Linda Civitello
Autor von Cuisine and Culture: A History of Food and People
Über den Autor
Linda Civitello holds an MA in History from UCLA and a BA in English from Vassar. She has taught food history at Le Cordon Bleu and Art Institutes culinary schools, and has recorded an audio tour on food and art for the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. The first edition of Cuisine and Culture won the mehr anzeigen 2003 Gourmand World Cookbook Award for Best Culinary History Book in English, United States. weniger anzeigen
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- Geschlecht
- female
- Land (für Karte)
- USA
- Ausbildung
- UCLA (C. Phil., history, 2014)
UCLA (MA, American History/Film, 2001)
Vassar College (BA, English/Anthropology/Medieval Studies) - Preise und Auszeichnungen
- Gourmand Award for Best Culinary History Book in English (U.S.)
- Kurzbiographie
- Linda Civitello is the author of Baking Powder Wars: The Cutthroat Food Fight That Revolutionized Cooking, which Smithsonian magazine named one of "The 10 Best Food Books of 2017" and Eater featured in its its list of “10 Food Books to Know About.” Civitello is also the author of Cuisine & Culture: A History of Food and People, winner of the Gourmand Award for Best Food History Book in English (US). Articles in Savoring Gotham: A Food Lover’s Companion to New York City include “Windows on the World,” “The Oyster Bar at Grand Central,” and “Food, Film, and NYC.” Civitello taught "The History of Chocolate" at UCLA Extension and "Food & Art" at the Getty Center. She has served on the faculty of The Art Institute of California - Los Angeles and Le Cordon Bleu College of Culinary Arts in Los Angeles and has appeared on television's Bizarre Foods, National Geographic (Nat Geo), and the BBC. She has spoken about food at Harvard University and before the American Chemical Society. She holds an undergraduate degree in English from Vassar College and a PhD in history from UCLA.
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First sentence: Business is war. Cooking is chemistry. Food is political.
Premise/plot: At its simplest, Baking Powder Wars is just that a history of the evolution/revolution of baking powder. The book begins pre-baking-powder-era and tells the story of what once was, of how bread [and cakes, etc.] used to be made. It then goes step by step through its evolution/revolution. [If it sounds dramatic, well, it's for good reason. It's a story of industry, corporations, commercialization and advertising, espionage, bribery, politics...and plenty of homemaking and 'domestic arts.' It has some to do with the role of women inside the home, and the role of the home inside society. The author uses baking powder to tell the story of convenience, of our love affair with convenience--fast, easy, cheap, consistent. This book truly offers a little something to every reader. It's got recipes. It's got stories about cookbooks and the role they play in society. It's got tension--as companies (and families who own companies) BATTLE it out literally and figuratively for supremacy. You might think naturally this would involve advertising, media, and market space...but it includes actual politics and politicians. It's also a history of what we eat, where we eat, how we eat, etc. (Bread, quick bread, muffins, pancakes, doughnuts, cakes, cupcakes, etc.) What we eat has definitely evolved through the centuries. It isn't just a story of one product--but of many. (Think Bisquick, Martha White, cake-mixes, etc.)
My thoughts: Until the last little bit--second half of last chapter--this one was actually fairly absorbing. I found that while it covered many subjects and seemed to present facts and factoids almost at random, it was almost always interesting and entertaining. The last half of the last chapter brings readers "up to date" on the families who started the big baking powder companies. These "updates" had nothing to do with food, advertising, cooking, etc. Most of them had to do with RACING. And it was like WHY IS THIS IN HERE? DO I CARE ABOUT RACE CARS? NO, I DO NOT. But so much of this one was interesting to me.
