Customer Reviews

American Food Writing: An Anthology: With Classic Recipes

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I enjoy reading good writing about food more than just about any other kind of writing, but not only for the obvious reason that I enjoy eating food. Sure, we all eat. And some of us enjoy food maybe more than most. But writing about food is something else and has many happy reasons to recommend it. The first being that one can enjoy reading good writing about all kinds of food without taking in even one calorie. I emphasize good writing because much of what passes for food writing is just filler stuff that is dashed off to fill pages in magazines between the advertisements.

But when an author gets to the soul of the food being written about, well, something very special happens for the reader. Food writing can open up new vistas for the adventurous food lover. We can learn about foods and dishes we had never expected or anticipated. We can get fresh takes on dishes we thought we knew. It can take us back in time and show us the roots of where we came from. Even the way they wrote their recipes can be instructive. We notice what they assumed the person using the recipe would assume as understood, the kinds of ingredients and equipment they assumed would be on hand, and what was new and different that had to be carefully spelled out.

Food writing also makes for wonderful anthropology. What people ate when and where provides wonderful insights into who the people were, what they valued, what was available to them, their technology, those with whom they traded, and their connections to those who came later (the way the dishes and foods evolved and changed over time). Too often we make the lazy assumption that the past was much like the present, but not as modern. In fact, it is often very different. And we assume those who came before as less sophisticated at our own peril.

When we take a close look at the past we are often given the lesson again and again how perfectly these people used and adapted what was available and were just as motivated to get what wasn't on hand. In fact, they had to prepare for seasons of want, something we have no experience of in present day America. They were every whit as intelligent as we suppose ourselves to be. A great journalist can also be a kind of short form anthropologist by using reporting about food to make their points about culture and to inform her readers about the current state of things.

Another wonderful source of great food writing is in the hands of a skilled fiction writer. Food can be used to reveal character, give them context, or even show them out of place and in discomfort. It can move the plot or provide a necessary space in the action or allow the author some time for a leisurely disquisition and let their gift for language and food flow (always a delight).

This wonderful anthology has superb examples of all these kinds of writing about food and much more. Molly O'Neill has done us a wonderful service by providing us with dozens of examples of food writing at its best from Thomas Jefferson recipe for ice cream through Michael Pollan's 2006 piece "My Organic Industrial Meal" and everything in between. I cannot even list all the authors, but urge you to trust that your favorites are likely represented as well as those you might not expect.

Along with all the essays, articles, excerpts from novels and other books on food, and even letters, there are also about fifty recipes from Jefferson's ice cream through Lady Bird Johnson's Pedernales Chili (as given by Robb Walsh). Of course, there are also instructions for cooking in many of the articles, as well. The recipes are set off in the table of context by a star so you can see them easily and flip to them for use or enjoyable reading.

This is another fine volume from the Library of America and to whom we all owe a debt of gratitude (along with the author) for their support of such quality projects.

"Food, glorious food! Eat right through the menu." Readers will be tempted to follow that lyrical advice when they discover the mouth-watering recipes in American Food Writing, a veritable historic and cultural feast that traces our love affair with food from Thomas Jefferson's favorite ice cream to Michael Pollen's comments on the upsurge of interest in organic foods.

Charles Ranhofer (1836 - 1899) was the chef at Delmonico's in New York City for some 30 years. If anyone could describe how to serve an epicurean feast he could and did. Thoreau, of course, had quite different ideas about our daily bread, we read: "I learned from my two years experience that it would cost incredibly little trouble to obtain one's necessary food.....that a man may use as simple a diet as the animals, and yet retain health and strength."

Not every man's idea of dinner, I imagine.

Jade Snow Wong (1922 - 2006) gives instruction on how to shop on a budget for the very best in meat and produce, and how to cook rice. One of my favorite entries is Julia Child's reminiscence about her television series. However, picking favorite isn't an easy task in this 784 page volume that holds among others praise of the oyster by M.F.K. fisher, and William Styron's delight in Southern Fried Chicken.

