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SAVORY SUPRS&FASH FEAST Hardcover – November 12, 1985

by Susan Williams (Author)

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Savory Suppers and Fashionable Feasts offers a delightfully flavorful tour of dining in America during the second half of the nineteenth century. Susan Williams investigates the manners and morals of that era by looking at its eating customs and cooking methods. As she reveals, genteel dining became an increasingly important means of achieving social stability during a period when Americans were facing significant changes on a variety of fronts - social, cultural, intellectual, technological, and demographic. Focusing on the rapidly expanding middle class, Williams not only examines mealtime rituals, but she looks at the material culture of Victorian dining: the furniture, the furnishings, and the growing array of accouterments - from asparagus tongs to sardine servers and lace doilies - that supported genteel expectations for tableside behavior. She also explores changing ideas about meals - how they fit into the daily schedule and what kinds of food and drink came to characterize specific meals and menus. Complementing Williams's analysis and descriptions is a lavish array of illustrations, as well as a rich sampling of recipes from the diaries and cookbooks of the era. The result is at once an informative look at life in Victorian America and a sumptuous celebration of a key moment in the country's culinary experience.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This lively and informative volume gives a good general picture of the eat ing patterns of the middle and upper classes in late 19th-century America. Separate chapters are devoted to "The Victorian Middle Class," "Etiquette of the Table," "Dining Rooms and Their Furnishings," and "Fashions in Food and Drink." The book concludes with a discussion of typical menus and a selec tion of period recipes. The final copy apparently will contain numerous black-and-white photographs and line drawings, although this reviewer has not seen them. With its many choice quotations and entertaining anecdotes, this well-written book should appeal to a wide audience. Highly recommend ed. Joyce S. Toomre, Russian Re search Ctr., Harvard Univ.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Pantheon; First Edition (November 12, 1985)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 335 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0394545710
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0394545714
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.18 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8 x 1.25 x 9.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #3,784,649 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Beth Gilmore

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on September 10, 2014

great

Orange cups? Sardine servers? Read on . . .

Reviewed in the United States on October 12, 2005

I have a longstanding interest in what might be called "domestic social history" of the 19th century -- how American and British households operated, what they ate and how, what were considered good manners, clothing customs, the functioning of the "servant class," and all of that. The author of this excellent work is Curator of Household Accessories and Tablewares at the Strong Museum in Rochester, one of the leading Victoriana museums in this country, and she certainly knows her subject. Per the title, she concentrates on the kitchen and dining room (with short excursions into the garden for tea and into city restaurants for special occasions), explaining where customs like placemats originated, detailing the astonishing amount of china and silverware thought necessary in a proper middle-class home, and analyzing the evolution of table manners over a period of three generations. Period illustrations are plentiful, as are quotations from 19th century sources (the bibliography runs to six pages) and menus from the social pages of the newspapers. There's also a lengthy collection of recipes of the time. If you want to pick up on what William Dean Howells was really talking about, read this book.