The Great American Cookbook: 500 Time-Tested Recipes: Favorite Food from Every State--- [Hardcover]

Clementine Paddleford (Author), Kelly Alexander (Editor), Molly O'Neill (Foreword)

Book Description

Release date: October 11, 2011

The first and greatest book of regional American cuisine, now revised for today’s home cook. Imagine a person with the culinary acumen of Julia Child, the inquisitiveness of Margaret Mead, and the daring of Amelia Earhart. This is Clementine Paddleford, America’s first food journalist. In the 1930s, Paddleford set out to do something no one had done before: chronicle regional American food. Writing for the New York Herald Tribune, Gourmet, and This Week, she crisscrossed the nation, piloting a propeller plane, to interview real home cooks and discover their local specialties.
The Great American Cookbook is the culmination of Paddleford’s career. A best seller when first published in 1960 as How America Eats, this coveted classic has been out of print for thirty years. Here are more than 500 of Paddleford’s best recipes, all adapted for contemporary kitchens. From New England there is Real Clam Chowder; from the South, Fresh Peach Ice Cream; from the Southwest, Albondigas Soup; from California, Arroz con Pollo. Behind all the recipes are extraordinary stories, which make this not just a cookbook but also a portrait of America.   
 

Editorial Reviews

Review

"But Paddleford loved and told the stories of others, and she sought out people and families who cooked the foods journalists and locavores still think we're discovering today." ~The New York Times

"Paddleford was clearly ahead of her time, and her reporting is a pleasure to read. This title’s historic and ethnographic significance will appeal to researchers, and anyone who loves good food writing will enjoy the stories accompanying some of America’s best-known dishes." ~Library Journal

About the Author

Clementine Paddleford was the first American writer to define American food. Through her weekly columns, she reached more than 12 million people. In 1963, Time magazine named her the country’s ‘Best-Known Food Editor.’ Kelly Alexander, a longtime editor at Saveur magazine, has written for The New Republic, Food & Wine, and The New York Times. Molly O’Neill, the author of four cookbooks including most recently One Big Table, was for ten years the food columnist for The New York Times Magazine and was also the host of the PBS series Great Food.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 848 pages
• Publisher: Rizzoli (October 11, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0847836908
• ISBN-13: 978-0847836901
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 2.3 x 10 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #530,009 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The perfect book for the shy American homecook February 28, 2012

By Susan Davis

Format:Hardcover

I was raised by a feminist with a job and a healthy scorn for the degree to which being a housewife meant lacking cultural currency. (Hey, it was the 70s.) My mom made sure that in her family, everyone did the cooking. But none of us were taught much so the cooking was uninformed and uninspired. Now that I have my own family and my own job, my cooking has been even less informed and less inspired. Until this book. The writing here is inviting, friendly and wise. There's a sense of humor and a friendly, can-do spirit to Paddleford's approach. The introduction is particularly inspiring given my reticence. Kelly Alexander lends me confidence and even a bit of a thrill. And I love these recipes, they don't intimidate and they don't bore. Everything I've made from this book has tasted delicious and has not caused me a headache or meltdown or trip to some faraway, unknown gourmet store. It's easy and rewarding. I recommend this book for everyone interested in American food, cooking and food writing.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Good basic recipes, impossible book format June 1, 2012

By belle

Format:Hardcover

I like most of the recipes in this book, which incorporates Clementine Paddleford's more modest 1960 volume, "How America Eats," and I actually appreciate the editor's substituting fresh foods for canned soup and similar staples of the 1950s. A number of Paddleford's named recipe sources are now famous, and the stories of the recipe origins are fun to read.

However, I _hate_ the format of this edition, which is not designed to be helpful to cooks. It weighs a ton, has unnecessary and distracting design and typographic features, and worst, it's bound like a paperback notwithstanding its heavy paper and cover--glued at the spine so tightly that you can hardly open the book. It certainly won't stay open for a second if you lay it down, which you conceivably might want to do in order to cook from it or just to rest your arm.

I think it was designed to be big and heavy like this to position it in the same category as other recent New York Times-derived cookbooks, say, Amanda Hesser's "Essential New York Times Cookbook" or Molly O'Neill's "One Big Table." By contrast with the Paddleford update, however, both these great big books are original works crammed with the authors' research and recipe testing, and you feel that every page is worth the added weight. There's are good reasons for their heft: Hesser's historical perspective and her selection of NYTimes recipes; and O'Neill's interesting personal stories, pictures, and unique home cooking. Both books--like the original "America Eats"--reflect the authors' years of first-hand experience at the Times and elsewhere.

(I should mention here an old favorite, Jean Hewitt's "New York Times Heritage Cookbook," published in 1972 and, like those of Paddleford, O'Neill, and Hesser, based on the author's original research. This title, arranged by region like "America Eats" and "Great American Cookbook," is particularly pleasing because it often includes several recipes for the same basic dish. You can see the evolution of a dish from region to region and compare, pick, choose, and combine ingredients and methods to suit your own wishes. The original recipe sources--some famous by now, some obscure--are listed in a six-page acknowledgments section. It still contains many of the best versions of American standards I know.)

Bottom line: to be useful, this Paddleford reissue should be smaller, lighter, less intrusively edited, and much less fancily formatted. It would have been so easy to keep it a modestly sized volume that would be very welcome in any American kitchen. Until the current publisher makes practical design changes, buy "America Eats" instead if you can - it seems to be selling out at online booksellers. And why not? it's a good middle-sized compendium, but in this new edition is ponderously dressed up like an old iron stove.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Walk down memory lane October 27, 2011

By LoveToCook

Format:Hardcover

This book is sort of like time-traveling back to America, circa 1950. The recipe choices for each state can be quirky, it's true. But I found them charmingly quirky--like when you turn to the page your grandmother dog-eared in her tattered Junior League spiral cookbook from 1950. The voice of Clementine Paddleford is great--sort of like a spunky aunt who loves to wax poetic about all her travels. This is a real lost classic.