Laced throughout this volume are comments by notable chefs, critics, and home cooks plus 50 recipes, both vintage and modern. Seldom has food been discussed so thoroughly and invitingly as it is in American Food Writing.

Highly recommended.

- Gail Cooke

I have not completed reading this book. That is part of its virtue. One can pick it up and read enjoyably for 10 or 15 minutes at a stretch because the samples/chapters are quite short- many in the 3 to 5 page range. I know that I will finish reading it eventually, because the writing as well as the topics are so interesting. One gets a feel for earlier times when reading the initial chapters. I found it fascinating that in the 1830's (if I am remembering the decade correctly) that members of a wealthy family living in Philadelphia and New Orleans would ship foodstuffs, e.g, oranges, to each other between the two cities. If you are a foodie, like good writing, and are interested in history, you will enjoy this book.

These essays are witty and informative -- an unintended cultural history of our national relationship with our collective palates. I read a number of them aloud to my partner while he did the driving on an extended automobile trip.
I have only two quibbles with Molly O'Neill's selections: First, she didn't include anything from her own Memoir, "Mostly True," which was not only hilarious in places but reveals her substantial culinary and writing talents. Second, she didn't include a selection from Robert Farrar Capon's "The Supper of the Lamb" -- a small cookbook with reminiscences, published in the 1970s and probably out of print by now.
I should add that I bought this particular copy of "American Food Writing" as a gift because I liked it so much.
--Catherine Carl Wakelyn

This was such a surprise. I am a long time subscriber to the Library of America, and occasionally receive an anthology... once it was LA Writing, another time Baseball writing, but this time it was American Food Writing. I thought it would bore me stiff! Who knew that food writing would make a wonderful anthology!

As one might expect, there are recipes throughout, and the writings of food luminaries such as Julia Child and James Beard. But, the volume includes essays, journal entries, and stories by Willa Cather (a selection from My Antonia), Thomas Jefferson, Meriwether Lewis, John Steinbeck, H.L.Mencken and Gertrude Stein to name just a few. They are written about food, not necessarily about cooking. Some use food as part of a larger landscape of writing, while other pieces directly explore the glory of eating.

All in all, it is a delicious volume of writing. I highly recommend this anthology for the joy of reading.

An anthology of American food prose and recipes from 1753 to the present. Some amazing pieces from the country's early years demonstrate that not only does the US definitely have a rich food culture, it's been around long enough that we've actually lost and forgotten some dishes that used to be hugely popular. Who knew how much beaver tail, canvasback duck, and turtle soup we used to eat?

There are pieces here by everyone from Thomas Jefferson, to Alice B. Toklas, to Ray Kroc. That's an incredible diversity of viewpoints. Walt Whitman's description of bringing exotic and rare iced cream to wounded civil war veterans contrasts strangely, but tantalizingly, with Eric Schlosser's exploration of exactly how the chemical factories in northern New Jersey create the artificial and "natural" flavors that permeate all of our processed food. From dozens of almost completely unrelated pieces, a picture of American food pointillistically emerges.

I went to this book's release party back in 2007 at the Redcat Theater in Los Angeles. (No conflict of interest in this review; the event was open to the public.) Some chefs from around the city had prepared a variety of foods from the recipes in the book, and they were all superb. Particularly fantastic were Helen Evans Brown's 1952 gazpacho (which I have since made at home to my wife's delight), and Union Square Cafe's 1994 yellowfin tuna burgers.

I was so sure I would love this book that I bought it brand new, sight unseen. Library of America, Molly O'Neill, over 700 pages of food writing. How could it miss?

After slogging throught the first 300 pages (the book is chronologically arranged), I finally came to the modern era of food writing. Many of my favorites were here: Nora Ephron, Julia Child, Calvin Trillin, David Sedaris. From here on in, the selections are more interesting, if uneven. I guess it's a matter of taste, but of all the extreme adventures Ruth Reichl wrote of in her marvelous Garlic & Sapphires, the sushi restaurant chapter didn't strike me as the one to pick. The consecutive pieces on Craig Claibornes' $4,000 meal in Paris followed by Russell Baker's parody of it are classic and so is David Sedaris's menu essay. But I wonder if Michael Pollan's food writing will hold up over time. I must admit I couldn't make my way through much of his book, Omnivore's Dilemma, from which a chapter is excerpted for this collection. It's just so darned earnest.

