkept house and probably didn't even prepare her face in the morning. The nerve!

A great deal of time is spent exploring the lives of the women who lived in the movement - the cookbook, magazine and fiction writers whose job it was to make sense of a changing culinary landscape and help women feel at ease with their changing roles as wives and perhaps even employed wives. While I suppose these women were explained in such depth as to be representations of the struggles and issues many women of the time were dealing with, I found the entire chapter devoted to the life of Poppy Cannon a bit unnecessary. While she lived a bit a duel life that perhaps many women of the 50's could identify with -wife and worker, canned dinner or from scratch? - I found the details of her multiple marriages and the ins and outs of her time in the publishing industry a bit off topic in the larger framework of the book. Shapiro touches briefly on the difference between women who cook (using canned and instant items, often to produce "dainty" dishes using marshmallows) and men who cook (creating strong, complex and meaty dishes from raw ingredients with advanced and nuanced cooking techniques). I found this distinction particularly compelling having read Anthony Bordain's Kitchen Confidential and, in a previous review, noted his dismissal of women as cooks or chefs. Having this piece of information about the stigmas developed around the time he was born (certainly when he was learning his trade) allows me to put his comments in a larger, albeit still sexist, framework.

In the end we tie these women to the larger feminist movement brewing under the surface during the post-war years. In general, I'm not interested to read any type of feminist lit, but Shapiro handles it with an even hand. Never preachy and never entitled, she describes how people like Julia Child and Betty Freidman gave women the courage to take not only the kitchen but their whole lives in their own hands outside of the influence of their husbands, their children, their mothers and the food industry. She describes other strong women, such as Alice Waters, who took these ideals and ran with them, going on to create the foundation for the local food movement.

This book was absolutely terrific and I would encourage anyone who shares my passions of cooking, corporate food culture and the 1950s to pick it up and dig in. My biggest disappointment was that though Shapiro leaves us at the birth of the local food movement, we never hear about its origins in war and community gardens. I would have been interested to hear her take on why this self sufficient practice was thrown to the wayside when the soldiers came home, especially considering the emphasis she places on women's need to feel as if they are creating or producing something in order to be "good housewives". I'm anxious to pick up her previous book Perfection Salad, which focuses on similar themes in the late 1800's to 1920's, to see if she touches at all on this issue.(less)

like · see review

Dec 25, 2012 Richard rated it 4 of 5 stars

This was great! An interesting cultural history about food in post-war America. Often funny too. Much of the book concerns the way the food industry kept trying to push their products at skeptical housewives. Corporations, in league with women's magazines and newspaper food columnists, kept assuring women they hated to cook, only to have their quarterly earnings plans stymied when those same women refused to fall in line. Of course, some "food products" did prove successful (TV dinners, cake mix...more

like 1 like · see review

Sep 03, 2012 Betty rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sociology

Very readable social history of the American culinary landscape during the 1950's. Despite the increasing prowess of heavily-marketed factory-produced food products many women back then were negotiating the postwar society by trying to figure out how to balance work and household duties such as feeding the family. The iconic imagery of happy housewife proves to be a marketing device that veils the everyday realities of "domestic chaos". Just as we have our baby blogs which details the joys and t...more

like 1 like · see review

Apr 12, 2010 Bob rated it 3 of 5 stars

I'm not sure where I started to find this less interesting (probably after the chapter on the emergence of frozen dinners) but somewhere along the way it lost my interest.

The first handful of chapters had me captivated. I love nostalgia and this was a big dose of it, combined with the real-life facts to prop it up. I loved reading about the emergence of space-age foods and the differences between what the magazines portrayed a woman wanted vs. what women actually wanted.

