`The Encyclopedia of Food and Wine in America' is a great 1500 page compilation of excellently written articles on virtually every aspect of the history, education, manufacture, marketing, personalities, and writing about food in America. Practically the only thing it does not include is recipes or cooking. Even sidebars whose label suggests a proper place for a recipe such as the sidebar on shoofly pie gives not one hint about how to make this delicious dessert. Given the size of the subject, it is not at all surprising that the editors have left these out, as both recipes and kitchen science can both be considered without nationality, plus the fact that there are thousands of good cookbooks and a score of books on food science available today, so why not focus on things which are not commonly covered in these books. This means that this volume can sit beside the `Larousse Gastronomique' with only a very small amount of overlap in material. These two giant books have two entirely different objectives. While both works will have articles on potatoes, Larousse will tell you how to cook them, but Oxford will tell us were they are grown, their commercial importance, nutritional importance, and their appearance in cartoons.
So, unlike Larousse, you are much more inclined to simply read the articles in these volumes for your own entertainment as much as for your need to know something. The articles are filled to the brim with interesting trivia about American food. One favorite item in the article about Spam is the fact that the word `Spam' became associated with junk e-mail on the strength of a Monty Python skit which did the same kind of number on Spam as the movie `Blazing Saddles' did on western films. Another discovery was the renaming of sauerkraut to `Liberty Cabbage' after World War I. In this way, the book follows the style of the Encyclopedia Britannica that leans heavily toward long, detailed articles rather than shorter articles with a greater chance of redundancy, especially with a hundred or more independent contributors.
It would probably take the average foodie about five minutes of searching through these volumes to find something they miss. My first sense of something being missing was when there were articles about Charlie Trotter, Alice Waters, and Rick Bayless, but no articles on Thomas Keller, Jeremiah Tower, or Richard Olney. I would not feel the absence so acutely if the editors had given us biographies on Julia Child, James Beard, Craig Claiborne, and M.F.K. Fisher and stopped there, as all four of these figures are so obviously at the very top of the heap in their influence on American eating and food writing. On the other hand, Tower and Olney between them are probably as much an influence on culinary professionals in the United States as Alice Waters. While Olney spent much of his life living in France, he was born in Iowa and all of his most influential works, most notably his editorship of the Time-Life culinary series of books in the 1960s was aimed at American audiences. This series is mentioned twice in the long article on cookbooks with no mention of Olney as the editor, a position recommended to the publishers by James Beard. Regarding Keller and Trotter, for example, both have received the James Beard best chef in the country award and of the books attributed to these two chefs, I much prefer the two from Keller than the three from Trotter which I have reviewed. I suspect the difference in the eyes of the editors is Trotter's earlier ascendancy, his substantial charitable activities, and his better than average culinary instruction TV shows.
These quibbles aside, I am genuinely impressed by the overall quality of the writing in the thousands of articles in this work. The biographical articles all begin with a crisp statement of the importance of the subject to American culinary history. In spite of the very large number of writers, all articles seem to share this same matter of factness, with virtually no sentimentality or sensationalism. One joggling act that must have challanged the editors is how to limit the book to `American' subjects. And, they seem to have accomplished this with great good judgment. In place of any mention of French or Italian or Japanese or Korean or East Indian or Chinese subjects, the editors have given us articles on `Italian-American' food and `German-American' food. I know the German-American culinary world better than any other and I give the author of this article high marks for capturing the big picture and not limiting himself to the very easy subject of the `Pennsylvania Dutch' cuisine. Although the Amish and Mennonite communities of Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York, and the Carolinas are at the heart of the German / American food tradition, the greater German influence is much broader, overlapping, for example, the Jewish-American culinary world and even the influences from France and Italy.
By far the best use for this work is as a starting point for serious culinary research or simply noodling around the literature of cookery for fun. In addition to the articles with their excellent bibliographies, there are appendices on general food bibliography, general wine bibliography, list of food periodicals and web sites, major food subject reference libraries, major food museums, food organizations, and food festivals.
Be warned that in spite of the title, wine gets much less than half the volume of ink spilled in these volumes. I also detected a few minor editing mistakes and omissions. The web site for the cable `Food Network' is listed as [...] but this was changed close to two years ago to [...] This little mistake is less easy to understand since the article on Julia Child notes her death which occurred about 6 months ago. Still, this book is a great source of entertainment and information for foodies and foodie scholars.
Expensive, but of high quality as a reference and entertainment.
ISBN-13:
978-0195154375
ISBN-10:
0195154371
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There is a newer edition of this item:
The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America: 3-Volume Set
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