The American Century Cookbook

Jean Anderson has been on a quest: to search out the most popular recipes of the 20th century and to chronicle 100 years of culinary change in America. The result is a rich and fascinating look at where we've been, at the recipes our mothers and grandmothers loved, and at how our own tastes have evolved.

Her painstakingly researched text includes extensive headnotes, thumbnail profiles of important people and products (from Fannie Farmer to James Beard and from electric refrigerators to the microwave), and a timeline of major 20th-century food firsts.

In recording popular recipes that might have been lost, setting them in richly detailed historical context, Jean Anderson has written her masterwork. The American Century Cookbook may well be the most important new cookbook of the decade; it is certainly the book America will love.