A pretty good read and I...more

like · see review

Mar 01, 2013 Samantha Koller rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 52-in-52-books-take-one

I really enjoyed learning about what cooking was like in the 1950s, and this book did a great job of setting the story--it explained how manufacturers created a market for convenience foods and how ladies' magazines incorporated them into their recipes. Before women were told that they didn't have time to cook, they actually reported that they enjoyed cooking more than other household chores (including caring for children) and did not feel like they were too busy to prepare food. Another study t...more I really enjoyed learning about what cooking was like in the 1950s, and this book did a great job of setting the story--it explained how manufacturers created a market for convenience foods and how ladies' magazines incorporated them into their recipes. Before women were told that they didn't have time to cook, they actually reported that they enjoyed cooking more than other household chores (including caring for children) and did not feel like they were too busy to prepare food. Another study that Shapiro presents in the book showed how women thought poorly of other women who purchased convenience foods like instant coffee--even in a time when most women were buying some convenience foods. The book also allowed me to understand the cultural significance of Julia Child and the contribution she made towards bringing the male culinary world of exquisitely-prepared, delicious food into a woman's home kitchen, where previously women were encouraged to showcase their creativity with green bean casseroles and Jell-O salads.

My grandmother lives with me now, and when we cook it's fascinating to hear what she has to say about cooking. She worked in a store during her teenage and adult life, and she cooked because she had to--meat, potatoes, and a vegetable. She didn't seem to particularly enjoy it, but she has her ideas about what is healthy and what is time-consuming, and what is appropriate to serve to guests, etc.. This book has provided the context to help me understand what her cooking life was like--and as someone who loves food and is very interested in it, it's really interesting to understand the culture I've inherited around preparing daily meals.

I will say that the reason this was a 4-star book and not a 5-star one is that the writing felt a little all over the place at times. It felt like a collection of essays, and I wished it had been more integrated. However, it always felt well researched, and here I am, a year later, and I feel like I've remembered a lot of the content because it was very engaging. It's very much worth a read if you're interested in the subject matter.(less)

like · see review

Jan 08, 2012 Al Martin rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: history, culture

I have read a lot about changing culture in this era of the US, so I realize the content here is probably less revolutionary to me than someone taking up the book for the first time. Still, I like reading other authors' takes on this familiar subject area, because invariably there is something new mixed into the familiar for me. That's true of this book, but even though the perspective was interesting, I couldn't get drawn in. I felt the book lacked a clear organization; we seemed to jump around...more I have read a lot about changing culture in this era of the US, so I realize the content here is probably less revolutionary to me than someone taking up the book for the first time. Still, I like reading other authors' takes on this familiar subject area, because invariably there is something new mixed into the familiar for me. That's true of this book, but even though the perspective was interesting, I couldn't get drawn in. I felt the book lacked a clear organization; we seemed to jump around a lot from one thing to another, and the chapter titles did very little to orient me as I read. One chapter felt like the next, and in a book like this - where the author makes it clear that several things are happening all at once - clear delineation is essential.

I also felt that what the title said we'd be exploring and what the book's content actually was were two different things. The subtitle, "Reinventing dinner in 1950s America" made me expect a book devoted entirely to culinary shifts. While the author does spend most of her time on this (discussing ready-made foods' appearance on the market, visionaries like "betty crocker" and Julia Child) I think what she's ultimately trying to illustrate is how culinary shifts mirrored, and sometimes caused, shifts in femininity as a whole in that time frame. It wasn't ABOUT dinner - dinner is merely a lens through which to view the American cultural landscape as it relates to women, and I think the author really misses the mark there.

This is perhaps best exemplified in the last chapter, which focuses rather strangly on Julia Child and then Betty Friedan, the latter of which has rather nothing to do with "dinner" per se and thus is a strange discovery in a book that is supposed to be about that topic. The first line of the epilogue explains her presence: "In the end, it took both a cook and a feminist to liberate the American kitchen." WHAT?!?!?! So if those two women are really what changed food culture, why did I spend my time reading those previous 5 chapters which had nothing to do with what ultimately "reinvented" dinner? I really think Shapiro could have made either a stronger thesis from the start - about how some food changes did impact the food culture and others did not - or she should have written the book all about Child and Friedan, and how several cultural factors paved the way for each of them, and that together their ideas caused a revolution in the kitchen. If she had chosen the latter, I would have bought that book.(less)

like · see review

Aug 24, 2010 Carolyn rated it 4 of 5 stars

A non-fiction book which was so much more then just cooking in the 1950's.

