In the mid-1990s, Chris Kimball moved into an 1859 Victorian townhouse on the South End of Boston and, as he became accustomed to the quirks and peculiarities of the house and neighborhood, he began to wonder what it was like to live and cook in that era. In particular, he became fascinated with Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. Published in 1896, it was the best-selling cookbook of its age-full of odd, long-forgotten ingredients, fascinating details about how the recipes were concocted, and some truly amazing dishes (as well as some awful ones). In Fannie's Last Supper, Kimball describes the experience of re-creating one of Fannie Farmer's amazing menus: a twelve-course Christmas dinner that she served at the end of the century. Kimball immersed himself in composing twenty different recipes-including rissoles, Lobster À l'AmÉricaine, Roast Goose with Chestnut Stuffing and Jus, and Mandarin Cake-with all the inherent difficulties of sourcing unusual animal parts and mastering many now-forgotten techniques, including regulating the heat on a coal cookstove and boiling a calf's head without its turning to mush, all sans food processor or oven thermometer. Kimball's research leads to many hilarious scenes, bizarre tastings, and an incredible armchair experience for any reader interested in food and the Victorian era. Fannie's Last Supper includes the dishes from the dinner and revised and updated recipes from The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book. A culinary thriller. it offers a fresh look at something that most of us take for granted-the American table.

Paul Freedman’s gorgeously illustrated history is “an epic quest to locate the roots of American foodways and follow changing tastes through the decades, a search that takes [Freedman] straight to the heart of American identity” (William Grimes). Hailed as a “grand theory of the American appetite” (Rien Fertel, Wall Street Journal), food historian Paul Freedman’s American Cuisine demonstrates that there is an exuberant, diverse, if not always coherent, American cuisine that reflects the history of the nation itself. Combining historical rigor and culinary passion, Freedman underscores three recurrent themes—regionality, standardization, and variety—that shape a “captivating history” (Drew Tewksbury, Los Angeles Times) of American culinary habits from post-colonial days to the present. The book is also filled with anecdotes that will delight food lovers: · how dry cereal was created by William Kellogg for people with digestive problems; · that Chicken Parmesan is actually an American invention; · and that Florida Key-Lime Pie, based on a recipe developed by Borden’s condensed milk, goes back only to the 1940s. A new standard in culinary history, American Cuisine is an “an essential book” (Jacques Pepin) that sheds fascinating light on a past most of us thought we never had.

We are what we eat, as the saying goes, but we are also how we eat, and when, and where. Our eating habits reveal as much about our society as the food on our plates, and our national identity is written in the eating schedules we follow and the customs we observe at the table and on the go. In Three Squares, food historian Abigail Carroll upends the popular understanding of our most cherished mealtime traditions, revealing that our eating habits have never been stable -- far from it, in fact. The eating patterns and ideals we've inherited are relatively recent inventions, the products of complex social and economic forces, as well as the efforts of ambitious inventors, scientists and health gurus. Whether we're pouring ourselves a bowl of cereal, grabbing a quick sandwich, or congregating for a family dinner, our mealtime habits are living artifacts of our collective history -- and represent only the latest stage in the evolution of the American meal. Our early meals, Carroll explains, were rustic affairs, often eaten hastily, without utensils, and standing up. Only in the nineteenth century, when the Industrial Revolution upset work schedules and drastically reduced the amount of time Americans could spend on the midday meal, did the shape of our modern "three squares" emerge: quick, simple, and cold breakfasts and lunches and larger, sit-down dinners. Since evening was the only part of the day when families could come together, dinner became a ritual -- as American as apple pie. But with the rise of processed foods, snacking has become faster, cheaper, and easier than ever, and many fear for the fate of the cherished family meal as a result. The story of how the simple gruel of our forefathers gave way to snack fixes and fast food, Three Squares also explains how Americans' eating habits may change in the years to come. Only by understanding the history of the American meal can we can help determine its future.

Turn your kitchen into the world's best bakery with this "comprehensive [and] extraordinarily useful" collection of 200 sweet and savory baking recipes from the James Beard Award-winning team at Milk Street (Booklist, starred review) The American baking repertoire may be unparalleled in our claim to pies, biscuits, and cakes. But step off a plane in London, Mexico City, Istanbul, or Paris, and you realize how much more there we can learn about the art of simple, delicious baked goods. We found a simple Spanish almond cake that uses no wheat flour. Loaf cakes that balance the sugar with slightly-bitter rye. Super-creamy Basque cheesecake that requires no water bath. Mexican sweet corn cake made in a blender. Or Catalan biscotti, sticky chocolate cake from Sweden, and crispy spinach and cheese borek from Türkiye. We also include forgotten American recipes such as maple-glazed hermits and new classics such as peanut butter banana cream pie. And we go beyond sweets to include yeasted breads, savory tarts, pizzas, and flatbreads (some made in a skillet in minutes). Most of these recipes are easier than you’d think, from beer pretzels to Danish dream cake. But in baking, the little things count—so Milk Street is here to help you avoid pitfalls with recipes that you can count on. Our promise to you is that you will become the best baker you know!

 The heyday of silent film soon became quaint with the arrival of "talkies." As early as 1929, critics and historians were writing of the period as though it were the distant past. Much of the literature on the silent era focuses on its filmic art--ambiance and psychological depth, the splendor of the sets and costumes--yet overlooks the inspiration behind these. This book explores the Middle Ages as the prevailing influence on costume and set design in silent film and a force in fashion and architecture of the era. In the wake of World War I, designers overthrew the artifice of prewar style and manners and drew upon what seemed a nobler, purer age to create an ambiance that reflected higher ideals.

"Covering the United States and Canada [with their possessions and neighbors] and containing the biographical and literary data of living authors whose birth or activities connect them with the continent of North America, with a press section devoted to journalists and magazine writers" (varies slightly).

From June 11, 1890, to April 15, 1891, Nannie Stillwell Jackson wrote about the best and meanest moments of her life on a small farm in southeast Arkansas. The combination of dreariness and charm that forms the diary is absorbing. Jackson's experience is rich and awful, as is what we may learn from it about the human spirit on the edges of civilization.