America's Founding Food: The Story of New England Cooking (Hardcover)

by Keith Stavely (Author), Kathleen Fitzgerald (Author) "When the small band of separatists from the Church of England whom we call the Pilgrims arrived at Cape Cod in November 1620, they entered..." (more)
Key Phrases: boiled bag puddings, manuscript cookbook, election cake, New England, Rhode Island, Catharine Beecher (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
[The authors] provide a thoroughly researched, well-referenced, and fluently written history of New England cooking. -- Choice

Review
"Helps us read between the lines of cookbooks as consumer guides. . . . Makes a convincing argument that a very self-conscious New England, proud of its contributions to the establishment of democracy in America, set in the 1800s a foodways pattern much copied across the country. We will become the wiser as we observe how that pattern was overturned in more recent times."
— Gastronomica

"America's Founding Food will become a standard work in culinary history.
(Andrew F. Smith, author of Peanuts: The Illustrious History of the Goober Pea)"

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 456 pages
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press (November 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0807828947
• ISBN-13: 978-0807828946
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #813,573 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A New Angle on New England History, May 26, 2006

By	Don Collins (Maine) - See all my reviews

My New England bookshelf groans under the weight of historical studies focusing on the politics, theology, intellectual life, industry, and notable people of the region. These are all worthy if well-worn subjects. Then there's the New England tourism industry, selling "ye olde" Boston baked beans, clam chowder, and Indian pudding as vaunted, almost sacred, symbols of the region. Here, finally, is a book that explains the connection between the two, taking both the history and the food seriously.

There are many surprises here, for instance that turkeys were often boiled and garnished with oyster sauce when served for special feasts, and that the first English to settle the region grew corn because their wheat crops mostly failed. This is a careful, food-oriented story, with lots of detail on what people ate, and how it was processed and preserved as well as cooked. It's also interesting to learn what average families wanted to eat when they were dining on their daily pottage.

The authors use memoirs, letters, and novels as well as cookbooks to uncover what New Englanders thought about the foods they ate. This is a compelling account and a detailed study, with lots of good stories to leaven the Boston Brown Bread. Whether you're interested in the ways gingerbread recipes changed from the court kitchens of the Middle Ages to the farm kitchens of New England, or in the reasons why a wallflower cuisine like New England cooking became enshrined as American food, there's something here for you.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Meaning of the Menu, May 18, 2006

By	C. Brown (East Coast, USA) - See all my reviews

Americans still think particular New England foods and menus, like Thanksgiving dinner, Boston Baked Beans, and boiled Maine lobster, are important parts of our American identity. This highly informative book tells us why these and other New England dishes were important to many generations of Americans, and continue to be part of our American heritage.

With wit and erudition, the authors separate fact from fiction through careful analysis of some hoary traditions. Along the way, they left me chuckling over such food-lore gems as the Adams-Jefferson dispute on when to serve pudding and the controversy concerning the "authentic" way to make Rhode Island Jonny cakes, with one side declaring that the other's was "hick feed."

There's something here for just about everyone interested in American history or the history of food. From a discussion of the economic motivation for setting up those quaint New England fishing villages to the environmental implications of animal husbandry (which the English colonists introduced into New England), we learn to think somewhat differently about New England's past. Along the way, we get a glimpse of American home life as it was lived, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries, in New England--the houswife who worries that she's too late bottling her plums and the little boy whose mother's "fire-cake" is such a treat. This book makes you feel like you are in those kithcens. Boiling a hundred oysters to make Oyster Ketchup, helping to butcher a 280-pound hog, these New England cooks were really something!

While it is a history and not a cookbook, this book gives both cooks and history buffs the solid information we need to separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of New England food lore. It offers a chance to see what New Englanders ate, and why, and most tellingly, what they thought about their food.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars American History through Food, March 1, 2005

By	D. Crofts (Cambridge, MA, USA) - See all my reviews

This is a scholarly, nuanced account of the history of New England cooking, with an emphasis on the social meaning of dietary choices. Corn, chowder, baked beans, boiled dinner--foods that are still icons of the region--are among the dishes discussed. Using culinary, historical, and literary sources, the authors put together a fascinating story of invented traditions and other social uses to which even the deceptively plain cuisine of New England can be put.