But my main gripe about American Food Writing is the writing that wasn't there. In a book of American Food Writing that makes room for writers remembering food from the old country, why is there nothing at all from the most American food writers of all, Jane and Michael Stern? Is there any food more American than diner food? And how about those other very American food pastimes, the hot dog eating contest (or pie eating contest or twinkie eating contest, etc.) and the chili cookoff? Amy Sutherland has an excellent book on cookoffs that might have provided an entertaining chapter. What about food blogs - Julie Powell, for instance?

There have been some great books of food writing recently like Julia Child's My Life in France, Jane and Michael Stern's Two for the Road, and David Kamp's The United States of Arugula. And the annual Best Food Writing edited by Holly Hughes hasn't let me down yet.

I received my copy of this book from Ms O'Neill after accompanying her and her associate, Nora Sherman, on a visit to Northern Minnesota, where they gathered recipes and stories for her next book, which is to be an anthology of American Home Cooking.

I've read many anthologies, but never really appreciated the meaning of the term until reading Molly O'Neill's "American Food Writing". Formed by the Greek words "anthos" (flower) and "logia" (collecting), the word implies a patient and studied selection of exemplars of the subject, incorporating just a bit of spontaneousness and personal preference.

MFK Fisher is my favorite food writer, and I was anxious to see which of her works had been chosen for this book. I was not surprised to see "A Lusty Bit of Nourishment" from "Consider the Oyster", since it's one of her best known pieces, (although not one of my own favorites), but the second selection, "Define This Word" from "Gastronomical Me" came as a complete surprise, and impressed upon me Ms O'Neill's mastery of this particular literary form.

Despite being quite familiar with Fisher's books, I'll admit that I didn't even recognize the story by it's title. In rendering this almost mystical tale of a meal eaten alone during the off-season in a famous restaurant in Northern Burgundy, prepared by the oft-referenced but invisible chef, "Monsieur Paul", and attended to by a young servant "almost fanatical about food, like a medieval woman possessed by the devil.", MFK Fisher could arguably be said to have created an entire new sub-genre of food writing.

That Molly O'Neill would recognize this, and choose it from the volumes of stories written by MFK Fisher, speaks volumes of her own talent. Thus, I highly recommend this book, along with any other anthologies she has written, or will write.

Every anthology has a mission. AMERICAN FOOD WRITING is an anthology in search of completeness, and its success there justifies its price. There are 162 entries, beginning with Peter Kahn in 1716 and ending with Michael Pollen, 2006. Walt Whitman discusses ice cream, Langston Hughes and LeRoi Jones each have strong opinions on soul food, and Wendell Berry is poetic on the subject of eating. There are also the usual suspects. This magnificent breadth is the book's great strength, and also its flaw. You will be able to read only a couple of pages, at best, of any one writer. Many of the included writers also present their recipes, and you can try them out: potted lobster, Roman punch, Yellowfin tuna burgers, Toll House cookies. Molly O'Neill's introductory essay is worth the price of admission, a great short course in American food writing. She says, "Every meal is a new beginning." Definitely American.

The idea behind this book is fabulous. A book about American food writing? Of course! The book is made up of excerpts from books, articles, etc by various authors spanning American history from the beginning to the present. Not much history about the authors is given except a little blurb before their excerpts, and no history about the time period or social culture of the time is included. It's pure food writing. I admit, some of the older works are just plain boring to me and I find them hard to slog through. But I'm sticking with it and have found several authors whose works and books I will be looking for. I am halfway through the book now. It's improving and becoming more interesting and relevant as one gets to the more modern authors. The only real complaint I have so far is the fact that the recipes included have nothing to do with the experts they proceed or follow. After reading about fabulous baked beans, i want a recipe for those beans. Or at least some beans. Not something totally irrelevant. If recipes were to be included in this book, some thought should have been given to what recipes to include and where best to put them rather than slapping random samplings between articles in as breaks.