This one admittedly won't be for every reader. But for those who have an interest in the subject--be it food, cooking, baking, domestic arts, advertising and marketing, business, history of cookbooks, history of supermarkets, history of society/culture "becoming" modern and industrialized...I think this one has a little bit of everything.… (mehr)
Premise/plot: At its simplest, Baking Powder Wars is just that a history of the evolution/revolution of baking powder. The book begins pre-baking-powder-era and tells the story of what once was, of how bread [and cakes, etc.] used to be made. It then goes step by step through its evolution/revolution. [If it sounds dramatic, well, it's for good reason. It's a story of industry, corporations, commercialization and advertising, espionage, bribery, politics...and plenty of homemaking and 'domestic arts.' It has some to do with the role of women inside the home, and the role of the home inside society. The author uses baking powder to tell the story of convenience, of our love affair with convenience--fast, easy, cheap, consistent. This book truly offers a little something to every reader. It's got recipes. It's got stories about cookbooks and the role they play in society. It's got tension--as companies (and families who own companies) BATTLE it out literally and figuratively for supremacy. You might think naturally this would involve advertising, media, and market space...but it includes actual politics and politicians. It's also a history of what we eat, where we eat, how we eat, etc. (Bread, quick bread, muffins, pancakes, doughnuts, cakes, cupcakes, etc.) What we eat has definitely evolved through the centuries. It isn't just a story of one product--but of many. (Think Bisquick, Martha White, cake-mixes, etc.)
My thoughts: Until the last little bit--second half of last chapter--this one was actually fairly absorbing. I found that while it covered many subjects and seemed to present facts and factoids almost at random, it was almost always interesting and entertaining. The last half of the last chapter brings readers "up to date" on the families who started the big baking powder companies. These "updates" had nothing to do with food, advertising, cooking, etc. Most of them had to do with RACING. And it was like WHY IS THIS IN HERE? DO I CARE ABOUT RACE CARS? NO, I DO NOT. But so much of this one was interesting to me.
This one admittedly won't be for every reader. But for those who have an interest in the subject--be it food, cooking, baking, domestic arts, advertising and marketing, business, history of cookbooks, history of supermarkets, history of society/culture "becoming" modern and industrialized...I think this one has a little bit of everything.… (mehr)
Changing American Tastes
I was astonished at how long and how bitterly the baking powder companies fought each other. Bribery and spying also entered into the story.
Some surprises:
- Taste hardly entered into the picture.
- Convenience was the driving factor and price determined the winner(s).
- Many of our traditional recipes are of recent creation. The good-old-days required a tremendous amount of labor.
- With the time saving advantage of powder, tastes shifted to new products enabled by the speed of the powders.
PS: If you have an older cookbook you might need to cut the amount of baking powder in half. For example Joy Of Cooking cookbook written before the mid-1960’s did not make clear that the recipes assumed cream-of-tarter powder. Alum based products requires half as much powder.
“Second, the cookbooklet claimed that [cream-of-tartar] could be used “in the same amount called for” by other types of baking powder, but its recipes still used larger amounts. Other baking powders used one teaspoon of baking powder per one cup of flour, but this cookbook uses 4 teaspoons of baking power to 1 ¾ cups of flour.” (Page 171)
This book has been on my radar for a while & I’m glad that I bought and read it.… (mehr)
I was astonished at how long and how bitterly the baking powder companies fought each other. Bribery and spying also entered into the story.
Some surprises:
- Taste hardly entered into the picture.
- Convenience was the driving factor and price determined the winner(s).
- Many of our traditional recipes are of recent creation. The good-old-days required a tremendous amount of labor.
- With the time saving advantage of powder, tastes shifted to new products enabled by the speed of the powders.
PS: If you have an older cookbook you might need to cut the amount of baking powder in half. For example Joy Of Cooking cookbook written before the mid-1960’s did not make clear that the recipes assumed cream-of-tarter powder. Alum based products requires half as much powder.
“Second, the cookbooklet claimed that [cream-of-tartar] could be used “in the same amount called for” by other types of baking powder, but its recipes still used larger amounts. Other baking powders used one teaspoon of baking powder per one cup of flour, but this cookbook uses 4 teaspoons of baking power to 1 ¾ cups of flour.” (Page 171)
This book has been on my radar for a while & I’m glad that I bought and read it.… (mehr)
I was attracted to this book by its global scope ; however, I was disappointed to discover that it is written for a reader with no knowledge of the past, and thus, at least four-fifths of the text are devoted to a rote retelling of history, leaving little room for the subject promised by the title. Perhaps this book is aimed at culinary students straight out of high school. Too bad, as an educated history of food around the world would be most interesting.
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We find out about the link between bread making, morality, religion, and how tied women were to that work. Money and political bribery. How women's lives and perceptions of the change by the power brokers behind the different companies controlling baking powder. The lies and manipulations of advertising and laws for money.
You get a lens on history through baking powder which is not something I expected.… (mehr)