America's Founding Food by Keith Stavely

But when it comes to Thanksgiving, 'the turkey part usually falls to me.'

Stavely credits his wife as being 'more a cook' than he, recalling that one of the first dishes she cooked for him was Indian pudding topped with ice cream. The couple lives in Jamestown, R.I., and Mr. The book chronicles the development of New England cookery from the 17th century to the mid-20th, focusing on seven food categories corn beans and pumpkins fish and shellfish fowl, game, and meat fruits, preserves, and pies cakes and drinks. We see how social status was so often measured by the foods that were eaten and how fashions changed with the evolving history of New England.' Particularly fascinating are the many first-hand accounts of the preparation and significance of such regional specialties as baked beans, dried cod, clambakes and rum flips as well as dishes for special occasions. Judith Jones, a cookbook author who may be best known as Julia Child's editor, commented for a book-jacket blurb that 'America's Founding Food' is 'a revealing look at the origins of New England food and the evolution of some of its best-known dishes. 'We thought it was kind of nice to be able to highlight the Fall River library,' Ms. 'We've got a pretty good collection of 19th-century periodicals here,' said Mr. It includes 20 black-and-white illustrations, many of them from old magazines such as Harper's in the Fall River library's collection. The 407-page (117 of them devoted to notes, bibliography and index) book was published by The University of North Carolina Press in hardcover and costs $34.95. 'I would like to add to that, people who are interested in New England history,' Mr.

Following the discussion, Keene’s own culinary master Linda Stavely will provide guests with food tastings using early American recipes.'We intend it to be for the general reader who's interested in either food or history or food history,' Ms. for a slide talk on the delights and surprises of historic New England cooking, based on their books, United Tastes and Northern Hospitality. Join the authors on Thursday, August 29, at 7 p.m.

The best-known foods of the region, such as baked beans and chowder, turn out to be only a small-and fairly recent-part of the story. In their earlier book, Northern Hospitality: Cooking by the Book in New England, Stavely and Fitzgerald probe the food culture of the region through a close examination of its earliest cookbooks, authors, and recipes. In their new book, United Tastes: The Making of the First American Cookbook, historians Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald explore the social and gastronomic complexities of the eighteenth-century world that produced the first American cookbook, American Cookery, and brought Amelia Simmons, an obscure orphan-cook before the public as one of America’s first female authors.

America's Founding Food by Keith Stavely