AccessMyLibrary provides FREE access to over 30 million articles from top publications available through your library.

Manly Meals and Mom's Home Cooking: Cookbooks and Gender in Modern America.(Book Review)

Journal of Popular Culture

| August 01, 2004 | O'Sullivan, Robin K. | COPYRIGHT 2004 Blackwell Publishers Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan.  All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)Copyright

Manly Meals and Mom's Home Cooking: Cookbooks and Gender in Modern America. Jessamyn Neuhaus. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

Embedded within the pages of American cookbooks, aspiring chefs find cultural messages about gender roles and domesticity. Women, it seems, prefer "fussy" recipes like finger sandwiches, while men prefer "hearty" foods like steak and potatoes. Above all, women assume responsibility for cooking daily meals, while men take command of the kitchen only on special occasions.

In Manly Meals and Mom's Home Cooking, Jessamyn Neuhaus effectively analyzes American cookbooks through the lens of gender. Her research reveals the depth and evolution of gendered discourse that has populated cookbooks since the 1790s. Neuhaus, who teaches history at Denison University, sees advice on food preparation as prescriptions for being a good wife and a devoted mother. Cookbooks normalize gender ideologies, reinforcing the disparate spheres of men and women in the home.

Through cookbooks, Neuhaus investigates "how foods, food preparation, kitchen labor, gender, class, and race have intersected in the United States" (1). Cookbooks are historical documents that reveal much about social values and trends. Suggestions on shopping, parenting, weight loss, time management, and home decorating are interspersed with directions for preparing dishes. Cookbook publishers were quick to recognize the role of housewife as consumer.

Cookbooks publicized notions of an ideal nuclear family in which women reigned over the kitchen. Neuhaus asserts that twentieth-century cookbooks tried to convince women that making dinner was their societal obligation. Women were advised that they should enjoy cooking instead of regarding it as drudgery. During World War II, cooking was a woman's patriotic duty. Even as more families had to relinquish their servants and women increasingly entered the work force, it was still the wife, not the husband, who fixed breakfast and prepared the nightly meal. Many cookbooks even included lists of food that men like to eat.

Neuhaus describes how, in the 1950s, cookbooks "helped create a kitchen-based version of the feminine mystique that we might aptly call 'the cooking mystique'" (159). Of course, women did not always agree with the rosy picture of domestic tranquility ...

Related articles from newspapers, magazines, journals, and more
Cooking with joy.(Manly Meals and Mom's Home Cooking: Cookbooks and Gender in...
Magazine article from: The Women's Review of Books Haber, Barbara October 1, 2003 700+ words
Manly Meals and Mom's Home Cooking: Cookbooks and Gender in Modern America by...scholars are starting to interpret cookbooks--traditionally ignored by American...essays that explore community cookbooks, those regional recipe collections...
(En)gendering cooking.(A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American...
Magazine article from: Feminist Collections: A Quarterly of Women's Studies Resources Swygart-Hobaugh, Amanda J. January 1, 2005 700+ words
...6. Jessamyn Neuhaus, MANLY MEALS AND MOM'S HOME COOKING: COOKBOOKS AND GENDER IN MODERN AMERICA...subject matter. Analyzing cookbooks published in the U.S...Neuhaus's opening chapter on cookbooks from 1796 to 1920 echoes...
Steak for men, salad for women; A century of gender programming from America's...
Newspaper article from: The Christian Science Monitor July 24, 2003 700+ words
...author of "Manly Meals and Mom's...Cook Book," cookbooks have long told...homemaking. Cookbooks prodded and...author of "The Cookbook for Brides...same time, cookbooks carved out...beauty). "Manly Meals" is often...
2003 cookbook calendar: featuring special discounts on selected cookbooks each...
Magazine article from: Mississippi Business Journal January 13, 2003 700+ words
...Collect all the cookbooks in the BEST OF THE BEST STATE COOKBOOK SERIES--and...Have for Dinner? Cookbook (Virginia) The RECIPE HALL OF FAME COOKBOOKS contain over 1300...the contributing cookbooks, a bonanza for cookbook collectors. The...
Cookbooks serve up sales.
Magazine article from: HFN The Weekly Newspaper for the Home Furnishing Network Werner, Holly M. October 28, 1996 700+ words
...currently offers more than 100 cookbooks. "When gourmet stores started...it really helped propel cookbooks beyond traditional cookbook sales," said Lisa Ekus...which specializes in promoting cookbooks and coaching food authors...
Homegrown cookbooks useful tool in diabetes fight.(Health &...
Newspaper article from: Windspeaker Petten, Cheryl September 1, 2003 700+ words
...disease. What makes these cookbooks different is that they...has created two such cookbooks is the Federation of...Indians. The first cookbook, filled with recipes...decided to create a cookbook as part of its diabetes...explained, because cookbooks are almost guaranteed...
'Private label' cookbooks offering recipes for profit. (supermarket cookbooks...
Magazine article from: Supermarket News Elson, Joel May 8, 1989 700+ words
...best-selling title in the whole cookbook category." Graul's, whose cookbook assortment tops out with a $24...uses the three Words Worth Eating cookbooks as a springboard to highlight its cookbook assortment in the firm's four...
Talking turkey. (cookbook publishing industry) (includes article on the...
Magazine article from: Publishers Weekly Hix, Charles Quinn, Judy Dahlin, Robert Patrick, Diane Frederick, Heather Vogel Mantell, Suzanne Fitzpatrick, Maureen Langstaff, Margaret Oder, Norman Dyer, Lucinda July 15, 1996 700+ words
...legacy lasts in their cookbook writing. Explains...customers"--of cookbooks their ex-clientele...99% Fat-Free Cookbook, published by Doubleday...The Silver Palate Cookbook, they note that certain pivotal cookbooks have literally changed...
Free Cookbooks Just in Time for the Holidays.
Press release article from: PR Newswire August 29, 2006 700+ words
...on the belief that cookbook buyers aren't getting...anymore. "With cookbooks costing forty dollars...Thanksgiving Feast" cookbook. Unlike similarly themed cookbooks that are a simple...Recipes Thanksgiving cookbook is an organized procedure...
The cookbook craze has lots of people singing; Cookbooks always sell well in...
Newspaper article from: The Christian Science Monitor January 13, 2005 700+ words
...without including a cookbook or two. "We had...leading seller of cookbooks. In addition to "The Gourmet Cookbook," which includes...made producing a cookbook increasingly easier...changed the world of cookbooks, all agree. Some...
For more facts and information, see all results
©2009 Gale, a part of Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
About us | FAQs | Contact us | Privacy policy | Terms and conditions
Other Gale sites: Encyclopedia.com | HighBeam Research | Acquire Content | Books & Authors | Goliath | MovieRetriever | Smart QandA