Overview
Perfection Salad presents an entertaining and erudite social history of women and cooking at the turn of the twentieth century. With sly humor and lucid insight, Laura Shapiro uncovers our ancestors' wide-spread obsession with food, and in doing so, tells us why we think as we do about food today. This edition includes a new Introduction by Michael Stern, who, with Jane Stern, is the author of Gourmet magazine's popular column "Roadfood" and the book Eat Your Way Across the U.S.A.Editorials
From Barnes & Noble
"Q. Are vegetables ever served at a buffet luncheon? A. Yes, indeed...provided they appear in a form which will not look messy on the plate.... Even the plebian baked bean, in dainty individual ramekins with a garnish of fried apple balls and cress, or toasted marshmallows, stuffed with raisins...."This advice, published in a popular cooking magazine in 1923, illustrates what happened to American cooking when well-meaning cooking teachers took up the domestic science banner, introducing "businesslike principles" to home management.
Laura Shapiro's insightful and amusing social history is full of such anecdotes. She documents the birth of domestic science, the movement that launched a million home economics courses and encouraged the overuse of white sauce, the invention of TV dinners, and the packaging of salads in Jell-O.
She vividly portrays such teachers as Fannie Farmer, "the mother of level measurements," and Ellen Richards and her Woman's Laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which taught Hygiene, Bacteriology, Foods, and Laundry Work. Another eminent teacher, Mrs. Lincoln, even devised a special scent-free menu of baked bean soup, dry toast, and stewed raisins for Tuesdays (the day after washday), so that clean clothes would not pick up cooking odors immediately.
As Shapiro sees it, "They chose domesticity as a way of getting out of the house, and food as a means of transcending the body. But they carved out an identity for women so powerful that we're still trying to clamber out of it, and their influence on American cooking was devastating."
Perfection Saladhas been republished as part of the new Modern Library Food Series, with an introduction by Jane and Michael Stern. (Ginger Curwen)
Nach Waxman
Dazzling may be an odd word to use about a work of social history, but dazzling it is. Laura Shapiro's gimlet-eyed exploration of the roots of modern home cooking in America offers utterly fascinating research, analytic acuity, wit, pace, and writing so exhilaratingly good that it's sometimes hard to remember what an important book this is. Three cheers for this classic. Entertaining, and it's good for you. What more could we ask?—Owner, Kitchen Arts and Letters
Richard Saz
How good to see this worthy book in print again. And how rare a writer is Laura Shapiro-she has synthesized an immense amount of research through the lens of her own crystal-clear thinking (and not incidentally her sly humor). Along the way: white sauce as purifier and ennobler, color-coordinated menus, Crisco as sandwich spread (!), "Dainty Desserts for Dainty People," home economics as agent for keeping "the male world male." This book is a pleasure to read. Welcome back, Perfection Salad.— author of Classic Home Desserts