The Taste of America

by Karen Hess and John L. Hess

Book Overview

This classic barbeque of our foodways is as valid and as savory today as when it first tickled ribs a generation ago. Based on the superlative authority of John L. Hess, onetime food critic of the New... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670693766
• ISBN13: 9780670693764
• Release Date: January 1977
• Publisher: Viking / Grossman
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.22 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Two of my favorite things

Cooking and America, not a better subject to be found. Well written and a keeper.

Powerful icon-shattering survey, vital for serious food fans

What a delight to find this amazing classic back in print, in a reprintedition with new comments by the authors. This will spare thousandsof food enthusiasts the perennial burden of scouring the used-bookmarket for copies of it. (I ordered several copies of the reprint at oncefor gifts and to have on hand.) People who were following food writing at the time will recall the stir created by the Hesses' book whenit first appeared in the late 1970s. The book is iconoclastic, even subversive, in the same sense as Prometheus's gift of fire to mankind.In this case the gift is not fire but perspective, or a sense of history.Co-author John Hess was himself a senior and very experienced food writer and editor, but he has a scholar's dislike of pretentiousmisinformation being quoted around until it becomes conventionalwisdom. Karen Hess is a food historian noted elsewhere for herwork on the mysterious "Martha Washington" cookbook.Their book addresses questions like: How did things like iceberglettuce and phony "gourmet" products displace centuries of fineimmigrant and indigenous cooking wisdom in the US? Who helpedto "sell" such changes, only to be celebrated later (Orwellian-style)for contributions to US cooking? Moreover, it is remarkable to seehow many "innovations" in US cooking since about the time this bookwas written consist actually of rediscovery of principles widely known100 or 200 years ago, as the book documents in detail.The casual reader should be forgiven for not having heard of all of this in the general media. Journalism in the US about food (and notonly about food) is lately graced with legions of people blissfullyand confidently unconscious of anything that preceded their own words.Such people will gush uncritically about food pundits like CraigClaiborne (distinguished on the basis that the gushing writershave heard of them) without any real research or perspective.These writers would not do so if they read the Hesses' book.From the Hesses', and other, evidence it seems that around the1950s, "gourmet" became a convenience-food-industry euphemism for"sucker" in the US. "That flabby midget called Cornish game hen was,next to chocolate-covered ants, the gourmet racket's funniest joke on agullible public. It has no more taste of game than a wad of cotton," saythe Hesses. Such game hens are one of several gimmicks CraigClaiborne is quoted pushing; canned beef gravy and instant whippedpotatoes are others. Claiborne receives especial attention here,though James Beard, the Rombauers, Fannie Farmer, even JC Herself,are not spared. Yet this criticism is constructive, at least for the reader,with positive counterexamples. It is an angry, or perhaps indignant, book but an informed one, meticulous in its documentation of sources. The bibliography by itself isvaluable, sort of an annotated miniature of Katherine Bitting's epic 1939"Gastronomic Bibliography" (also cited; that book is very expensiveon the used market; I know because

Feast Your Eyes!

After reading this book for the first time in the early 1980s, it changed the way I thought about both choosing what to feast upon and how to prepare it. I always wondered why I hated vegetables as a child. Having read the book, I realized that my mother--loving though she may have been--had cooked vegetables to death by boiling everything until it was soft, tasteless and unappetizing. When I began learning to cook for myself, the beauty of this text came through for me. Now I appreciate vegetables because I prepare them simply and let the flavor come through. I recommend this book to anyone who is a "picky" eater (and even to those who are not). Once you know why you don't like a variety of foods, you may discover that it's not the food you learned detest, but the way Mama cooked it for you!

fascinating and tragic

An impassioned, lively, fascinating look at the American table. The Hess' are knowledgeable, erudite and highly opinionated. Many disagree with their negative view of American eating habits, but it is hard to argue with them on the facts. Read it and think!