Manly Meals and Mom’s Home Cooking Summary and Analysis

Neuhaus, Jessamyn. Manly Meals and Mom's Home Cooking: Cookbooks and Gender in Modern America. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003. 1-4. Print.

Manly Meals and Mom’s Home Cooking

Cookbooks and Gender in Modern America

Summary:

The introduction to Neuhaus’s book is appropriately titled “The Purpose of a Cookery Book” and goes on to explain how cookbooks vary in their content and purpose. The two types of cookbooks mentioned were community cookbooks and commercial. Community cookbooks typically included recipes that women and sometimes men have actually tried to make, while commercial cookbooks were geared more toward making a profit. These cookbooks not only contain recipes that would tell the reader what the food thought processes of a certain era were, but also included ways to improve life in general; how to shop, how to lose weight, how to feed your children for example. Neuhaus adds that cookbooks have also played a role in perpetuating the idea of women belonging in the kitchen, which led to it being seen as the norm. Cooking, which took time and energy as well as all the shopping and cleanup, was phrased so that it seemed more like an opportunity than a repetitive required task. Even as society changed and women took a more active role outside of the home, the idea of the dutiful wife’s rightful place at home and in charge of the meals has not changed. Cookbooks could also tell a lot about society as they were often a “reflection of publishing policies, advertising needs, and popular demand in a particular era.” Due to the gender-linked suggestive tone trend many cookbooks have followed, even as women advance in society, mom’s home cooking is an ideal that will continue to endure.

Analysis:

As expected from the second part of the title “Cookbooks and Gender in Modern America,” the introduction repetitively reminds the reader that there is this link between women and cooking and the expectations that go with it. The author states that cookbooks give other valuable information in addition to the recipes, but that they also imply that it is a women’s rightful duty to do these things and thus helping to create this idea as the norm. Neuhaus does not write about the specific content found in cookbooks, but puts more emphasis on the general ideas they presented and how cookbooks were interpreted in terms of cooking and gender expectations.