America eats,belatedly

The material in The Food of a Younger Land was originally compiled for publication in a book called America Eats after the FWPs directors decided to put together a book on food to make use of the expertise of its writers around the country. Even at that time there was a sense that food culture was being lost: frozen food was appearing,as were industrial food products such as Jell-O and ready-made cake mixes. So the editors set out to preserve not only traditional dishes but also traditional attitudes and customs and decreed that emphasis should be divided between food and people. The resulting material contained many references to recipes from the civil-war era,and some items look back as far as the colonial period. But apart from a recipe for Depression Cake without flour or eggs,there are few direct references to the privations of the time.

The attack on Pearl Harbour,and Americas subsequent entry into the second world war,meant that America Eats was never completed. Now,however,Mr Kurlansky has dusted off the files from the FWP archive and chosen the best morsels from a huge amount of raw material. They range from an essay on maple-syrup production in Vermont to squirrel recipes from Arkansas,a poem about Nebraskans enthusiasm for frankfurter sausages and a description of how Sioux Indians prepared buffalo meat. As well as providing an introduction,Mr Kurlansky adds his own commentary and sprinkles in the occasional modern reference point: alongside the 1940 Christmas dinner menu from the Brown Hotel in Louisville,Kentucky,for example,the 2007 menu from the same hotel is provided for comparison. The modern menu includes antipasti and sushi; the 1940 menu mentions neither.

The numerous recipes are not merely impersonal lists of ingredients and instructions,but are spiced with tips and personal anecdotes. There are arguments over the best way to prepare clam chowder and a mint julep,a list of food superstitions from Colorado Do not burn bread crust in the kitchen fire,or bad luck will come to that household and a handy guide to New York soda-luncheonette jargon. Some contributions are from FWP writers who went on to successful literary careers,including Eudora Welty,Nelson Algren and Zora Neale Hurston.

Mr Kurlansky notes that at the time America Eats was published,America had rivers on both coasts teeming with salmon and squirrels still leapt from conifer to hardwood in the uncut forests of Appalachia. It is,he says,terrifying to see how much we have lost in only 70 years. A great deal has changed since this book was compiled. But the account of the popularity of the impersonal,high-speed Automat restaurants of New York the precursors of later fast-food chains and a piece ridiculing the dietists and health-food cults of Los Angeles serve as a reminder that some things have not.

The Economist Newspaper Limited 2009