Customer Reviews

Much Depends on Dinner: The Extraordinary History and Mythology, Allure and Obsessions, Perils and Taboos of an Ordinary Meal

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Visser begins by stating that "The extent to which we take everday objects for granted is the precise extent to which they govern and inform our lives." She then discusses the shape of chairs, the shape and configuration of forks, things we just don't think about every day. Visser constructs a menu of simple, taken-for-granted foods -- corn with salt & butter, chicken with rice, lettuce with olive oil and lemon juice, and ice cream. She the devotes a chapter to each course, providing more details about corn, salt & butter than you could ever imagine -- and it's all fascinating; corn, for example, touches just about everything we eat (except fish) -- all canned foods are bathed in liquids containing corn, nearly all paper, cardboard and plastic packaging depends on corn products, soft drinks contain corn-based coloring and high fructose corn syrup, corn touches ketchup, ice cream, pickles, instant coffee, insecticides, soap -- just about everything. Visser describes how corn plants grow, the origins of corn, how corn is eaten, the development of the original health food - corn flakes (with a fascinating discussion of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and his efforts at the Battle Creek Sanitorium), corn farming around the world. It's not dull or laborious or academic -- it's fun, easy reading. After corn, Visser moves on to salt, then butter -- again, in delightful detail.

I'd recommend this book to anyone with a penchant for non-fiction, particularly a food lover, a history buff, or a science buff. Informative, well-researched, delightful fun.

Margaret Visser takes typical components of an American meal (corn, salt, butter, chicken, rice, lettuce, olive oil, lemon juice, ice cream), and shows the reader what they tell us about our history and culture. It is one of the effects of mass production that we have very little idea how our products are produced, and for those people who share an interest for food, why people eat what they do, and the beliefs people hold about food, this book will be fascinating. It is not just a collection of tidbits of useless trivia; there is a steady theme of the food being discussed in each chapter. At the same time, it is not just about the particular foods she chooses as her chapter titles. With Visser, you find out that not only do our behaviors of consumption have far reaching effects that are largely unnoticed by the general public, but also that the foods we eat have long, unthinkable histories that determine our attitudes towards them.

This book is an exploration into the science and lore of common foods. In the introduction, the author notes that the topic is far too broad to be covered in any detail in a single volume, so she has restricted herself to examining 9 ingredients found in a simple dinner menu: corn with salt and butter, chicken with rice, lettuce with olive oil and lemon juice, and ice cream. Each subsequent chapter takes up one of these ingredients in turn. At the end of the book there is an extensive section of references, organized first by general references and encyclopedias, and then by specific references corresponding to each chapter. There is also an index.

The material in each chapter is quite varied, ranging from history, mythology, science, and economic botany, to health concerns and environmental issues. We read about such topics as the history of corn flakes, the significance of salt-making for the Indian independence movement, and the preservation of lettuce through irradiation or sprinkling with sulphite. All in all, the book is quite fascinating, with many facts and figures for those interested in food history and culture.

It's hard to imagine now how revolutionary books like this were back when Much Depends on Dinner was published in 1986. It was barely conceivable then that someone would write a book, an actual book about something so ordinary as a meal of corn on the cob with butter and salt, chicken, lettuce with olive oil and lemon dressing and ice cream. History was supposed to be reserved for the manly pursuits of war and politics with occasional detours to economy and science.

We are much more comfortable now with the notion that real life (and therefore real history) is about the ordinary and that the mysteries worth exploring are the ones wrapped in dailiness. Way before her time, Visser made the point that "...forms of things are a kind of language, speaking the logos of our culture...". In short, that to truly understand ourselves , we need to understand the things that are so common that we scarcely notice them at all.

Her pioneering work helped open up a floodgate. We have excellent books about Cod Cod: A Biography of the Fish That Changed the World and SaltSalt: A World History, ChocolateThe True History of Chocolate, Second Edition and olive oilOlive Oil: From Tree to Table. There are so many books about the history of wine that there's no place for them in a brief review.

