Serious Books for Serious Cooks

Acquired Taste: The French Origins of Modern Cooking. By T. Sarah Peterson. In a book redolent with fresh lore about the history of cookery, the author reconstructs the revolution in French cooking that explains why we eat as we do. Cornell University Press. 280 pp. Š1994. $39.95 Cloth

America Eats. By Nelson Algren. Nelson Algren was a winner of the first National Book Award, The Man with the Golden Arm–but the author of a cookbook? Here it is, the never-before-published America Eats, a delightful, thoroughly entertaining look at who we are and what we love to eat. University of Iowa Press. 35 photos. 143 pp. Š1992. $25.95 Cloth.

America's Collectible Cookbooks: The History, The Politics, The Recipes. By Mary Anna DuSablon. This is a wonderful concoction of gossipy morsels and serious reflection about cookbooks and cookbook authors. This book "encourages...libraries, and historical museums to preserve local treasures and collectibles." –Journal of the American Dietetic Association. 229 pages. Paper. Š1994. Illus./biblio. $15.95.

America's First Cuisines By Sophie D. Coe. Drawing on original accounts by Europeans and Native Americans, this pioneering work offers the first detailed description of the cuisines of the Aztecs, the Maya, and the Inca. Sophie Coe begins with the basic foodstuffs, including maize, potatoes, beans, peanuts, squash, avocados, tomatoes, chocolate, and chiles, and explores their early history and domestication. University of Texas Press. 288 pp. Š1994. $15.95 Paper. See also The True History of Chocolate.

Art, Culture, & Cuisine: Ancient & Medieval Gastronomy. By Phyllis Pray Bober.Complete with menus and recipes for prehistoric, Mesopotamian, Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Gothic repasts. The University of Chicago Press. Chicago. Paper. 442 pages. Illus. ISBN: 0-226-06253-8. Stock # UC005 $25.00

The Backcountry Housewife: A Study of Eighteenth-Century Foods. By Kay Moss and Kathryn Hoffman. More than a cookbook, this volume is chock full of history, folklore, and 18th century gossip! The backcountry covered in this volume includes inland Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, North and South Carolina and Georgia. This book includes 65 receipts gleaned from unpublished manuscripts and personal handwritten cookery books that have survived two centuries. ISBN: 0-9712913-1-4.Paper. 146 pp. Š 2001 Stock # BH001 $14.95.

Bibliography of Culinary History: Food Resources in Eastern Massachusetts. Wheaton, Barbara Ketcham and Patricia Kelly. 379 pages. 1,975 works in libraries in the Boston Cambridge area are cited. An important work for identifying important works on food history. G. K. Hall & Co., Boston, 1988. First Edition. Hardcover. ISBN 0-8161-0455-7. As Nutrition condition. Stock # BW002. $110.00

Bread of Dreams: Food and Fantasy in Early Modern Europe. By Piero Camporesi. Using sources as varied as ecclesiastical records and official reports, proverbs, scurrilous verse and popular drama, Camporesi argues that it was hunger, and the urgent need to relieve it through food that moved the masses most in the societies of five or three hundred years ago. The axis of famine and food, and the fears and fantasies linked with them, form the core of this inquiry. (See also Exotic Brew and The Land of Hunger) University of Chicago Press. 200 pp. Š1989. $33.00 Hardcover, $17.95 Paper.

The Book of Marmalade. By C. Anne Wilson. Here is everything you need to know about marmalade. C. Anne Wilson, Britain's foremost historian of food, traces the history of this most British of preserves from its roman and medieval antecedents, through its adoption in Tudor England, its development in Stuart and Georgian Britain, and its fortunes up to the present day. She tells how the Portuguese learned from the Moors to eat quince marmalade, and how its characteristic Arab flavorings enhanced its appeal to the Europeans. University of Pennsylvania Press. Philadelphia. Revised Edition. Š 1999. 184 pages. 12 b/w illus. Paper. $16.95

The Bread Ovens of Quebec. By Lise Boily and Jean-Francois Blanchette. This unique study of the role of the bread oven in rural Quebec society also gives complete instructions on how to build a traditional outdoor bread oven. The techniques, which are the same as those in Diderot's 18th-century Encyclopedie, are described in detail, and aare illustrated with photographs of the actual building of a clay oven. But the book is far more than a construction manual. The authors relate the bread oven to various aspects of French-Canadian culture -- economic, social, linguistic, psychological and religious. National Museum of Man - National Museums of Canada. 119 pages. Š 1979. Paper. $8.95

Clambake: A History and Celebration of an American Tradition. By Kathy Neustadt. An insightful examination of how public rituals like clambakes help people define who they are. University of Massachusetts Press. 240 pp. Š1992. $17.95 Paper.

