HIS 301: Food in American Culture

Until about 100 years ago, when modern chemistry and geology revealed how prevalent it is, salt was one of the most sought-after commodities, and no wonder, for without it humans and animals could not live. Salt has often been considered so valuable that it served as currency, and it is still exchanged as such in places today. Demand for salt established the earliest trade routes, across unknown oceans and the remotest of deserts: the city of Jericho was founded almost 10,000 years ago as a salt trading center. Because of its worth, salt has provoked and financed some wars, and been a strategic element in others, such as the American Revolution and the Civil War. Salt taxes secured empires across Europe and Asia and have also inspired revolution (Gandhi's salt march in 1930 began the overthrow of British rule in India); indeed, salt has been central to the age-old debate about the rights of government to tax and control economies.

In Mary Anna DuSablon's look at the two hundred-year evolution of American cookbooks, these authors receive their due--not simply as recipe peddlers, but as shapers of American culture. This book describes how government and industry joined forces to woo women back into the kitchen after the world wars. And it hails the role of the cookbook as a fund-raiser during the many years of social reform.

Theobromo caco . . . chocolate . . . "the food of the gods." Delicious indulgence or cause of migraines? Aphrodisiac or medicinal tonic? Religious symbol or Mesoamerican currency? This delightful tale of one of the world's favorite foods draws upon botany, archaeology, socio-economics, and culinary history to present a complete and accurate history of chocolate. The story begins some three thousand years ago in the jungles of lowland Mexico and Central America with the tree Theobroma cacao and the complex processes necessary to transform its bitter seeds into what is now known as chocolate. This was centuries before chocolate was consumed in generally unsweetened liquid form and used as currency by the sophisticated Maya, and the Aztecs after them. The Spanish conquest of Central America introduced chocolate to Europe, where it became first the stimulating drink of kings and aristocrats and then was popularized in coffeehouses. Industrialization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries made chocolate a food for the masses--until its revival in our own time as a luxury item.

This book examines our relationship with alcohol and examines how drink has evolved in its functions and uses from the late Middle Ages to the present day in the West. This book discusses a range of issues, including domestic versus recreational use, the history of alcoholism, and the relationship between alcohol and violence, religion, sexuality, and medicine. It looks at how certain forms of alcohol speak about class, gender, and place. Drawing on examples from Europe, North America, and Australia, this book provides a comprehensive history of the role of alcohol over the past.