What matters, it seems to me, is that these histories aren't just about the substances being discussed. Can Cod really be said to have a history?
They are instead, about how our interaction with these things has shaped us and our world. For many readers, this represents a great advance over all that stuff about kings and presidents.

Lynn Hoffman, author of New Short Course in Wine,The which owes its existence in part to Visser breaking the trail and to the thoroughly food-filled bang BANG: A Novel.

With this book Margaret Visser single-handedly launched the rash of single-subject books that have proliferated over the past two decades. And this one remains the best of them. She has a light touch, a sharp eye and a brilliant capacity for communicating the minutiae of her extensive research. She devotes a chapter to the history of each ingredient in a simple, everyday meal (sweetcorn, salt, butter, chicken, rice, lettuce, olive oil and icecream) and she takes the reader on a fantastic journey through history, mythology and contemporary culture. Everyone interested in food should have a copy.

I enjoyed much of the books unique structure, explaining the history of a single meal by diving back into the history of the nine primary components of that meal. However, some of the dietary information is dated and could use an update.

Specifically, in the chapter on butter, margarine's claims to health are given a little skepticism. A skepticism appropriate to the scientific knowledge of 1986. However, knowing what we do now about the enormous risks that trans fats pose to our health (and about the relative safety of saturated fat, once you separate trans fat and saturated fat datapoints), this would read quite differently. The section regarding the development of margarine, a highly processed food product competing with butter, a slightly processed food product, might instead come across as a cynical attempt by agribusiness to capitalize on the excess of indistinguishable vegetable oils at the expense of your health and mine.

However, since this book was written in 1986, and the dangers of trans fats were still being successfully hidden away by Cargill and ADM, I can't blame Ms. Visser for the omission.

Except for a few other details where the science has advanced over the past 22 years since the book was written, most of the information remains just as interesting and historically accurate as the day it was originally put to paper. A fascinating and well-written work.

So you want to boycott corn...Butter, you say, is inappropriate in the modern diet...Ms. Visser provides an in depth, historical account of the whys and wherefores of what we eat. The premise is a holiday meal, and each ingredient is scrutinized for its contribution to our North American culture. This is not mere Big-City, Food- Page editorialism. Ms. Visser goes into the nitty gritty of the minutae of our culinary culture. So you want to avoid corn: How about eating a diet of fresh fish, and nothing else? And forget about writing to complain; the plastic in your pen, the stiffener coating the paper, not to mention the styrofoam, and the plastic wrapping that contains the fish you just bought,is made from corn. And then there is the definition of Corn itself, in the english language...Oh Nevermind. "Much Depends On Dinner" is the history of the food we take for granted. You can read it chapter by chapter, or from cover to cover. It's that easy. It's a whole bunch of information that will never make you rich, and possibly, not that much more interesting, unless you're a tourguide through agricultural areas. But on the other hand, you never know. And you never knew...

If you enjoy learning the trivia about the basics of your daily existence this book will amaze you! Who ever dreamed that corn was so omnipresent in our lives? That white food was associated with mildness and innocence and is considered appropriate for children and sick folks? That vegetables and salads were considered female foods, unnecessary luxuries for men, right up until the 20th century? You'll be quoting tidbits from this book over dinner for months!

From the history of margarine to the ubiquity of corn, there's just so much we don't know about the way we live our lives. And so much we take for granted, too: the order we eat our meal, the table manners we will use, the salt we casually sprinkle without wondering about its provenance. Visser's writing is light and cheerful as she tosses out fact after fact on these and many other subjects.

This book has no real central thesis; Visser has no agenda here. Though she presents many potentially-dismaying facts (such as the extinction of several varieties of produce), she's not a doomsayer. She never goes too far in any potentially-negative direction. But in this context, I think she's made the right decision, never branching off into polemic or getting up on a soapbox, even for a second.

I'm not saying those issues aren't important. They're just not central to what Visser wants to write, so although she overlooks them somewhat. Instead, she stays on topic throughout, delivering what almost every author promises but many can't deliver: a thoroughly enjoyable read.

A quirky, very informative book about the foods we eat. I found it very, very interesting.