In Pursuit of Flavor

It's a cookbook. I don't cook :P I picked out this book to read because I heard someone say this book is his comfort book. The author talks about her childhood in Freetown, Virginia (probably in the early 20th century) and how her family raised animals, hunt game, fished, grew vegetables, picked fruit, made preserves....All livestock, game, crops, fruits and vegetables were organic then. And the author repeatedly says the organic ones have better flavor. So it does make you feel good in a sense of bringing you back to a simpler time, where the connection between labor and enjoyment of good food is simple, and when food just have good flavor.

The recipes in the book were mostly food that her family or people in her community would have show more cooked, so the style is distinctly Southern U.S. country. As someone who grew up outside the U.S., I actually know next to nothing about Southern dishes, so everything was fascinating. Three dishes particularly struck me as novel: 1) They saute bananas! With lemon juice! 2) They poach pears in sugary water as dessert! 3) They bake apples as dessert! These three are the most simple recipes. Other recipes take more trouble to make. It seems to me that a lot of the work involved is largely due to the constraint of technology ( For example, in order to eat fruit in the winter in the late 19th and early 20th century, you have to make them into preserves. You just don't have other choices.) show less

This is a wonderful book, as all Edna Lewis's are. The level of detail in both ingredients and directions is wonderful. She is so thorough about ingredients - not just the names, but the varieties, and how tell them apart. The drawings are wonderful too. I have two other cookbooks of hers, and have ordered a third. It is mainly southern including many recipes she learned "at her mother's knee, but some northern stuff is there too.

1st ed dw. Ms. Lewis was the doyenne of Virginia Cookery. Scott Peabody worked with her on subsequent books. Scott is a friend of the bookstore.

A landmark in the history of American Cuisine.

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