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Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste
Luke Barr · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorCooked: A Natural History of Transformation
Michael Pollan · 480 pages
"Fire, water, air, earth--our most trusted food expert recounts the story of his culinary education In Cooked, Michael Pollan explores the previously uncharted territory of his own kitchen. Here, he discovers the enduring power of the four classical elements--fire, water, air, and earth--to transform the stuff of nature into delicious things to eat and drink. Apprenticing himself to a succession o
Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing
Anya von Bremzen · 338 pages
Born in a surreal Moscow communal apartment where eighteen families shared one kitchen, the author grew up singing odes to Lenin, black-marketeering Juicy Fruit gum at school, and longing for a taste of the mythical West. It was a life by turns absurd, drab, naively joyous, melancholy and, finally, intolerable.
My Life in France
Julia Child, Alex Prud'Homme · 344 pages
Julia Child singlehandedly created a new approach to American cuisine with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, but as she reveals in this bestselling memoir, she was not always a master chef. Indeed, when she first arrived in France in 1948 with her husband, Paul, who was to work for the USIS, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the coun
What She Ate: Six Remarkable Women and the Food That Tells Their Stories
Laura Shapiro · 313 pages
"A beloved culinary historian's short takes on six famous women through the lens of food and cooking--what they ate and how their attitudes toward food offer surprising new insights into their lives. Everyone eats, and food touches on every aspect of our lives--social and cultural, personal and political. Yet most biographers pay little attention to people's attitudes toward food, as if the great
Imbibe!: From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a Salute in Stories and Drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, Pioneer of the American Bar
David Wondrich · 326 pages
From Absinthe Cocktail to Whiskey Smash, a salute in stories and drinks to "Professor" Jerry Thomas, pioneer of the American bar. Featuring the original formulae for 100 classic American drinks and a selection of new drinks contributed in his honor by the leading mixologists of our time.
Jerusalem
Yotam Ottolenghi, Sami Tamimi · 320 pages
A collection of 120 recipes exploring the flavors of Jerusalem from the New York Times bestselling author of Plenty.
America the Edible: A Hungry History, From Sea to Dining Sea
Adam Richman · 271 pages
"The host of Travel Channel's most popular show explains how iconic American foods have captured our culinary imaginations. You won't look at a bagel the same way again! In America the Edible, Travel Channel host Adam Richman tackles the ins and outs of American cuisine, demonstrating his own unique brand of culinary anthropology. Believing that regional cuisine reveals far more than just our tas
Joy of Cooking
Irma S. Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, Ethan Becker · 849 pages
John and Megan developed more than six hundred new recipes for this edition, tested and tweaked thousands of classic recipes, and updated every section of every chapter to reflect the latest ingredients and techniques available to today’s home cooks. Their strategy for revising this edition was the same one Irma and Marion employed: Vet, research, and improve Joy’s coverage of legacy recipes while
Extra Virginity: The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil
Tom Mueller · 238 pages
For millennia, fresh olive oil has been one of life's necessities, not just as food but also as medicine, a beauty aid, and a vital element of religious ritual. Today's researchers are continuing to confirm the remarkable, life giving properties of true extra-virgin, and "extra-virgin Italian" has become the highest standard of quality. But what if this symbol of purity has become deeply corrupt?
Our Irish Grannies' Recipes: Comforting and Delicious Cooking From the Old Country to Your Family's Table
Eoin Purcell · 152 pages
As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto
Julia Child · 416 pages
A Year in Provence
Peter Mayle · 207 pages
In this witty and warm-hearted account, Peter Mayle tells what it is like to realize a long-cherished dream and actually move into a 200-year-old stone farmhouse in the remote country of the Lubéron with his wife and two large dogs. He endures January's frosty mistral as it comes howling down the Rhône Valley, discovers the secrets of goat racing through the middle of town, and delights in the glo
The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation
David Kamp · 416 pages
One day we woke up and realized that our "macaroni" had become "pasta," that our Wonder Bread had been replaced by organic whole wheat, that sushi was fast food, and that our tomatoes were heirlooms. How did all this happen, and who made it happen? The United States of Arugula is the rollicking, revealing chronicle of how gourmet eating in America went from obscure to pervasive, thanks to the cont
Bread, Wine, Chocolate: The Slow Loss of Foods We Love
Simran Sethi · 350 pages
"Bread, Wine, and Chocolate, part journey to six continents in pursuit of delicious and endangered tastes, part investigation of the loss of biodiversity from soil to plate, tells the story of what we are losing, how we are losing it, and the inspiring people and places that are bringing back the foods we love. Award-winning journalist Simran Sethi travels from wild coffee forests in Ethiopian to
The Food of a Younger Land: The WPA's Portrait of Food in Pre-World War II America
Mark Kurlansky · 397 pages
This book is a portrait of American food -- before the national highway system, before chain restaurants, and before frozen food, when the nation's food was seasonal, regional, and traditional -- from the lost WPA files. An anthology with introduction and annotations of the unpublished manuscripts from the last WPA writers project, an exploration of food and eating in America in 1940. This broad a
The Rituals of Dinner: The Origins, Evolution, Eccentricities and Meaning of Table Manners
Margaret Visser · 432 pages
This book is a commentary on the manifold meanings of the rituals of dinner; it is about how we eat, and why we eat as we do. We insist on special places and times for eating, on specific equipment, on stylized decoration, on predictable sequence among the foods eaten, on limitation of movement, and on bodily propriety. In other words, we turn the consumption of food, a biological necessity, into
On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen
Harold McGee · 684 pages
Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking is a kitchen classic. Hailed by Time magazine as "a minor masterpiece" when it first appeared in 1984, On Food and Cooking is the bible to which food lovers and professional chefs worldwide turn for an understanding of where our foods come from, what exactly they're made of, and how cooking transforms them into something new and delicious. Now, for its twentieth
The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food
Jennifer 8. Lee · 314 pages
If you think McDonald's is the most ubiquitous restaurant experience in America, consider that there are more Chinese restaurants in America than McDonalds, Burger Kings, and Wendys combined. New York Times reporter and Chinese-American (or American-born Chinese). In her search, Jennifer 8 Lee traces the history of Chinese-American experience through the lens of the food. In a compelling blend of
In the Devil's Garden: A Sinful History of Forbidden Food
Stewart Lee Allen · 331 pages
Among the foods thought to encourage lust, the love apple (now known as the tomato), wormed its way over pastas and into catsup. The morality of this fruit was questioned due to its similarity to a plant called the mandrake, which medieval people believed carried demonic spirits (Joan of Arc's alleged possession of a mandrake root was one of the crimes that sent her to the stake). The sin of sloth
The Physiology of Taste: Or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy
Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin · 395 pages
On the Noodle Road: From Beijing to Rome, with Love and Pasta
Jen Lin-Liu · 398 pages
Fannie's Last Supper: Re-creating One Amazing Meal from Fannie Farmer's 1896 Cookbook
Christopher Kimball