I liked this book, but then I was interested in the subject of cooking, plus I really enjoy the history of the 1950s.

Shapiro writes well, both acedemically and humorously. The first part of the book took a look at how the food processing world changed after World War II (you mean hamburger didn't always come ground and women had to pluck their own chickens?). As well as obvious changes with the invention of the blender, tv...more

like · see review

Jul 25, 2009 Laura rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction, social-history

Shapiro's book is at its most interesting when she is discussing the cultural trends that created the packaged food industry and such icons as Betty Crocker. I was less interested in the section of mini-biographies of "big names" in the food industry such as Poppy Cannon. I also found myself disagreeing with a few of the conclusions that the author comes to, namely that the combination of Julia Child and Betty Friedan together "liberate[d:] the American kitchen ... from the grip of the food indu...more

like 2 likes · see review

Jan 12, 2009 Patty rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: kitchen-tales, non-fiction

Interesting, BUT it could have used an editor. For example, there were lots of opportunities for more photographs, but the density of the text and the size of the print made the book more difficult to read. Looks matter. There is one illustration of the first Betty Crocker, but none showing how she changed through the ages. There is a discussion of how much fruit and vegetables Americans ate in the 40's, but not information on how much they consume now and how that has changed. However, it was s...more

like · see review

May 13, 2008 Kate rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 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" of tomatoes with che...more

like 1 like · see review

Jan 28, 2008 Kristen rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: food, fromlibrary

This book is basically about the classic 1950s+ convenience meals and how what was marketed (and thus what we remember) doesn't entirely match what really happened. Women kept making things from scratch (and enjoying it) at a higher rate than pop culture history has you believe.

She does a ton of research. One really interesting contrast, as an example, are the articles and recipes in major newspaper food supplements (or magazines) compared to the reader recipe requests and submissions in the sam...more This book is basically about the classic 1950s+ convenience meals and how what was marketed (and thus what we remember) doesn't entirely match what really happened. Women kept making things from scratch (and enjoying it) at a higher rate than pop culture history has you believe.

She does a ton of research. One really interesting contrast, as an example, are the articles and recipes in major newspaper food supplements (or magazines) compared to the reader recipe requests and submissions in the same publications.

Although the social history was really interesting, the best part was the food itself. The really weird recipes and products they tried to foist on consumers.

Vichysoise : Frozen mashed potatoes stirred into Campbell's cream of chicken. A Harvest Luncheon: Vienna sausages broiled with canned peaches. Sprinkle cheese on tomatoes, top them with banana slices and mayo, and brown in the oven. Half a doughnut topped with a slice of cranberry sauce and a scoop of cottage cheese. A "sophisticated" dessert from Nestle: spread Saltines with cream cheese and top each with a sliced strawberry. Garden club salad: elbow macaroni, pineapple chunks, chopped cabbage, marshmallows, olives, Italian dressing.

The frozen and canned food industries did a lot of retooling after the war. The products that failed were sometimes really interesting, especially when they were really similar to the products that were smash hits. Everyone loved frozen concentrated orange juice but no one bought frozen concentrated tomato juice (people preferred the canned to even fresh, and still do). Frozen coffee didn't work either. Ditto powdered just-add-water wine. Canned cooked hamburgers. Frozen baked beans. Frozen concentrated mineral water! Fish sticks were insanely popular, but no one then bought breaded sticks of chicken, veal, eggplant, or lima beans.

And for those of you who hadn't already heard of candle salad: half a banana, standing upright in a pineapple ring, with a cherry on top.

Campbell's marketed soup for breakfast and there were ads recommending chocolate bars get stirred into oatmeal and 7-up into milk. Betty Crocker pushed a late-night "fourth meal" fifty years before Taco Bell.

Fun stuff. (less)

like 1 like · see review

Jul 12, 2009 amy rated it 5 of 5 stars

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 and similarly explosive debuts of Julia Child's The French Cook and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, in 1963.

