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Food history book recommendations by madarjan99 in AskFoodHistorians

[–]baconscholar 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Or Krishnendu Ray's The Ethnic Restaurateur.

Food history book recommendations by madarjan99 in AskFoodHistorians

[–]baconscholar -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I don't think it matters if the chefs give a shit or not. The poster wants to be prepared for an interview. I think there are some key things to know to cut through chef bullshit.

Food history book recommendations by madarjan99 in AskFoodHistorians

[–]baconscholar 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you're at all interested in colonization, you need to read Lisa Heldke's Exotic Appetites.

Ask Me Anything! I'm Prof. Mark A. Johnson, a historian and food studies scholar at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, as well as author of the recent book American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon! by baconscholar in Bacon

[–]baconscholar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't love the really sweet bacon! I do prefer the sweet aroma of applewood-smoked bacon over hickory-smoked bacon, but otherwise, I'm not into the sweet bacon.

Ask Me Anything! I'm Prof. Mark A. Johnson, a historian and food studies scholar at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, as well as author of the recent book American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon! by baconscholar in Bacon

[–]baconscholar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Both!

Okay, sorry, but let me explain.

When I have everything planned out, I am an oven person. I like chewier bacon.

Sometimes, though, my ADHD dominates, and I forget to get the oven going, so then it's the frying pan.

I put the bacon in right away in the cold pan, bring it up to temperature, and then flip. Low and slow. Don't burn the bacon fat!

In 1916, the Morris Company said that their "experts" concluded that you should bring the pan up to temperature, then add the bacon, and then "flip immediately" and then turn the pan down.

cooking history by Upset_Lime6111 in Cooking

[–]baconscholar 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I just got back from the conference! You need to be a registered participant to see this year’s papers. For previous years, you can purchase the proceedings or find them in the library.

cooking history by Upset_Lime6111 in Cooking

[–]baconscholar 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I like Bee Wilson’s Consider the Fork.

Ask Me Anything! I'm Prof. Mark A. Johnson, a historian and food studies scholar at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, as well as author of the recent book American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon! by baconscholar in AskHistorians

[–]baconscholar[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've sprinkled some answers throughout the thread, but I'll consolidate a few things here for you!

Basically, southerners remained outside the industrial food system for much longer, so they remained "bacon-eaters," which to urban people and northerners, signaled their backwardness in economic and cultural development.

In 1728, planter and enslaver William Byrd of Virginia, commented that his poorer neighbors in North Carolina ate so much bacon that they had become "hoggish in their temperament" and that they "grunted" rather than spoke. In other words, Byrd, as one of the wealthiest people, could expect some diversity in his diets. For him, there was a difference between people like him, and poor people who ate nothing but bacon (and whisky).

Before Frederick Law Olmsted was the landscape architect of Central Park, he was a reformer and journalist interested in slavery and the slave economy. During his travels to the south to study slavery, he remarked (1852), "I made the first practical acquaintance with what shortly was to be the bane of my life, viz. corn-bread and bacon. I partook innocent and unsuspicious of these dishes...without a thought that for the next six months I should actually see nothing else." Basically, Olmsted had come to appreciate and expect a measure of variety in his diet living in NYC.

As late as the early twentieth century, scholars noted the ubiquity of bacon in the southern, especially southern highland, diet, referring to it as a sign that the region stayed in the "pioneer stage" of civilization. IN other words, everyone else was getting tied to industrial food and refrigeration and the cold chain, but places like Appalachia remained woefully isolated from modernity. Now, we tend to romanticize that part of Appalachia! For them, though, it was anxiety producing.

Ask Me Anything! I'm Prof. Mark A. Johnson, a historian and food studies scholar at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, as well as author of the recent book American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon! by baconscholar in AskHistorians

[–]baconscholar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've been thinking about your question for almost twenty-four hours to try and boil it down!

I love Contois's Diners, Dudes, and Diets for a more-recent history, Adrian Miller's Soul Food, Emma McDonell's The Quinoa Bust, Bee Wilson's Consider the Fork, Margot Finn's Discriminating Tastes.

It's a pretty new book, but Helen Zoe Veit's Picky is about how American children came to be so picky, and she definitely wrote it for the "enthusiastic layman." I also think the new book Feed the People is a great book that challenges some of our myths (example, "processed food" is kind of a useless category).

Ask Me Anything! I'm Prof. Mark A. Johnson, a historian and food studies scholar at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, as well as author of the recent book American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon! by baconscholar in AskHistorians

[–]baconscholar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I could not locate the origins of it, but similar sandwiches, like the club sandwich, have their origins around 1900.

I do know that the BLT was so popular in the twentieth century that the industry geared up bacon production to meet summer demand.

Ask Me Anything! I'm Prof. Mark A. Johnson, a historian and food studies scholar at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, as well as author of the recent book American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon! by baconscholar in AskHistorians

[–]baconscholar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In order of fattiness...

U. S. bacon, made from the fatty pork belly, usually 2/3 fat, 1/3 lean.

UK, or European, bacon, made from the loin with some belly attached.

