The Physiology of Taste: Or, Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

Michael Pollan · 450 pages

What should we have for dinner?" To one degree or another this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature offers, humans have had to learn what is safe, and what isn't—which mushrooms should be avoided, for example, and which berries we can enjoy. Today, as

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

The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food

Adam Gopnik · 293 pages

"From the author of Paris to the Moon--one man's quest for the meaning of food in a time obsessed with what to eat. Never before have we cared so much about food. It preoccupies our popular culture, our fantasies, even our moralizing--"You still eat meat?" How could the land of Chef Boyardee have come so far overnight? And where can we possibly go from here? Locating the roots of our foodways in F

How to Cook a Wolf

M.F.K. Fisher · 261 pages

From Amazon: Written to inspire courage in those daunted by wartimes shortages, How to Cook a Wolf continues to rally cooks during times of plenty, reminding them that providing sustenance requires more than putting food on the table. M. F. K. Fisher knew that the last thing hungry people needed were hints on cutting back and making do. Instead, she gives her readers license to dream, to experimen

Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly

Anthony Bourdain · 320 pages

A celebrity chef shares anecdotes of his experience in the restaurant industry, and of his journey from dishwasher to a position of fame in the food industry.

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

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.

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

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

Provence, 1970: M.F.K. Fisher, Julia Child, James Beard, and the Reinvention of American Taste

Luke Barr · 320 pages

Uncorrected Proof - Not For Sale. NOTE: Chapters and narrative pages are numbered. Ditto NOTES AND SOURCES, BIBLIOGRAPHY AND INDEX. But no page numbers are shown in the TABLE OF CONTENTS.

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 Book of Tea

Kakuzo Okakura · 54 pages

Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage. In China, in the eighth century, it entered the realm of poetry as one of the polite amusements. The fifteenth century saw Japan ennoble it into a religion of aestheticism - Teaism. Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence. It inculcates purity and harmony, the mystery of mutual charity

Judgment of Paris: California vs. France and the Historic 1976 Paris Tasting That Revolutionized Wine

George M. Taber · 336 pages

The author recalls the historic events surrounding the 1976 wine tasting contest where top French wine experts compared some of France's most famous wines with the new California wines, and describes the results and the impact on the wine industry.

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?

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

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

The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World's Great Drinks

Amy Stewart · 400 pages

Sake began with a grain of rice. Scotch emerged from barley, tequila from agave, rum from sugarcane, bourbon from corn. Thirsty yet? In The Drunken Botanist, Amy Stewart explores the dizzying array of herbs, flowers, trees, fruits, and fungi that humans have, through ingenuity, inspiration, and sheer desperation, contrived to transform into alcohol over the centuries. Of all the extraordinary a

Italian Food

Elizabeth David · 364 pages

The Book of Jewish Food: An Odyssey from Samarkand to New York

Claudia Roden · 616 pages

In more than 800 glorious recipes interwoven with stories, reminiscences, and history, Claudia Roden traces the fascinating development of Jewish cooking over the centuries. The recipes - many of them never before documented - are the treasures garnered by the author during almost fifteen years of traveling around the world, tasting, watching, collecting recipes, talking to cooks and food sellers,

The Language of Food: A Linguist Reads the Menu

Dan Jurafsky · 246 pages

The Lost Ravioli Recipes of Hoboken: A Search for Food and Family

Laura Schenone · 352 pages

The Audacity of Hops: The History of America's Craft Beer Revolution

Tom Acitelli · 440 pages

"Charting the birth and growth of craft beer across the United States, Tom Acitelli offers an epic, story-driven account of one of the most inspiring and surprising American grassroots movements. In 1975, there was a single craft brewery in the United States; today there are more than 2,000. Now this once-fledgling movement has become ubiquitous nationwide--there's even a honey ale brewed at the W