American Dish: 100 Recipes from Ten Delicious Decades

Rating:
Summary: An excellent cookbook
Review: Part cookbook and part history book. Shindler gives brief introductions explaining the culinary history for each decade of the 20th century and then follows with a sampling of recipes for typical foods from that era. The recipes are all simple and clear and many are for items you often don't see recipes for.

Rating:
Summary: A Remarkable Book
Review: This small, concise volume boils the 20th century down to 100 recipes, which seems impossible. But the author has done it with wit and style, coming up with recipes that aren't just tasty (the chili is the best ever), but which also represent their eras with great precision. What seems, at first, like a cookbook, is actually a socio-culinary-historical tract on Our Times, viewed from the table top. The verbiage is clever, the book handsome -- it deserves a place on the shelf of every curious cook.