American Dish

100 Recipes From Ten Delicious Decades

by Merrill Shindler

In American Dish: 100 Recipes From Ten Delicious Decades, author Merrill Shindler, Zagat survey editor and popular culinary talk show host, takes us on a lighthearted, nostalgic and eminently edible journey through the Yankee Doodle dining habits of twentieth-century America.

Throughout history, cuisine has been an indulgence for the rich and a bland necessity for the poor. At the start of the twentieth century the very act of eating -- along with sex, the most fundamental of human activities -- went through a radical reinterpretation.

The twentieth century was destined to become a crispy, crunchy and convenient time. By the time the century began, there were already forty-two breakfast cereal plants in Battle Creek, Michigan, the hamburger had been perfected at a diner in New Haven, Connecticut, and H.J. Heinz erected a sign in New York City which stood six stories tall and proclaimed "57 Good Things for the Table" -- ranging from tomato ketchup to peach butter. The fun had just begun.

From Cobb salad to Caesar salad. Chipped beef to mystery meat. Tamale pie to lemon meringue. Chicken chop suey to chocolate fondue. Vichyssoise to cioppino. String-bean and onion-ring casserole to angel hair pasta with tomatoes and basil and beet risotto. Shindler delivers the dishes -- annotating 100 archetypical recipes that defined their times -- in a decade-by-decade history of America and its wild and wonderful eating and drinking habits.

AMERICAN DISH is a delicious mix of recipes, American history and humor It's a collectible for food lovers of every ilk. An amusing and cleverly-designed cook/history book, this irresistible compendium captures every tasty morsel of the twentieth century.

160 pages
illustrated
9x9"
hardcover: ISBN 1-883318-10-6; $21.95