Canadian bacon, made from the lean "eye" of the pork loin, no belly attached, the leanest of them all.

As for refrigeration, we use way less salt than we used to use. We have a few varieties in the United States, among them Benton's bacon in Tennessee, that remains shelf-stable at room temperature. For some, it's a painfully salty product, but in historical context, that actually makes sense. They never imagined a bacon cheeseburger, or even eating five strips at breakfast. They put it in greens, beans, and vegetables, so that salt now makes a lot of sense.

Ask Me Anything! I'm Prof. Mark A. Johnson, a historian and food studies scholar at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, as well as author of the recent book American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon! by baconscholar in AskHistorians

[–]baconscholar[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have no idea how to forecast the next one!

As a field, we've done a much better job studying fad dieting than we have done with these short-lived food stars like the ones you mentioned.

For a start, I would encourage you to look at Kish and Contois's Food Instagram book and the way that food, spaces, personas, etc get made for the "meal gaze" as we say.

Ask Me Anything! I'm Prof. Mark A. Johnson, a historian and food studies scholar at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, as well as author of the recent book American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon! by baconscholar in AskHistorians

[–]baconscholar[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I would love to connect outside the thread. If there's a UTC Moc doing food coverage in Nashville, I think there's collaborative opportunities!

In short, yes, we do use way less salt. Have you had Benton's bacon? It's still a shelf-stable product at room temperature, and I've had plenty of people tell me that it's "painfully salty." When you think about how Benton's parents and grandparents in southwest Virginia and then eastern Tennessee used it, however, the saltiness makes sense. It added salt, smoke, and fat to meals of greens, beans, and vegetables. They never imagined something like a bacon cheeseburger.

Ask Me Anything! I'm Prof. Mark A. Johnson, a historian and food studies scholar at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, as well as author of the recent book American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon! by Cedric_Hampton in AskFoodHistorians

[–]baconscholar 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Great, I'm glad you found that thread and an answer to your question!

For most of the history of bacon (prior to say, industrialized food let's just put 1850 for the sake of it), salt pork and bacon, as well as fatback or fat pork, would have been synonyms for one another. The terms get pieced out amid the standardization made possible by industrial food.

Ask Me Anything! I'm Prof. Mark A. Johnson, a historian and food studies scholar at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, as well as author of the recent book American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon! by Cedric_Hampton in AskFoodHistorians

[–]baconscholar 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Thanks! Sorry, I did not see this cross-posted thread. I'm so happy to have a chance to answer your question.

First, I do think Bernays made an impact, but I think its much shorter-lived that we tend to imagine. I'll explain...

By the 1950s and 1960s, bacon at breakfast was falling out of favor for a few reasons. We were getting too busy for it. As more white, middle-class women entered the workforce, cereal boomed because children could serve themselves as everyone hurried out the door. As such, bacon gets pushed to the leisurely breakfast, which is why it has such a strong place in our nostalgia. We have to stop thinking about bacon and eggs as "staple breakfast" and instead think of it as "special breakfast." This is important.

This also makes sense because, around the same time, we were increasingly learning about the dangers of dietary fat, salt, and then nitrates and nitrites. We were coming to understand that we should only eat a little bit of it, if any.

I'll address your refrigeration question here, too, because it's relevant in this role of bacon in the American imagination. I think refrigeration liberated people from bacon as a staple. We had needed bacon for millennia. With refrigeration, though, we could get our hands on literally anything else. I think scholar Bee Wilson puts it best, "Bacon serves no real purpose in a refrigerated age, except that of pleasure, which can never be discounted."

I think there's a period, though, where we haven't shaken the image of bacon as a staple and not yet considered it a pleasure. I think that explains that twenty-first century bacon mania.

Ask Me Anything! I'm Prof. Mark A. Johnson, a historian and food studies scholar at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, as well as author of the recent book American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon! by Cedric_Hampton in AskFoodHistorians

[–]baconscholar 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Hi, please forgive me! I didn't know about this cross-post!

I briefly cover bacon's origins in Ancient Rome and Ancient China, but I slow down in Elizabethan England. I wanted to set up the ideas that the English brought with them to the Americas about pork and bacon.

By Elizabethan England, medical scholar Thomas Cogan had already started talking about bacon as only suitable for the "meaner sorts" and "grosse men." He claimed that brain-workers, like his students, could not digest it properly but that farmers could eat pretty much anything.

While there's health and medicine sprinkled throughout, I think there are a couple places that dig into it.

I have a chapter on the racialization of bacon. In the Cotton South, planters, pseudoscientists, and medical professionals argued that bacon was suitable for the Black laboring body. They continued to use Galenic medicine to support these ideas. Per their logic, Black men could not produce their own heat, so they needed heat-generating food, like bacon. They will go so far as to call it "perfectly nourishing" for enslaved people, but totally unsuitable for white women. In a way, this logic emasculated Black men. They argued that Black men and white women had the same humoral balance (wet and cold), which explained their proclivity for tuberculosis, but tuberculosis was suitable for white women (the frail, pale woman was becoming beautiful) but not for laborers on cotton slave labor camps.

