From Publishers Weekly
In this robust roundup, researcher and librarian Collins scours the archives to show how cooking programs throughout the decades reflect America's changing cultural mores. From James Beard to Rachael Ray, TV cooking hosts have brought this intimate brand of entertainment into the home, moving from educating the general public on the finer points of home economics to coaching us on developing our inner creativity. Collins skillfully marshals her research, starting with radio programs sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in the mid-1920s, featuring a fictitious Aunt Sammy to administer recipes in order to lift the level of American cookery. James Beard hosted the first postwar TV cooking show,
I Love to Eat, short-lived and criticized for its blatant endorsement of commercial sponsors, while spawning numerous imitators. Then, Cordon Bleu–trained Dione Lucas's sophisticated prime-time 1950s cooking show enraptured audiences until it was eclipsed by Julia Child's PBS show,
The French Chef, in 1963. Unfussy and fallible in the kitchen, Child demystified haute cuisine, and her long-running TV presence spurred good-natured rivals like Graham Kerr's
The Galloping Gourmet. Readers might be surprised at the role public television played in nurturing the genre, presently evolved into the Food Network's elevation of chefs as celebrities and food akin to porn. Collins's engaging, somewhat scholarly study finds cooking shows the great leveler in gender, class and lifestyles and with a strong future.
(May) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
"Cooking is so huge on television today that it has made chefs as famous as movie stars. From the earliest days of flickering black-and-white sets, food shows have infused the tube with class and character that makes this one of the richest genres of programming. It is about time this fact was recognized and explored in depth, with insight and good humor, as it is in Kathleen Collins' Small Screen Cuisine. This is a book not only for foodies, but for anyone with an interest in this vital vein of American popular culture." --Jane and Michael Stern, authors of Jane and Michael Stern's Encyclopedia of Pop Culture (HarperCollins) and American Gourmet (HarperCollins)
"In her lively and informative narrative of television food shows, Kathleen Collins captures the phenomenal growth of food as entertainment, what has evolved into a new form of spectator sport in America. The rise of TV celebrity chefs within the context of the nation's growing sophistication about food are stories that needed to be told, and Collins has told them well." --Barbara Haber, food historian, author of From Hardtack to Home Fries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals"
"In her lively and informative narrative of television food shows, Kathleen Collins captures the phenomenal growth of food as entertainment, what has evolved into a new form of spectator sport in America. The rise of TV celebrity chefs within the context of the nation's growing sophistication about food are stories that needed to be told, and Collins has told them well." --Barbara Haber, food historian, author of From Hardtack to Home Fries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals"
"Dione Lucas started them in the 1940s, Julia Child popularized them in the 1960s, and the Food Network hit them out of the park in the 1990s. Since the dawn of TV, cooking shows have captivated Americans, and in Small Screen Cuisine Kathleen Collins explains why. With an easy wit and a "me, too" voice that pulls readers right in, Collins charts the rise of TV cooks as educators, mentors, entertainers and co-conspirators; indeed, as beloved, central and enduring characters in our national pop culture." --Barbara Haber, food historian, author of From Hardtack to Home Fries: An Uncommon History of American Cooks and Meals"
