Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century / Edition 1

by Laura Shapiro

Overview

Toasted marshmallows stuffed with raisins? Green-and-white luncheons? Chemistry in the kitchen? This entertaining and erudite social history, now in its fourth paperback edition, tells the remarkable story of America's transformation from a nation of honest appetites into an obedient market for instant mashed potatoes. In Perfection Salad, Laura Shapiro investigates a band of passionate but ladylike reformers at the turn of the twentieth century—including Fannie Farmer of the Boston Cooking School—who were determined to modernize the American diet through a "scientific" approach to cooking. Shapiro's fascinating tale shows why we think the way we do about food today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520257382
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	10/02/2008
Series:	California Studies in Food and Culture , #24
Edition description:	First Edition, With a New Afterword
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Laura Shapiro was on staff at Newsweek and is a contributor to the New York Times, Rolling Stone, Granta, and Gourmet. She is the author of Julia Child and Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America.

Table of Contents

PROLOGUE: Toasted Marshmallows Stuffed with Raisins 

ONE: Drudgery Divine 

TWO: And the Kitchen Becomes the Workshop of the Skies 

THREE: Better Ways, Lighter Burdens, More Wholesome Results 

FOUR: Perfection Salad 

FIVE: The Mother of Level Measurements 

SIX: Whoever Knew a Dyspeptic to Be a Christian? 

SEVEN: Foes in Our Own Household 

EIGHT: An Absolutely New Product 

CONCLUSION: A Leaf or Two of Lettuce 

Afterword 
Acknowledgments 
Notes 
Bibliography 
Index