Shapiro takes a multi-pronged (can I get away with this word?) look at the 1950s housewife: as a woman with a veritable laundry list of a job description; as the target audience...more

like · see review

Jul 05, 2012 Teena in Toronto rated it 3 of 5 stars

Interesting book to read considering where we are today with convenience meals ... Lean Cuisines, President's Choice products, etc.

The quotes from those times were hilarious. My favourite from radio personality, Mary Margaret McBride ...

"She went on to predict that homemade biscuits and cakes would never lose their appeal, 'just as no satisfaction will ever equal the joy a woman finds in setting those biscuits and other delicious products of her own skill before her family.'"

Um ... sure.

like · see review

Jul 25, 2011 Val rated it 2 of 5 stars

Overall it was a disappointment. Less about dinner in 1950's America, and more about the role of women in society. Lots of statistics on the percentage of women working. Also, lots of biographical info on real and imaginary cooking "authorities" - including Poppy Cannon and Betty Crocker. Included a section on women authors - such as Jean Kerr ("Please Don't Eat the Daisies") and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey ("Cheaper By the Dozen") - and how the life they wrote about differed from the life they liv...more

like · see review

May 25, 2010 Toni rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club

A fascinating--sometimes scary--book about American food in the 1950s. Told in an often humorous manner, the author takes us through an era where food manufacturers tried to convince American housewives that the foods manufactured for feeding the soldiers during the war REALLY should be part of mainstream America's food, and how often their efforts were rejected. Still, they kept trying, and while manufacturers were never able to convince anyone that eggplant sticks were "food," they did find wa...more

like · see review

Mar 02, 2013 Barbara rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: food-books, history, non-fiction

Well researched but uneven account of the influences and changes in 1950's American food. Since I grew up eating some of the horrors described, I experienced mild interest in the background. I thought much of the book was common knowledge for my generation, but I was interested by the chapter on Poppy Cannon, terrible cook but progressive in the arenas of feminism and race.

like · see review

Mar 18, 2012 Sarah rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, mba, source-library

Swept through this book while researching Betty Crocker for a school paper. Also listened to the NPR "All Things Considered" story on the book. There were some great analyses of the era in which Betty Crocker reigned as "America's First Lady of Food" - I liked the way the author went deeper than a superficial history to investigate WHY.

like · see review

Jun 21, 2010 Dixie Diamond rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 1950s, anthropology, history, women, my_books

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

like 1 like · see review

Jul 25, 2011 Sarah added it

Fascinating subject matter, esp. the chapter on Poppy Cannon (I want to know more). I'm somewhat skeptical of some of Shapiro's larger arguments-- she even seems to allude to the fact that these historical actors behaved in nuanced ways but subordinates those quibbles to create a more pleasing narrative. As such, it is a pleasant read, but I'm curious to delve into more rigorous scholarship on the subject.

like · see review

Aug 26, 2012 Maron rated it 3 of 5 stars

Fascinating topic that I didn't event know I was interested in. It turned out to be a whole lot more that the cooking revolution and more about how the woman's role in society has changed and effects of that change. It's a topic I am looking forward to reading a lot more about. I wasn't "in love" with some of the sections, but overall it was a very captivating story. Good suggestion.

like · see review

Aug 10, 2011 Doug Ebeling added it

Really interesting history of home cooking as convenience foods took over the kitchen and the lengths the food companies went to promote their use -- fascinating when you consider our current debate about obesity and processed foods.

like · see review

title link	preview: Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America
avg rating	preview: Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America Goodreads rating: 3.62 (275 ratings)
small image	preview: click here [close]
med image	preview: click here [close]
BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/345923.Something_from_the_Oven?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1309287683l/345923.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/345923.Something_from_the_Oven?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America by Laura Shapiro[/url]

Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America

Friend Reviews

Lists with This Book

Community Reviews

new topic
Discuss This Book

combine
Other Editions (3)

Genres

Readers also enjoyed similar books

About Laura Shapiro

Books by Laura Shapiro

Share This Book

Share This Book on Your Website

Trivia About Something from th...

Quotes from Something from the Ove...