From the Americas to Australasia, from northern Europe to southern Africa, the tomato tickles the world's taste buds. This book traces the early cultivation of the tomato, its infiltration of American cooking practices, the early manufacture of preserved tomatoes and ketchup, and the great tomato mania of the 1820s and 1830s.

"By any standard, the Centennial Buckeye Cook Book was the most important cookbook to have originated in Ohio in the nineteenth century. It included more than three hundred pages of good recipes for jellies and jams, soups and sauces, fruits and vegetables, meats, poultry and fish, and confectionary, cakes and pastry, and many more. It was, however, much more than just a cookbook. Some editions featured information about medicine and the chemistry of food, how to do the laundry, how to make icehouses, hints for the sick, and, most unusual, hints for the well. The book was a reflection...

Whether in movie theaters or sports arenas, at fairs or theme parks, around campfires or family hearths, Americans consume more popcorn by volume than any other snack. To the world, popcorn seems as American as baseball and apple pie. Within American food lore, popcorn holds a special place, for it was purportedly shared by Native Americans at the first Thanksgiving. In Popped Culture, Andrew F. Smith tests such legends against archaeological, agricultural, culinary, and social findings. While debunking many myths, he discovers a flavorful story of the curious kernel's introduction and...

Food expert and celebrated food historian Andrew F. Smith recounts--in delicious detail--the creation of contemporary American cuisine. The diet of the modern American wasn't always as corporate, conglomerated, and corn-rich as it is today, and the style of American cooking, along with the ingredients that compose it, has never been fixed. With a cast of characters including bold inventors, savvy restaurateurs, ruthless advertisers, mad scientists, adventurous entrepreneurs, celebrity chefs, and relentless health nuts, Smith pins down the truly crackerjack history behind the way America eats....

A companion to Andrew F. Smith's critically acclaimed and popular Eating History: Thirty Turning Points in the Making of American Cuisine, this volume recounts the individuals, ingredients, corporations, controversies, and myriad events responsible for America's diverse and complex beverage scene. Smith revisits the country's major historical moments--colonization, the American Revolution, the Whiskey Rebellion, the temperance movement, Prohibition, and its repeal--and he tracks the growth of the American beverage industry throughout the world. The result is an intoxicating encounter...