A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America (Arts and Traditions of the Table Perspectives on Culinary History)

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Synopsis
A colorful, spirited tour of culinary attitudes, tastes, and techniques throughout colonial America. Confronted by unfamiliar animals, plants, and landscapes, settlers in the colonies and West Indies found new ways to produce food. Integrating their British and European tastes with the demands and bounty of the rugged American environment, early Americans developed a range of regional cuisines. From the kitchen tables of typical Puritan families to Iroquois longhouses in the backcountry and slave kitchens on southern plantations, McWilliams portrays the grand variety and inventiveness that characterized colonial cuisine. As colonial America grew, so did its palate, as interactions among European settlers, Native Americans, and African slaves created new dishes and attitudes about food. McWilliams considers how Indian corn, once thought by the colonists as &“fit for swine,&” became a fixture in the colonial diet. He also examines the ways in which African slaves influenced West Indian and American southern cuisine. While a mania for all things British was a unifying feature of eighteenth-century cuisine, the colonies discovered a national beverage in domestically brewed beer, which came to symbolize solidarity and loyalty to the patriotic cause in the Revolutionary era. The beer and alcohol industry also instigated unprecedented trade among the colonies and further integrated colonial habits and tastes. Victory in the American Revolution initiated a &“culinary declaration of independence,&” prompting the antimonarchical habits of simplicity, frugality, and frontier ruggedness to define the cuisine of the United States—a shift that imbued values that continue to shape the nation&’s attitudes to this day. &“A lively and informative read.&” —TheNew Yorker
Copyright:
2005

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
Book Size:
400 Pages
ISBN-13:
9780231503488
Related ISBNs:
9780231129930
Publisher:
Columbia University Press
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
Columbia University Press
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
History, Nonfiction, Cooking, Food and Wine, Social Studies
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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