Cooking up Modernity: Culinary Reformers and The
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--_.. -------- COOKING UP MODERNITY: CULINARY REFORMERS AND THE MAKING OF CONSUMER CULTURE, 1876-1916 by KIYOSHI SHINTANI A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department ofHistory And the Graduate School ofthe University ofOregon in partial fulfillment ofthe requirements for the degree of Doctor ofPhilosophy December 2008 11 University of Oregon Graduate School Confirmation ofApproval and Acceptance of Dissertation prepared by: Kiyoshi Shintani Title: "Cooking Up Modernity: Culinary Reformers and the Making of Consumer Culture, 1876-1916" This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment ofthe requirements for the Doctor ofPhilosophy degree in the Department ofHistory by: Daniel Pope, Chairperson, History Ellen Herman, Member, History James Mohr, Member, History Geraldine Moreno, Outside Member, Anthropology and Richard Linton, Vice President for Research and Graduate StudieslDean ofthe Graduate School for the University ofOregon. December 13, 2008 Original approval signatures are on file with the Graduate School and the University of Oregon Libraries. 11l ©2008 Kiyoshi Shintani IV An Abstract ofthe Dissertation of Kiyoshi Shintani for the degree of Doctor ofPhilosophy in the Department of History to be taken December 2008 Title: COOKING UP MODERNITY: CULINARY REFORMERS AND THE MAKING OF CONSUMER CULTURE, 1876-1916 Approved: Dr. Daniel Pope Fannie Farmer ofthe Boston Cooking School may be the only culinary expert from the Progressive Era who remains a household name today, but many other women took part in efforts to reform American foodways as well. Employing "scientific cookery," cooking based on the sciences ofnutrition and physiology, these women paradoxically formed their careers within a prescribed culture ofwomen's domesticity. At a time when the food industry was rapidly growing, culinary authorities engaged in commercial enterprise as intermediaries between producers and consumers by endorsing products, editing magazines and advertising recipe booklets, and giving cooking demonstrations at food expositions. This study examines the role ofcooking experts in shaping the culture of consumption during the forty years beginning in 1876, when the first American cooking school based on scientific principles was founded in New Yark. Consumer culture here v refers not only to advertising and a set ofbeliefs and customs regarding shopping at retail stores. Expanding the definition of consumption to include cooking (producing meals entails consuming foods) and eating, this dissertation also explores how cooking experts helped turn middle-class women into consumers of food. Drawing on cooking authorities' prescriptive literature, such as cookbooks, magazine and newspaper articles, and advertising cookbooks, this study takes a bifocal approach, illuminating the dynamic interplay between rising consumerism and foodways. Culinary experts not only helped develop the mass marketing and consumption of food. They also shaped a consumerist worldview, which exalted mental and physical exuberance, laying the groundwork for consumer culture, especially advertising, to grow. They adopted commercial aesthetics into their recipes and meal arrangements and, claiming that the appearance offoods corresponded to their wholesomeness, culinary authorities suggested eye-appealing dishes for middle-class women to make and consume. The entwinement ofculinary and consumer cultures involved cooking teachers' insistence on the domesticity of women, especially their role ofproviding family meals. This gender expectation, along with consumer culture, characterized twentieth-century America. Culinary reformers helped modernize American society at large at the tum of the twentieth century. VI CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Kiyoshi Shintani GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University ofOregon, Eugene Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan University ofMichigan at Ann Arbor Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor ofPhilosophy, History, 2008, University ofOregon Master ofArts, 2001, Doshisha University Bachelor ofArts, 1995, University ofMichigan at Ann Arbor AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: Consumer Culture Food Studies PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Graduate Teaching Fellow, Department ofHistory, University ofOregon, September 2001 - June 2004 Vll TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION.. 1 II. CULINARY REFORMERS IN THE FEMININE CULTURE OF PROFESSIONALISM 33 III. CONTROLLING APPETITE AS A PATH TO PROGRESS 62 IV. EATING AS A THERAPEUTIC ACTIVITy................................................... 87 V. APPEALING TO THE EYE: CULINARY AND COMMERCIAL AESTHETICS 107 VI. CULINARY REFORMERS AS INTERPRETERS BETWEEN PRODUCERS AND CONSUMERS................................................................. 125 VII. PURCHASING FOODS AND COOKING: A STRUGGLE TO ACHIEVE "LUXURIOUS ECONOMY" 152 VIII. EATING: REFINING WOMEN'S APPETITE 186 IV. CONCLUSION 212 BIBLIOGRAPHY 219 ------ -_.. _... _._-_._---- 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Fannie Fanner may be the only culinary expert from the Progressive Era who remains a household name today, but many other women took part in efforts to improve American cooking and eating habits as well. Employing "scientific cookery," the newly developing sciences ofnutrition and physiology, these women used cooking and diet as a tool to refonn American society. In parallel with an emerging mass-marketing economy, cooking experts not only constituted a corporate marketing team to promote food products but also developed a consumerist outlook and adopted many elements of consumer culture into their recipes. This entwinement ofculinary culture and consumer capitalism involved cooking teachers' insistence on women's roles as "consumers," that is, purchasers ofhousehold goods and as providers offamily meals, even ifthey were wealthy enough to hire servants. These gender role expectations solidified in twentieth century America. No matter how influential cooking teachers were in disseminating their ideas, culinary refonners helped modernize not only American cooking and eating habits but also American society at large. In the United States, a major transition regarding cooking and eating occurred at the turn ofthe twentieth century. Before the 1880s, many Americans assumed that quantity, rather than quality, offood mattered. Respectable, well-offAmericans despised food-related tasks and were not entirely comfortable about the animalistic act ofeating. Many had not used processed foods nor seen bananas, among other "exotic" foods. 2 Twenty years later, however, many Americans became familiar with eating according to nutritional criteria, whether they practiced that diet or not; many women assumed kitchen work, partly because servants had become hard to come by and kitchen and utensil innovations made the task easier; Americans were leaving the genteel culture behind and displaying their appetites in public places without much hesitation; processed foods like gelatin had permeated into the lower-middle class, who could now enjoy making and eating decorative desserts, which had once belonged only to the higher classes; and bananas could be found everywhere by the early twentieth century. Thus American cooking and eating habits had become more commercialized, diversified, democratized, and casual-that is more modernized-by the early decades ofthe twentieth century. This study examines the role ofcooking experts in shaping the culture of consumption for forty years, beginning in 1876 when the first American cooking school based on scientific principles was founded in New York. l Consumer culture here refers not only to advertising and a set ofbe1iefs and customs regarding shopping at retail stores. Expanding the definition ofconsumption into cooking (as producing meals entails consuming foods) and eating, this dissertation also examines how cooking experts helped tum women, especially middle-class women, into consumers offood. Thus, this study rests on the intersection between food studies and consumer culture. 1 The fIrst cooking school ofany kind in the United States is believed to be Mrs. Elizabeth Goodfellow's Cooking School in Philadelphia, where the pastry cook and confectioner taught upper-class girls from around 1805 to the 1840. Goodfellow, who never published a cookbook, mentored Eliza Leslie {1787 1858), who popularized many ofGoodfellow's recipes in her cookbooks. See Mary Anna Dusablon, America's Collectible Cookbooks: The History, the Politics, the Recipes (Athen: Ohio University Press, 1994),69; William Woys Weaver, A Quaker Woman's Cookbook: The Domestic Cookery oJElizabeth Ellicott Lea (Philadelphia: University ofPennsylvania Press, 1982), xxxi. 3 The protagonists ofthis dissertation are domestic scientists, who were associated with major cooking schools in the Northeast and engaged in commercial enterprises, such as editing magazines and advertising cookbooks and conducting public demonstrations at food expositions. These domestic scientists include Juliet Corson, who founded the New York Cooking School; Maria Parloa, who was one ofthe first teachers at the Boston Cooking School and contributed to the Ladies' Home Journal and Good Housekeeping, among others; Mary J. Lincoln, who, after taking lessons from Parloa, became the first principal ofthe Boston Cooking School and later edited the New England Kitchen Magazine;2 Fannie Farmer, the fourth principal ofthe Boston Cooking School who wrote for the Woman's Home Companion for ten years; Anna Barrows, who attended the Boston Cooking School and later edited