Piquancy

Right now I'm putting the finishing touches (I hope) on the manuscript for Taste of the Nation: American Coookbooks and Culture. When I wrote these first few posts back in 2010, I was in an early stage of the research. Three years and hundreds of cookbooks and food magazines later, I am at that stage when I really should not be doing new research.

But nonetheless I find myself  immersed in the 1953 Better Homes & Gardens New Cook Book. Looking at it from the vantage of my research, I see it as representative of everything that critics have attacked in American cuisine since the 1930s--love of convenience foods, emphasis on calories and vitamins, disinterest in wine. Most of all,  it is jam packed with flavors that make contemporary food critics shudder. These flavors are haunting me. One flavor in particular: sauerkraut juice. Those imaginary denizens of better  homes & gardens suggest serving sauerkraut juice as an appetizer. In a way this shouldn't be surprising, since I am used to reading menus that begin with pickles or glasses of cold tomato juice. These "cocktails," sometimes fruity, sometimes vegetal, were popular starters in cookbooks of the first half of the twentieth century.

But this one I just can't imagine. Which I suppose means I am going to have to try it. Stay tuned. It's supposed to precede a dinner of cranberry Waldorf salad, flank steak with sweet potatoes and succotash, and nutmeg feather cake. The panoply/riot of flavors in this menu challenge accusations that "50s food" was bland. It's like reading something in dialect, though--it won't make sense to me till I try it on my tongue.