The Classical Cookbook. Andrew Dalby and Sally Grainger. This book is the first of its kind to explore the daily culture of the Mediterranean through the center of its social life–food and drink. Each chapter provides a historical outline, with translations of the original recipes followed by versions for the moden cook. The J. Paul Getty Museum. 144 pages. 27 color & 23 B/W illus., 23 line drawings. $24.95. (See also Siren Feasts: A History of Food and Gastronomy in Greece.)

Classic Russian Cooking – Elena Molokhovets' A Gift to Young Housewives. Translated, Introduced, & Annotated by Joyce Toomre. Elena Molokhovets' classic cookbook and manual on household management was the "bible" of middle-and upper-class Russian homemakers. "This is an astonishing and immensely appealing work that will serve adventurous readers and curious cooks." Nahum Waxman, owner, Kitchen Arts & Letters.Indiana University Press. 680 pp. Paper. Š 1992. $35.00

The Oxford Companion to Food by Alan Davidson. Twenty years in the making, here is the long-awaited magnum opus from one of the world's great authorities on the history and use of food. This Companion is packed with 2,650 delightfully written A-Z entries – including 39 feature articles on staple foods – the vast majority penned by the renowned Alan Davidson, with additional articles by over fifty specialists from as far afield as the Philippines, Norway, and Australia. The Coverage is spectacular, with most wide-ranging treatment ever of foods and food products and how to use them. Indeed, the Campanion covers everything – plant products, meats, birds and eggs, dairy products, nuts, aquatic plant foods, cereals, and exotic foods. Gourmet magazine called it "The canon of great food literature just got one fat volume greater. The food book for all time." Oxford University Press. Š 1999 912 pages. 178 drawings, 8-5/8 x 11 Hardcover. $65.00

Cookbooks Worth Collecting. By Mary Barile. A complete guide to the field of cookbook collecting. The author is a confectioner and a member of the Culinary Historians of New York. "An invaluable resource for culinary bibliophiles." –Library Journal. 232 Pages Paper. Š1994. $17.95. (A signed bookplate will accompany this book.)

Cooking, Eating, Thinking: Transformative Philosophies of Food. Edited by Deane W. Curtin & Lisa M. Heldke. Philosophy has often been criticized for privileging the abstract; this volume attempts to remedy that situation. Focusing on one of the most concrete of human concerns, food, the editors argue for the existence of a philosophy of food. This collection provides various approaches to the subject matter, offering new readings of a number of texts–religious, philosophical, anthropological, culinary, poetic, and economic. Indiana University Press. 386 pp. Š1992. $19.95 Paper.

The Culture of Food. By Massimo Montanari. This book is about the history of food in Europe and the part it has played in the evolution of European cultures over the last two millennia. "Montanari's book is at once readably lively and scholarly, based on wide knowledge of the sources in several languages..." Stephen Mennell, Dublin. Blackwell Publishers. 224 pp. Š1994. $24.95 Paper

Early American Gardens: "For Meate or Medicine." By Ann Leighton. Gardens were literally of the first importance to the early settlers of New England. To understand American culinary history it is first necessary to understand the importance of the kitchen garden as a source of both food and medicine. University of Massachusetts Press. Illustrated. 464 pp. Š1970/1986 $20.95 Paper.

Eat Not This Flesh: Food Avoidance from Prehistory to the Present. 2nd Edition Revised & Enlarged. By Frederick J. Simoons. Hailed as a classic when initially published in 1961, Eat Not This Flesh was the first book that explored, from a historical and cultural perspective, taboos against eating certain kinds of flesh. University of Wisconsin Press. 550 pp. Š1994. $22.95 Paper.

