Some Publishers with Interesting Books on Food History

I’ve just returned from the main annual meeting of a group called the International Association of Culinary Professionals in New Orleans. It’s an interesting umbrella organization that offers shelter to those interested in food who don’t find a natural home elsewhere. I rubbed shoulders with food stylists, journalists, owners of gourmet shops, tour leaders, cooking school teachers, people I’d never normally run into. Among all these glimpses into different worlds, I specially enjoyed talking to some of the publishers there who specialize in my favorite niche, food history.

Sheila Levine masterminds the superb food and wine list put out by the University of California Press. The books are of high scholarly quality, beautifully produced, and, cheers, almost never written in a dry academic style. They range from Ted Bestor’s study of Tsukiji, the Japanese fish market, to Marion Nestle’s series of books on food politics (pet food politics being the next offering), to a reprint of Martino’s Art of Cooking, central to understanding the cooking of Renaissance Italy. If you don’t know this series, check it out.

Also look at Gastronomica, that the journals wing of the Press publishes, edited by Darra Goldstein.

Rob Arndt is in charge of Yes Press which has just one book to its credit, Culinary Biographies, edited by his late wife Alice. I was a tad skeptical when Alice told me her plans for this and twisted my arm into doing entries on Accum (see below) and Appert (the Frenchman who demonstrated the possibility of canning in the early nineteenth century). The result, however, makes compulsive reading and it was enthusiastically reviewed by the New York Times and other prestigious organs.

Opening it at random, I can go from Marion Harland, celebrity cookbook author in nineteenth-century America, to Dorothy Hartley, collector of English culinary folklore, to Nika Hazelton, German-Italian cookbook author who did much to introduce Americans to European cookery following World War II.

So if you don’t have it, it’s a book worth thinking about. And since in a few years there will be a second edition, think of suggestions for new entries. Rob particularly wants to strengthen non-American, non-European entries.

Ann Dolamore and her husband run Grub Street. It has reprinted some of the very best cookbooks of the last century, with a British emphasis, including ones by Elizabeth David, who had fame in England as great as the fame of Julia Child in the United States, Jane Grigson, who combined style, scholarship, research and great recipes whether for charcuterie, fruit, or vegetables, and Claudia Roden, of middle eastern food fame.

Less well known but just as interesting are Margaret Patten and my favorite Mary Norwak. She wrote the first cookery column I ever read on the back page of the Farmer’s Weekly no less. Her book on English Puddings Sweet and Savoury that Grub Street has reprinted ranges much more widely than the title suggests and opens the eyes to a world that has nearly gone.

Finally, there Phil Zuckerman, president of Applewood Books. He sells all kinds of interesting food books at great discounts. He reprints historic food books, mainly American and ranging much more widely than just cookbooks, and sells them at quite ridiculously low prices.

And if you visit his web site Foodsville, you can join discussion groups, do social networking (as I’ve learned to call it), and–get this–read those hundred plus reprints free. What a service.

I quickly checked out Accum’s Treatise on the Adulterations of Food and Culinary Poisons (1822), Bertha Haffner Ginger, California Mexican-Spanish Cookbook (194), Lafcadio Hearn’s Creole Cookery (1885), and Cheese and Cheemaking with special reference to Fancy Continental Cheeses (1896)–basically how Americans could get in on the growing cheese business.

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