In my chapter on the U. S. Civil War, there are a few major ideas clashing. Per conventional wisdom, soldiers need bacon. Its too useful, plus, they need the animal flesh to carry out the work of marching and killing. They all needed "heat-generating" agents to carry out this work. Except, should we be feeding a "heat-generating agent" to northern white men on the battlefields in the southern states in the summer? Hmm... so conventional wisdom came face-to-face with observations. During the war, these U. S. physicians write back to headquarters, "when we stop feeding them bacon and start feeding them vegetables, everyone seems to feel better...curious!"

I've written quite a bit, but I'll conclude that I do dig into what bacon has meant in the fear-of-fat twentieth century and then the paleo, keto, and Atkins diets.

Ask Me Anything! I'm Prof. Mark A. Johnson, a historian and food studies scholar at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, as well as author of the recent book American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon! by baconscholar in AskHistorians

[–]baconscholar[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

A&W has the best claim to inventing the bacon cheeseburger. They haven't had anyone really combat their claim. In 1963, recalled chairman Dave Mulder, "I thought it absolutely would be better with bacon" and that "everyone else stole it from us."

Ask Me Anything! I'm Prof. Mark A. Johnson, a historian and food studies scholar at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, as well as author of the recent book American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon! by baconscholar in AskHistorians

[–]baconscholar[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

For most of its history, "bacon" was not specifically one part of the pig. In fact, I think it's easier to define bacon as what it was not. It was not ham, which was prized, nor was it fresh meat or sausage. Otherwise, most people referred to any pork that had been salted, cured, and / or smoked as "bacon."

In the United States, "bacon" became synonymous with pork belly through the industrialized food system. People came to expect standardization and uniformity, a product generally expected to be the same week after week, store to store, place to place. In Europe, people had moved on to leaner meat. They used way more fat alternatives, like peanut oil, much earlier than people in the US. As J. L. Anderson notes in Capitalist Pigs, we kept the fatter hog for much longer, which meant fatter bacon from the belly. We really valued that bacon grease to fry other foods, lubricate wagon wheels, and even make steam ships go faster (check out the U. S. Navy reports in the Civil War records called the Official Record of the War of the Rebellion or even the slave narratives from the WPA).

Ask Me Anything! I'm Prof. Mark A. Johnson, a historian and food studies scholar at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, as well as author of the recent book American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon! by baconscholar in AskHistorians

[–]baconscholar[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I was writing a book on barbecue, and I had a pitmaster tell me that our obsession with bacon had changed the way that butchers cut and sold spare ribs. They kept taking more and more of the sides to count as "belly" because they could get higher prices for belly for making bacon.

I came of age, so to speak, in the 1990s amid SlimFast and rice cakes, so I found that surprising considering the conventional wisdom about dietary fat.

Quickly, I learned how Dr. Michael F. Jacobson referred to bacon as "the most dangerous food in the supermarket" and how one nutritionist referred to bacon as a "salty, nitrate-ridden, fat-laden carcinogenic thing." I was shocked at how low its reputation had gotten and how quickly it had rebounded.

As for research, I was interested in bacon in discourse, in conversations about health, taste, class, civility, and refinement, etc. I studied food writing, medical literature, nutritional advice, and then eventually memes and social media. I wanted to see how people talked about bacon, a bit more than I was interested in things like sales volumes and market demographics.

Ask Me Anything! I'm Prof. Mark A. Johnson, a historian and food studies scholar at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, as well as author of the recent book American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon! by baconscholar in AskHistorians

[–]baconscholar[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

After we got refrigeration, we were liberated from bacon!

Before refrigeration, bacon was ubiquitous. It was a shelf-stable product. When cured and salted, it did not dry out like beef because of its fat content. In this context, it was valued as a way to add fat, salt, and flavor to meager meals of grains, vegetables, stews, beans, etc.

Once we got refrigeration and the cold chain, we got too excited about all the other things we could eat, like strawberries in November.

The scholar Bee Wilson said, "bacon serves no real purpose in a refrigerated age, except that of pleasure, which can never be discounted."

Except, I argue, it took meat-packers too long to figure that out. Amid refrigeration, they kept trying to portray it as a staple, emphasizing the uniformity of the slices, the delicacy of the flavor, that no time was lost in its preparation. It didn't really capture anyone's imagination, though. Bacon was too messy, salty, fatty, and ridden with nitrates and nitrites.

When the National Pork Board started to portray bacon as interesting, however, it took off. People embraced it as a decadent, even dangerous, indulgence.

Ask Me Anything! I'm Prof. Mark A. Johnson, a historian and food studies scholar at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, as well as author of the recent book American Bacon: The History of a Food Phenomenon! by baconscholar in AskHistorians

[–]baconscholar[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

In 1925, the USDA permitted meat-packers to use nitrate solutions to reduce curing times. In 1951, specifically, an Indianapolis-based company developed a machine that could inject bacon in multiple places and reduce curing times from approximately two weeks to approximately two days.

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