America Eats

by Nelson Algren and David E. Schoonover

Published 1 December 1992

Recipes adapted from an Iranian classic offer souffles, rice dishes, grilled meats, and desserts, and also includes recipes geared to the colonial British taste.

The Queen City, Cincinnati is known for its geographical, economic, political, cultural, and culinary diversity, a diversity reflected in the recipes, advice, and advertisements contained in The Cincinnati Cookbook. Here you will find hundreds of recipes for breads, cookies, cakes and icings, salads, salad dressings, oysters, crabs, sardines, veal loaf, Spanish cream, cream salmon, cream puffs, soups, and pickles. Accurate measures are given throughout, though you may need to experiment with the prescribed cooking temperatures, which include "slow oven, " "rather cool oven, " "moderate oven, " "hot oven, " "rather a quick oven, " "steady, but not quick, oven, " and "quick oven." Also included are household hints (with a warning about washing your face in ordinary lake water), medicinal remedies, and recipes for dealing with insects, laundry, and other chores. The advertisers, representing Cincinnati's "most prominent and successful concerns, " offer much advice in the form of the conventional wisdom of the ti The financial wisdom: "Start now to get a home of your own, because success or failure in life depends upon grasping opportunities." Heron & Co. urges readers to "Start right when you begin housekeeping. Be sure that you get started right. The rest will then be easy." The original publisher's own motto: "Opportunities come to all men who hustle." The Cincinnati Cookbook contains many photographs of a number of the city's geographical areas, buildings, schools, and monuments to and portraits of several generous and important donors to the city's cultural institutions. It is a feast for the senses and a nostalgic journey on a grand scale.