Includes bibliographical references (pages 223-236) and index.

As any cook knows, every meal, and every diet, has a story--whether it relates to presidents and first ladies or to the poorest of urban immigrants. Cultural historian Haber has spent years excavating stories of the ways in which meals cooked and served by women have shaped American history. This book brings together the best of those stories, from the 1840s to the present, focusing on a remarkable assembly of little-known or forgotten Americans who determined what our country ate during some of its most trying periods. Women's work and women's roles in America's past have not always been easy to recover. Haber's secret weapon is the cookbook. She unearths cookbooks and menus from rich and poor, urban and rural, long-past and near-present. She shows us that a single, ubiquitous lens can illuminate a great deal of this other half of our past. Includes sample recipes and photographs.--From publisher description.

SACFinal081324