Exotic Brew: The Art of Living in the Age of Enlightenment. By Piero Camporesi. Exotic Brew is a concise and elegant account of the eating and drinking habits of the upper classes in the 18th century, written by one of the foremost historians of food and social manners in Europe. (See also Bread of Dreams and The Land of Hunger) Blackwell Publishers. 200 pp. Š1994. $31.95 Cloth., Paper 22.95

A Feast For The Eyes: Evocative recipes and surprising tales inspired by paintings in the National Gallery By Gillian Riley. A total delight to the senses, this book is a combined visit to a magnificent art museum and host of historic kitchens. Gillian Riley takes us on a voyage of discovery of paintings from the Renaissance to the Impressionist period and introduces us to the gastronomic pleasures these works evoke. With an entertaining text, sumptuous pictures, and delicious recipes, the book provides a delectable feast--for the connoisseur of art and of food. Riley's extensive browsing among contemporary books and manuscripts has uncovered recipes to complement the style and flavor of each of the London National Gallery artworks in this volume Yale University Press. Š1998. 168 pages, 7,3/8 x 9,1/2 Cloth. $25.00

Feasts: Archaeological and Ethnographic Perspectives on Food, Politics, and Power. Edited by Michael Dietler and Brian Hayden. From the ancient near east to modern-day North America, communal consumption of food and drink punctuates the rhythms of human societies. Feasts serve many social purposes, establishing alliances for war and marriage, mobilizing labor, creating political power and economic advantages, and redistributing wealth. Smithsonian Institution Press. Š 2001 432 pp. Illus. Paper. Stock # SM006 $16.96

A Guide To Collecting Cookbooks: A History of People, Companies and Cooking. By Colonel Bob Allen. Contains 40 pages of color photographs (over 200 photos) of cookbook and recipe leaflet covers produced in America over the past 130 years. Prices updated in 1995. Collector Books. 214 Pages, 8,1/2 X 11. Š1990. Paper $14.95.

Haute Cuisine: How the French Invented the Culinary Profession By Amy B. Trubec. For a century and a half, fine dining the world over has meant French dishes and, above all, French chefs. Despite the growing popularity in the past decade of regional American and international cuisines, French terms like julienne, saute, and chef de cuisine appear on restaurant menus from New Orleans to London to Tokyo, and culinary schools still consider the French methods essential for each new generation of chefs. This book explores the fascinating story of how the traditions of French came to dominate the culinary world. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. Š 2000. ISBN: 0-8122-3553-3. 178 Hardcover Stock # UP003 $24.95

A Historical Dictionary of Indian Food by K. T. Achaya. An unusual diversity of food materials has been produced in India for centuries. This dictionary contains a wealth of information on the food materials, food ethos, cuisine and recipes of India. It draws upon literature, archaeology, historical writing, botany and genetics too situate Indian foods in time and place. Oxford University Press. Delhi Š 1998. 347 pages. Hardcover. $29.95

Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, & Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration. By Hasia R. Diner. Millions of immigrants were drawn to American shores, not by the mythic streets paved with gold, but rather by its tables heaped with food. How they experienced the relities of America's abundant food--its meat and white bread, its butter and cheese, fruits and vegetables, coffee and beer--reflected their earlier deprivations and shaped their ethnic practices in the new land. Harvard University Press. Cambridge. Š 2001.292 pages. B/W photos. Hardcover. ISBN: 0-674-00605-4. Stock # HA007 $39.95

In Public Houses: Drink and the Revolution of Authority in Colonial Massachusetts. By David W. Conroy. In this study of the role of taverns in the development of Massachusetts society, the author brings into focus a vital and controversial but little-understood facet of public life and material culture during the colonial era. Concentrating on the Boston area, he reveals a popular culture at odds with Puritan social ideals and the colony's social and political hierarchy and one that contributes to the transformation of Massachusetts into a republican society. Univ. of North Carolina Press. 351 pages. Š1995 Paper. $16.95.

