Making Modern Meals: How Americans Cook Today

by Amy B. Trubek

Overview

Home cooking is crucial to our lives, but today we no longer identify it as an obligatory everyday chore. By looking closely at the stories and practices of contemporary American home cooks—witnessing them in the kitchen and at the table—Amy B. Trubek reveals our episodic but also engaged relationship to making meals.
 
Making Modern Meals explores the state of American cooking over the past century and across all its varied practices, whether cooking is considered a chore, a craft, or a creative process. Trubek challenges current assumptions about who cooks, who doesn’t, and what this means for culture, cuisine, and health. She locates, identifies, and discusses the myriad ways Americans cook in the modern age, and in doing so, argues that changes in making our meals—from shopping to cooking to dining—have created new cooks, new cooking categories, and new culinary challenges.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520289222
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	10/24/2017
Series:	California Studies in Food and Culture , #66
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Amy B. Trubek is Associate Professor of Nutrition and Food Science at the University of Vermont. She is the author of Haute Cuisine: How the French Invented the Culinary Profession and The Taste of Place: A Cultural Journey into Terroir.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Introduction: From Cook to Cooks
1. Cooking Is a Chore
2. Cooking Is an Occupation
3. Cooking Is an Art
4. Cooking Is a Craft
5. Cooking Is for Health
Conclusion

Appendix: Methods
Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Illustration Credits
Index

Editorial Reviews

This ambitious book opens hallways full of doors for young scholars in food studies to one day walk through. . . . This book eloquently raises many topics worthy of deep and serious discussion.

Graduate Association for Food Studies Journal

11/01/2017
For many, cooking is both a skill and a behavior. But is cooking defined by preparing appealing meals from scratch, or the ability to assemble processed ingredients to create food for sustenance? Are we likely, or able, to cook if no one has taught us? Trubek (nutrition & food science, Univ. of Vermont; Haute Cuisine) considers contemporary cooking: how it has changed over the past century, whether it is choice or chore, and what it means to cook. Her ethnographic research takes her on a journey that considers many facets of cookery: as occupation, art, craft, and for health. Trubek states that she is "hopeful about cooking," as her research shows the process to be rich, various, complex, and creative. The author hopes for a world where we understand how to make meals but are not always obligated to produce them. VERDICT Suitable for all academic libraries and larger research collections, Trubek's book is an important contribution to the anthropology of food.—Penelope J.M. Klein, Fayetteville, NY

Library Journal

"Makes the familiar compellingly strange as meals become complex processes of self, other, and culture. Readers in the United States will have little trouble inserting themselves into Trubek's stories, enabling them to consider their own habits of cooking and consuming food.

PopMatters

An excellent introduction to the study of contemporary culinary habits.

CHOICE

Insightful and timely. . .Truly another treat from Trubek, providing the reader with a taste of many of the challenges and considerations facing home cooks in the twenty-first century.

Gastronomica