Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink Book

Offering a panoramic view of the history and culture of food and drink in America with fascinating entries on everything from the smell of asparagus to the history of White Castle, and the origin of Bloody Marys to jambalaya, the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink provides a concise, authoritative, and exuberant look at this modern American obsession. Ideal for the food scholar and food enthusiast alike, it is equally appetizing for anyone fascinated by Americana, capturing our culture and history through what we love most—food!

Building on the highly praised and deliciously browseable two-volume compendium the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, this new work serves up everything you could ever want to know about American consumables and their impact on popular culture and the culinary world. Within its pages for example, we learn that Lifesavers candy owes its success to the canny marketing idea of placing the original flavor, mint, next to cash registers at bars. Patrons who bought them to mask the smell of alcohol on their breath before heading home soon found they were just as tasty sober and the company began producing other flavors.

Edited by Andrew Smith, a writer and lecturer on culinary history, the Companion serves up more than just trivia however, including hundreds of entries on fast food, celebrity chefs, fish, sandwiches, regional and ethnic cuisine, food science, and historical food traditions. It also dispels a few commonly held myths. Veganism, isn't simply the practice of a few "hippies," but is in fact wide-spread among elite athletic circles. Many of the top competitors in the Ironman and Ultramarathon events go even further, avoiding all animal products by following a strictly vegan diet. Anyone hungering to know what our nation has been cooking and eating for the last three centuries should own the Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink.

· Nearly 1,000 articles on American food and drink, from the curious to the commonplace

· Beautifully illustrated with hundreds of historical photographs and color images

· Includes informative lists of food websites, museums, organizations, and festivals

John Charles - Library Journal

Smith (culinary history & professional food writing, New Sch.) edited The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America(OEFDA), which he uses as the main ingredient in his latest culinary reference work; but by adding subjects not found in that book, he creates a useful and entertaining new literary dish. The approximately 1000 A-to-Z entries, each ranging from a paragraph to several pages in length, are written by 200-plus experts. Complemented by 200 mostly black-and-white illustrations, they cover everything from foods (e.g., the cauliflower, the tomato) to companies (e.g., Borden, Nabisco) to biographies of such famous individuals as cookbook authors Fannie Farmer and Eliza Leslie. Most entries contain a bibliography of additional sources, and there are some valuable appendixes dedicated to food-themed festivals, organizations, museums, and web sites. Similar information can be found in other standard culinary reference sources-e.g., the classic Larousse Gastronomiqueand The Oxford Companion to Food(2006. 2d ed.)-but Smith's work creates its own valuable niche not only by combining all these subjects and more into one book but also by focusing on the ways in which they are specifically connected to American food culture and history.