The Invention of the Restaurant: Paris and Modern Gastronomic Culture By Rebecca L. Spang. "This book about the origins of restaurant culture wouuld have been inconceivable at any time before its recent efflorescence, with its interplay of refinement and abundance, its sense of celebrity and spectacle, its belief that the right restaurant might somehow change your life. Spang's achievement lies in showing hat such things have been from the start hard-wired; that what we want from a restaurant today is exactly what 18th-century Parisians hoped to find in a demitasse of broth." from Michael Gorra's review in The Boston Globe, June 4, 2000. Harvard University Press, Illus. 325 pages. Š 2000. Hardcover. ISBN: 0-674-00064-1, Stock # HA003 $35.00; Paper ISBN: 0-674-00685-2, Stock # HA006 $ 16.95

The Khwan Niamut or, Nawab's Domestic Cookery. Edited by David E. Schoonover. This appealing little cookbook, published in Calcutta in 1839 with the weighty subtitle "Being a Selection of the Best Approved Recipes of the Most Flavored and Savory Dishes, from the Kitchen of Nawab Qasim Uli Khan, Buhadur Qâum Jung, from the Original Persian," gave colonial Europeans a way to enjoy royal feasts in their own homes. All the refinements of Persian cookery are served up in the pages of this facsimile edition. University of Iowa Press. 170 pp. 1992 $19.95 Cloth.

Kitchen Collectibles: The Essential Buyer's Guide. By Diane Stoneback. This all-in-one buyer's guide/price guide includes: tips on buying and selling, history of gadgets for preparing and cooking food, and a list of price guides, reference books, collectors' clubs, newsletters and museums. Wallace-Homestead Book Co. 241 pages Š1994. Paper $17.95

Kitchen Collectibles: An Illustrated Price Guide. By Ellen M. Plante. This book presents a vast array of collectible advertising memorabilia, cookware, appliances, dinnerware, gadgets and utensils, pottery, woodenware, and other items in informative text and more than 300 photographs. Wallace-Homestead Book Co. 164 pages. Š1992. Paper $14.95.

The Land of Hunger by Piero Camporesi. This highly original book explores the two worlds of feast and famine in early modern Europe. This book is a graphic and engaging journey into the folk culture of early modern Europe. It will consolidate Comporesi's reputation as one of the most original and imaginative historians of our time. (See also Bread of Dreams and Exotic Brew) Blackwell Publishers. 200 pp. Š1996 $52.95 Hardcover.

The Lord's Table: The Meaning of Food in Early Judaism and Christianity. By Gillian Feeley-Harnik. This imaginative inquiry is one of the most fascinating books to appear on the general subject of food and eating. It is a searching essay in the anthropology of food, and an imaginative inquiry into the nature of religion and group identity. Smithsonian Institution Press. 200 pp. Š1994 $14.95 Paper

Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery. Transcribed by Karen Hess. This is the family cookbook Martha Washington kept and used for fifty years, with over five hundred classic recipes dating largely from Elizabethan and Jacobean times, the golden age of English cookery. Columbia University Press. 518 pp. Š1981 (1995 Paper Edition) ISBN: 0-231-04931-5. Stock # CU002 $21.00.

Meat: A Natural Symbol. By Nick Fiddes. This book is a broad-ranging and provocative study of the human passion for meat. It will intrigue anyone who has ever wondered why meat is important to us; why we eat some animals and not others; why vegetarianism is increasing; why we aren't cannibals; and how meat is associated with environmental destruction. Routledge Publishers. 250 pp. Š1991 $20.99 Paper.

Pampille's Table: Recipes and Writings from the French Countryside. By Shirley King. A translation and adaptation of Marthe Daudet's 1919 classic Les Bons Plats de France. "Pampille's Table is a sensitive translation of one of the few source books on French regional cooking. Shirley King has skillfully remastered the rich recipe traditions of provincial France and breathed new life into a kitchen classic. This cookbook will now be as valued in English as it always has been in the original French." – Anne Willan. 274 pages. Cloth $22.95.

Peppers: The Domesticated Capsicums. New Edition. By Jean Andrews. Since its original publication in 1984, Peppers has become the complete and classic source for the history and dispersion, biology and taxonomy, cultivation, and medicinal, economic, and gastronomic uses of the domesticated capsicum. In this new edition, Jean Andrews updates each section with new material gathered over the last ten years. University of Texas Press. 274 pp. (1995) 9 X 12in., 34 full page color plates, 24-color photos, 20 B&W illus., 3 maps, 11 tables, $65.00 Cloth.

