Invention of the Modern Cookbook

by Sandra Sherman

Overview

This eye-opening history will change the way you read a cookbook or regard a TV chef, making cooking ventures vastly more interesting—and a lot more fun.

Every kitchen has at least one well-worn cookbook, but just how did they come to be? Invention of the Modern Cookbook is the first study to examine that question, discussing the roots of these collections in 17th-century England and illuminating the cookbook's role as it has evolved over time.

Readers will discover that cookbooks were the product of careful invention by highly skilled chefs and profit-minded publishers who designed them for maximum audience appeal, responding to a changing readership and cultural conditions and utilizing innovative marketing and promotion techniques still practiced today. They will see how cookbooks helped women adjust to the changes of the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution by educating them on a range of subjects from etiquette to dealing with household servants. And they will learn how the books themselves became "modern," taking on the characteristics we now take for granted.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798216104636
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	04/15/2010
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	304
File size:	23 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.
Age Range:	7 - 17 Years

About the Author

Sandra Sherman, PhD, is a food historian, attorney, and assistant director at the Intellectual Property Law Institute, Fordham University.
Sandra Sherman, PhD, is a food historian, attorney, and assistant director at the Intellectual Property Law Institute, Fordham University.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction xi

Timeline xxxi

1 Culinary Authority 1

2 Intelligible Recipes and Competent Instruction 39

3 Complementary Material 75

4 Celebrity Chefs 117

5 Marketing Strategies 155

6 Niche and Specially Cookbooks 191

7 Point of View 229

Selected Bibliography 253

Index 259

What People are Saying About This

Laura Schenone

"In this brilliant book, Sandra Sherman sheds new light on one of the biggest literary and media phenomena of all time: the modern cookbook. Her scholarship is impeccable, her thinking sharp and new. As she combs through more than three hundred years of culinary records, Sherman reveals why our appetite for cookbooks is endless, and why their legacy and promises continue to endure—and evolve. Anyone who wants to understand the history of the blockbuster cookbook (and its consistently winning formulas) must read this book."

— Laura Schenone, author of James Beard Award–winning A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told Through Food, Recipes, and Remembrances and The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken: A Search for Food and Family

Heather Dubrow

"Sandra Sherman's approach to the history of cookbooks is original, acute, and witty. Invention of the Modern Cookbook will be of interest to a wide range of readers, from those who study eighteenth-century literature and culture to those who enjoy contemporary cookbooks and cooking programs or simply enjoy cooking and eating. This is an important--and engaging-- volume."

— Heather Dubrow, John D. Boyd, SJ, Chair in the Poetic Imagination at Fordham University and Director of the Poets Out Loud poetry reading series

Laura Schenone

"In this brilliant book, Sandra Sherman sheds new light on one of the biggest literary and media phenomena of all time: the modern cookbook. Her scholarship is impeccable, her thinking sharp and new. As she combs through more than three hundred years of culinary records, Sherman reveals why our appetite for cookbooks is endless, and why their legacy and promises continue to endure—and evolve. Anyone who wants to understand the history of the blockbuster cookbook (and its consistently winning formulas) must read this book."

—

Laura Schenone, author of James Beard Award–winning A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told Through Food, Recipes, and Remembrances and The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken: A Search for Food and Family

Heather Dubrow

"Sandra Sherman's approach to the history of cookbooks is original, acute, and witty. Invention of the Modern Cookbook will be of interest to a wide range of readers, from those who study eighteenth-century literature and culture to those who enjoy contemporary cookbooks and cooking programs or simply enjoy cooking and eating. This is an important--and engaging-- volume."

—

Heather Dubrow, John D. Boyd, SJ, Chair in the Poetic Imagination at Fordham University and Director of the Poets Out Loud poetry reading series

Betty Fussell

"If you thought you knew what a 'cookbook' is, read this smart analysis of a genre that continues to evolve, explode and implode. Armed with scholarship and a lively sense of history, Sandra Sherman shows how the modern cookbook began in 18th-century England as a mass-marketed text. Even then it was shaped by entrepreneurial strategies, hyped by publicity machines, tied to celebrity chefs and used for geopolitical aims. If you want to understand the rage for foodblogs today, this is the book to read."
— Betty Fussell, author of Raising Steaks: The Life and Times of American Beef

Laura Schenone

"In this brilliant book, Sandra Sherman sheds new light on one of the biggest literary and media phenomena of all time: the modern cookbook. Her scholarship is impeccable, her thinking sharp and new. As she combs through more than three hundred years of culinary records, Sherman reveals why our appetite for cookbooks is endless, and why their legacy and promises continue to endure—and evolve. Anyone who wants to understand the history of the blockbuster cookbook (and its consistently winning formulas) must read this book."

Betty Fussell

"If you thought you knew what a 'cookbook' is, read this smart analysis of a genre that continues to evolve, explode and implode. Armed with scholarship and a lively sense of history, Sandra Sherman shows how the modern cookbook began in 18th-century England as a mass-marketed text. Even then it was shaped by entrepreneurial strategies, hyped by publicity machines, tied to celebrity chefs and used for geopolitical aims. If you want to understand the rage for foodblogs today, this is the book to read."

—

Betty Fussell, author of Raising Steaks: The Life and Times of American Beef

Editorial Reviews

Food historian Sandra Sherman looks into the present-day fascination with cookbooks and celebrity chefs, showing how the modern cookbook has roots going back as far as 17th-century England. She shows how even the first cookbooks were the product of careful invention by highly skilled chefs and profit-minded publishers who designed them for maximum audience appeal. Sherman describes how cookbook writers and publishers kept ahead of changes in readership and cultural conditions by using marketing and promotion techniques that are still practiced today, and she shows how they ultimately developed cookbooks with the 'modern' characteristics that we take for granted today. While the author's writing style is a bit on the academic side, jargon is kept to a minimum, making this book suitable both for academics and adventurous general readers.” —Reference & Research Book News

“Recommended. Large academic libraries serving upper-division undergraduates through researchers/faculty.” —Choice

From the Publisher