Yummer Reading

A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told Through Food, Recipes, and Remembrances

Norton, 416pp., $35

Taking on the social history of American women in terms of food is a task of mind-boggling scope, and Laura Schenone's efforts to do so provide a very mixed bag of results.

"Throughout history, cooking reveals itself as a source of power and magic, and, at the same time, a source of oppression in women's lives." Schenone attempts to demonstrate this "consistent paradox" specifically through the experience of American women, beginning with pre-Columbian Native Americans and including Puritans, slaves, Westward pioneers, and European, Asian, Latino, and Caribbean immigrants, related in roughly chronological order.

While the author's enthusiasm is evident and admirable, the book is ultimately neither fish nor fowl, neither in-depth scholarly treatment nor comprehensive popular storytelling. Necessarily focusing on selected areas, it falls somewhere between a history survey textbook without the footnotes and a Ken Burns-style documentary without the fiddle music. The beautifully designed volume contains wonderful sepia photos and drawings on creamy paper. Topical sidebars include quotes and anecdotes, and revealing, sometimes amusing, period-specific recipes.

Unfortunately, the speculatively vague, early chapters are almost painful to read, particularly where the author engages in such fanciful mythmaking as the prehistoric "All-Woman," used to illustrate ideas about the earliest American women caring for their families by learning to manipulate seeds and fire, roots and berries.

However, some later sections of the book are quite compelling; the treatment of the late 19th- and early 20th centuries is particularly interesting. The author commendably describes how cooking clubs, settlement homes, and the home economics movement functioned in the "americanization" of Native Americans and immigrants. I was fascinated by the significant (but non-military) roles of women during World War I, including voluntary and widespread food-conservation campaigns, and by the political causes of the post-war food riots of 1917. The processed convenience-food era of the 1950s takes on new meaning when placed in the context of the large numbers of women juggling WWII jobs with homemaking for the first time. For those wanting to explore the politics of food during those eras, this is a reasonable place to begin; the chapter bibliographies provide paths to more in-depth resources.