The Physiology of Taste by Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin. Unabridged republication of the Peter Davies, Ltd. 1925 edition with introduction by Arthur Machen. No food historian, cook, chef, gourmet, or lover of fine food should miss this landmark in the gastronomic literature. 40 line drawings and 1 halftone. xx + 326 pp. Paper. ISBN: 0-486-42253-4. Stock # 000521 $12.95

Plants of Life: Plants of Death. By Frederick J. Simoons. Author of Eat Not This Flesh. In this fascinating and thorough new study, simoons examines plants associated with ritual purity, fertility, good health, prosperity, and life, on the one hand, or with ritual impurity, sickness, ill fate, and death, on the other. He surveys a vast geographical region extending from Europe through the Near East to India and China. The University of Wisconsin Press. 1998. Paper. 568 pages. ISBN: 0-299-15904-3. Stock # WP002. $34.95.

A Price Guide to Cookbooks and Recipe Leaflets. By Linda J. Dickinson. If you collect cookbooks then you will want to have this inexpensive guidebook in your collection. Prices updated in 1995. Contains 93 B/W reproductions of the covers of cookbook and recipe leaflets. Collector Books. 190 pages. Š1990. Paper. $9.95.

Produce and Conserve: The Grocer and the Consumer on the Home Front Battle-field During World War II. Ed. by Barbara McLean Ward. During W.W.II the "Little Corner Store" of Walter and Bertha Abbott of Portsmouth, NH, played a vital role by overseeing rationing, collecting scrap, and educating customers to be patriotic consumers. This colorful book, with over 200 illustrations, tells the story of this store during the years 1943-1945. University Press of New England. 208 pp. Š1994. $24.95 Paper.

Pure Ketchup: A History of America's National Condiment - with Recipes. by Andrew F. Smith. This "is the only serious work I know on this ancient condiment, how it started, how it came to America, above all how it came to be americanized, so much so that it is almost a national symbol of our food." –Karen Hess, coauthor of The Taste of America. University of South Carolina Press. Š1996. 242 pages Cloth. $24.95

Receipts of Pastry and Cookery For the Use of His Scholars. By Edward Kidder. Ed. by David E. Schoonover. Edward Kidder (1665?-1739), a renowned pastry chef in 18th-C London, was also a very successful teacher of the culinary arts. Kidder's scholars were able to record his recipes in small leather-bound notebooks. This facsimile edition reproduces one such notebook, written in a flowing and confident hand, as well as a typeset transcription of the manuscript, a historical and culinary introduction, updated menu, and recipes for today's chefs. Also includes a glossary. University of Iowa Press. 192 pp. Š1993. $22.95 Cloth.

Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet. For most Americans in the 19th century, it wasn't what you ate, but how much you ate, that mattered. Late in the century, docutors wrote books like How to Be Plump and the voluptuous woman was the ideal. Levenstein provides a vivid account of the people and social forceses that redirected the American diet, spiced with colorful portraits of the reformers, scientists, businessmen, faddists and hucksters who promoted or exploited the eating revolution. Oxford University Press. 292 pp. Š1988 $30.00 Hardcover.

Savory Suppers & Fashionable Feasts: Dining in Victorian America. By Susan Williams. A delightfully flavorful tour of dining in America during the second half of the 19th century. First published in 1985, the author has updated the bibliography and included a new introduction. The University of Tennessee Press. 335 Pages. Š1996/ 1st Paper Ed., $30.00

The Sensible Cook: Dutch Foodways in the Old and the New World. Translated and edited by Peter G. Rose. One of the most delightful and revealing documents of Dutch influence in early American history is here translated into English for the first time. De Verstandige Kock was the most favored Dutch cookbook of the entire 17th century and had a major impact on the foodways of the Dutch territories both in Holland and in the New World. Syracuse University Press. 142 pages Š1989 $29.95 Hardcover. $18.95 Paper.

