The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink Quotes

“In the Apollo moon program of the late 1960s, the quality and variety of space food was greatly improved. Hot water was available for rapid reconstitution of freeze-dried foods, and the taste of the foods was much better. The astronauts carried “spoon bowls,” pressurized plastic containers that could be opened with a plastic zipper and the contents eaten with a spoon. Because it had a high moisture content, the food clung to the spoon, making eating seem closer to the earthbound experience.”
― Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink

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― Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink

“The decision to call the meals “TV dinners” was the result of research showing that people were already eating Swanson potpies in front of the television.”
― Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink

“Agricultural historians cannot agree on where the sunflower, Helianthus annuus, originated: Peru, Central America, or what is now the southwestern United States are all candidates.”
― Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink

“Associated with refinement and sweetness, sugar has come to represent stereotypical feminine qualities. Phrases such as “Home Sweet Home,” “eye candy,” and “sugar and spice” (what girls are made of) have entered the vocabulary.”
― Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink

“Cyclamates, aspartame, and saccharin are not only sweeter than sugar—thirty, two hundred, and three hundred times, respectively—but are also cheaper to produce.”
― Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink

“Because sugar has no nutritional value and is something that brings pleasure, many nineteenth-century Americans identified it as a source of various societal maladies. Victorian medical advisers and reformers alike, preoccupied with personal respectability and good conduct, believed that sugar was slightly addictive and would lead to other vices, such as gambling and drinking. In the late twentieth century people blamed hyperactivity, obesity, attention deficit disorder, diabetes, and other debilities (especially among children) on sugar consumption.”
― Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink

“While there was some sugar rationing during World War I and supplies of candy for the soldiers became a priority (it was a quick and portable energy source and did not go bad), women on the home front especially felt the shortages during World War II. It was the first commodity to be put on the ration list and the last to be taken off (in 1947).”
― Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink

“For centuries available only to the rich—its value was once almost equal to gold—sugar became a mainstay in elite diets and social rituals. It tempered the bitter taste of other luxurious imported substances, such as coffee, chocolate, and tea.”
― Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink

“In the nineteenth century apothecaries used sugar-coated lozenges to conceal the bitter drugs inside; from those medicinal products came hard candies.”
― Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink

“To determine the heat level, cooks held a hand in the oven for as long as tolerable and judged the temperature by time. (Some authorities recommended thirty-five to forty-five seconds as the time indicative of a “moderate” oven.) This system was highly individual, because it depended on the peculiarities of the oven itself and the heat tolerance of the cook.”
― Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink

“Even homes supplied with electricity had serious problems with electric stoves. The incoming current was weak, and it took an hour to heat an oven for baking. There often was not sufficient amperage to power the stove burners while the oven was heating.”
― Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink

“While Stewart’s handcrafted approach evokes such positive notions as conservation and recycling, in actuality many of these projects (and recipes) are quite complex, require a fair amount of money, and can be wasteful of resources.”
― Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink

“Though many criticize Stewart as an elitist perfectionist with a notorious reputation for demanding and rude treatment of her staff and household help, many home cooks are fiercely loyal, seeing her as transforming their lives for the better.”
― Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink

“Martha Stewart food lends itself to elaborate, conspicuous consumption and is based upon an invented artisan ethos fully realized only by those who have the luxury to perform the work—whipping cream by hand, for example, or making crackers from scratch.”
― Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink

“Nonetheless, spinach has remained a stranger to most American tables. American annual per capita consumption, only 0.4 pounds by 1977, increased to 1.3 pounds by 2002—lower than that of all other vegetables except artichokes, asparagus, and eggplant.”
― Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink

“Spinach tastes slightly bitter (owing to the presence of oxalic acid), reduces dramatically in volume when cooked, requires several washings before being eaten, delivers few calories, and contains a nutritional powerhouse of beta-carotene, minerals, fiber, protein, and vitamins B, C, and E.”
― Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink

“It lacked taste and texture, and the cubes flaked into crumbs that floated around Glenn’s capsule, threatening to jam delicate equipment.”
― Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink

“So well disguised was the soybean in the Asian diet that the first Europeans who visited the Orient, including Marco Polo, did not realize that the foods they tasted were derived from the soybean.”
― Andrew F. Smith, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink