Cookbooks offer a unique and valuable way to examine American life. Far from being recipe compendiums alone, cookbooks can reveal worlds of information about the daily lives, social practices, class aspirations, and cultural assumptions of people in the past. With a historical introduction and contextualizing annotations, this fascinating historical compilation of excerpts from five Civil War-era cookbooks presents a compelling portrait of cooking and eating in the urban north of the 1860s United States.

As companions to the first and second volumes in the American Food in History series we offer selections of recipes, updated and tested by food editor Jennifer Billock, using measurements and techniques that modern readers can use in their own kitchen. Arranged by main meal occasions (breakfast, picnic or lunch, dinner, dessert) these recipes--some familiar, some curious, all intriguing--will allow family and friends to get a "taste of the times" with their own "Civil War era" meals. The original versions of these recipes (and many more) can be found in Food in the Civil War Era: The North and Food in the Civil War Era: The South, edited by Helen Zoe Veit, along with fascinating essays about the history and the times.

This fascinating study in cultural history presents a variety of Civil War-era recipes from the South, accompanied by intriguing essays describing this tumultuous period. This second volume in the American Food in History series sheds new light on cooking and eating in the Civil War South, pointing out how seemingly neutral recipes can reveal aspects of life beyond the dinner plate, from responses to the anti-slavery movement to shifting economic imperatives to changing ideas about women's roles.

Godey's Lady's Book, perhaps the most popular magazine for women in nineteenth-century America, had a national circulation of 150,000 during the 1860s. The recipes (spelled ""receipts"") it published were often submitted by women from both the North and the South, and they reveal the wide variety of regional cooking that characterized American culture. There is a remarkable diversity in the recipes, thanks to the largely rural readership of Godey's Lady's Book and to the immigrant influence on the country in the 1860s. Fish and game were readily available in rural America, and the number of seafood recipes testifies to the abundance of the coastal waters and rivers. The country cook was a frugal cook, particularly during wartime, so there are a great many recipes for leftovers and seasonal produce. In addition to a wide sampling of recipes that can be used today, Civil War Recipes includes information on Union and Confederate army rations, cooking on both homefronts, and substitutions used during the war by southern cooks.

'From the first shot fired at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, to the last shot fired at Appomattox, food played a crucial role in the Civil War. In Starving the South, culinary historian Andrew Smith takes a fascinating gastronomical look at the war and its aftermath. At the time, the North mobilized its agricultural resources, fed its civilians and military, and still had massive amounts of food to export to Europe. The South did not; while people starved, the morale of their soldiers waned and desertions from the Army of the Confederacy increased.....' (Book Jacket)

As companions to the first and second volumes in the American Food in History series we offer selections of recipes, updated and tested by food editor Jennifer Billock, using measurements and techniques that modern readers can use in their own kitchen. Arranged by main meal occasions (breakfast, picnic or lunch, dinner, dessert) these recipes--some familiar, some curious, all intriguing--will allow family and friends to get a "taste of the times" with their own "Civil War era" meals. The original versions of these recipes (and many more) can be found in Food in the Civil War Era: The North and Food in the Civil War Era: The South, edited by Helen Zoe Veit, along with fascinating essays about the history and the times.

Presents recipes used during the American Civil War, intertwining history and cuisine for insights into the lives of soldiers on the battlefield and their loved ones at home.