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America EatsandDrinks, and Drinks,andDrinks .... Sanborn C. Brown. Winesand Beers of OldNew England: AHow-to-do-it Histo1:i•, Hanover, N.H.:The University Press ofNewEngland, 1979.157+ xxxpp. Lowell Edmunds. The Silver Bullet: The Martini in Ame11can Civilization. Westport, Conn.: The Greenwood Press, 1981.149+ xviiipp. Lewis A. Erenberg. Steppin' Out: New YorkNightlife and the Transformationof'American Culture, 1890-1930. Westport, Cairn.: The Gr.eenwoodPress, 1981.291+xixpp. \fa1thaWashington'sBooke of Cooke1:v,with an introduction andcommentaryby Karen Hess. NewYork: Columbi;iUniversity Press, 1981.518 + viiipp. Peter Buitenhuis Thesefour volumesare each in their different wayssignificantcontributions tothe history of American popular culture. They provide interpretations ofthe ways in which Americans used and then modified their European culturalheritage in the face of different physical and social conditions in theNewWorld. Tomisquote Napoleon, a nation progresseson itsstomach, althougha historian surveying the drinking habits of Americans from the imbibingof spruce beer in the seventeenth century to the consumption of Martinisin the twentieth might well question, once again, the whole idea ofprogress. As Karen Hess, the admirable editor of Martha Washington'sBooke of Cooke,y says,''Fewscholars are cooks-and fewercooks are scholars.'' The samecannot of course be saidforscholars asdrinkers, whichisperhaps why moreattention has been paid to drinking than to eating in studiesof popular culture.Any reader cannot but be impressed by the importance of strong drinkin American history, a vibrant paradox in a supposedlypuritan nation. SanbornBrown,the author of Winesand Beers of OldNew England, reports thatthe liquid intake of early Americans wasprodigious. Onesurveyof 1767 claimed,doubtless with some hyperbole, that the consumption of ciderper personwas more than one keg (fivegallons)per day! Martha Washington'scookery book, as mightbe expected,consistslargely ofEnglishrecipesof the so-calledgolden age-the sixteenthand seventeenth Canadian Review of American Studies, Volume 14,Number 4, Winter 1983,475-79 476 PeterBuitenhuis centuries. English cooking, then as now, did not have the refinement and elegance of the French, but it was surprisingly inventive and varied. The recipes were easilyadapted to American use because the settlers rapidly domesticated English animals, fruit and vegetables. It was not, however, until the end ofthe eighteenth century that recipes using materials of native origin-such as chowders, pumpkin pies and hominy-appeared in print. No doubt such recipes were in use long before that, passed on orally or in manuscript form. As Karen Hess suggests, many of Martha Washington's recipes are suited to modern cuisine- though the materials that we have to use are usually far inferior. In order to make this book a practical one, however, she has annotated each recipe and suggested modern variants to make the dishmore feasible, or even more palatable. Some of the recipes, such as "To boylea carpe in its blood," are of antiquarian more than of culinary interest. Martha Washington's Booke of Cookery is a thoroughly scholarly work. Karen Hess carefully traces the history of the manuscript and dismissesthe common assumption that the manuscript was actually in Martha's hand. It is of far earlier origin. Hess surmises that it was actually written by a descen· dant of the famous Culpeper family, Lady Berkeley, a forebear of Martha Washington's first mother-in-law (George was Martha's second husband). The transcription process is carefully described, and the manuscript placed within the tradition of recipe compilation from the medieval period onwards. This is a book for the shelf of the scholar and the kitchen. Winesand Beers of OldNew England is a practical manual, written for those who "like to go to folk museums, who like to collect antiques, wholike to renovate old houses, and who like to drink." The last category considerably enlarges the potential readership, which would probably be most interested in the last two chapters of the book: "Hot Mixed Drinks" and "Cold Mixed Drinks." The author, Sanborn C. Brown, is an Emeritus Professor of Physics from M.I.T. and thus brings to his history scientific know-how as well as antiquarian interests. He writes clearly and unpretentiously about howfarmers in New England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries brewed their beers and made their wines, and how these techniques can be applied today. He has not transcribed but in fact reconstructed these methods, since few...

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