To Set Before the King: Katharina Schratt's Festive Recipes. Ed. by Gertrud Graubart Champe. Translated by Paula von Haimberger Arno in collaboration with Chef Louis Szathmáry. Foreword by David E. Schoonover. This kitchen notebook, a concrete remnant from the paradoxical world of turn-of-the-century Vienna, belonged to a woman who played an extraordinary role in her society. The book contains an entertaining biography of Schratt and her glittering world and Chef Louis Szathmáry has created almost a hundred updated Austro-Hungarian recipes that will bring the world of a European metropolis to the tables of today's cooks. University of Iowa Press. 15 photos, 208 pp. Š1996 $24.95 Cloth.

Siren Feasts: A History of Food and Gastronomy in Greece. by Andrew Dalby. Fully documented and comprehensively illustrated, Siren Feasts demonstrates the social construction placed upon different types of food at different periods; it places diet in an economic and agricultural context; and it provides a history of mentalities in relation to a subject which no human being can ignore. 256 pages. 50 illus. Š1995. $19.95 Paper. (See also The Classical Cookbook above.)

A Social History of Wet Nursing in America: From Breast to Bottle. Janet Golden. Traces the history of wet nursing in America from the colonial era to the 20th-century. Ohio State University Press, Columbus. Š 2001. ISBN: 0-8142-5072-6. Paper.215 pages. Stock # 000434 $19.95

The Taste of America. By John L. Hess and Karen Hess. Now considered a classic in food history, this readable and authentic history of food, cooking, and cookbooks in America draws on original sources such as cookery manuscripts and books and gardening manuals. The authors trace the historical decline of American food and cooking and argue that the golden age of American cookery occurred in the first half-century of the republic. University of South Carolina Press. 400 pp. Š1989 $19.95 Hardcover (Autographed by both authors)

A Taste of Ancient Rome. By Ilaria Gozzini Giacosa. Translated by Anna Herklotz. foreword by Mary Taylor Simeti. From appetizers to desserts, from the rustic to the refined, here are more than 200 recipes from ancient Rome tested and updated for today's tastes. University of Chicago Press. 16 color plates. 232 pp. Š1994. $18.00 Paper

The Tomato in America: Early History, Culture and Cookery. By Andrew F. Smith. Arguably the most popular fruit in the world, the tomato holds a favored place in the US, which ranks as the world's largest producer of commercial tomatoes. University of South Carolina Press. 234 pp. Š1994 $24.95 Cloth

Treasury of Hidden Secrets. A 17th-Century Housewives' Handbook of Cookery and Medicine. Attributed to John Partridge, reprinted from the 1653 edition. A rare and important book for readers in the history of herbal and complementary healthcare, and household cooking in 15th and 16th century England. Rhwymbooks, Cambridge, MA. ISBN: 1-889298-04-2. Handcrafted paper. edition. xxii + 84 pages. Stock # 000523 $19.95 (To read more about this book go to Rhwymbooks web site.)

The True History of Chocolate. By Sophie D. Coe and Michael D. Coe. Theobroma cacao...chocolate..."the food of the gods," Delicious indulgence or cause of migraines? Aphrodisiac or medicinal tonic? Religious symbol or Mesoamerican currency? This delightful tale of one of the world's favorite foods draws upon botany, archaeology, socioeconomic, and culinary history to clear up the ambiguities and misconceptions, presenting for the first time a complete and accurate history of chocolate. Thames and Hudson. 288 pp. Š1996. $27.50 Hardcover.

Wine and the Vine: An Historical Geography of Viticulture and the Wine Trade. by Tim Unwin. "A thoroughly fascinating book offering many insights into the importance of wine in our culture and the effect of variables such as religion, government, marketing, economics, and even colonialism on the growth of the wine industry...It will give the wine lover scores of insights into aspects of wine that for decades have simply been taken for granted." –California Grapevine. 448 pages, 39 illus. $25.99 paper. Visit our page of quality books on wine and beer in historical perspective.

Women in Prehistory: North America and Mesoamerica. Chery Claassen and rosemary A. JoyceThis book challenges the assumption that women in prehistory were “immobilized” by pregnancy, lactation, and child care and therefore needed to be left at a home base. Contributors explore the actions and status of prehistoric women in case studies from the earliest Paleoindian people to the societies present at European contact in North America and Mesoamerica. University of Pennsylvania Press. Philadelphia. 1997. Paper. 300 pages. $18.50