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from the Boston Globe
CULINARY BIOGRAPHIES IS FOOD FOR THOUGHT
By T. Susan Chang, GLOBE CORRESPONDENT
June 7, 2006 Page: C3 Section: Food
Food is what all of us have in common, and it's big business. Just ask the celebrity chefs who have become household names in the last decade. Just ask the Food Network. Or the book distributors who sell the nearly 2,000 new titles published every year. Yet those who study food often find themselves adrift in academia. Dedicated food studies departments are few (often falling under "cultural studies" or, on the science side, "nutrition") and the list of food reference books has been a yawning void until rather recently. For something that enjoys such mainstream popularity, food is, in fact, perhaps the least documented field of study.
So thought Alice Arndt, a Houston-based food historian. Dictionaries, "companions," and atlases have gradually appeared, but some five years ago Arndt began sounding a new battle cry: "We need a biographical dictionary!" In it, there would be a gathering-place for the heroes of food scattered through history the philosopher Epicurus, the doomed Vatel, the expansive Julia Child. All those vaguely familiar-sounding names you know you should be able to place, from Ray Kroc (McDonald's) and Irma Rombauer ("Joy of Cooking") to Mary Randolph ("The Virginia House-wife," 1824) would have their spot in the sun, too. Arndt went for an ambitious swath of luminaries, encompassing not just those who made food, but those who grew it, celebrated it, ate it, or wrote about it. These, she reasoned, were the figures who wove the true fabric of the history of the table. Like many biographical editors, she made the decision not to include living figures in the book, declaring that "you can't assess a career until it's over." That means no Martha Stewart or Emeril, Jamie Oliver, or Alice Waters, whose magnetic presences might have drawn in more readers even if their biographies remained incomplete.
On the other hand, included among the great culinary figures who have passed to the other side are some who were never here at all, like Betty Crocker, the corporate invention that launched a national brand.
While Arndt consulted with any number of experts (including local contributor Barbara Haber, former curator of books of Radcliffe's Schlesinger Library), she also had the luxury of acting as her own in-house editor. Yes Press, the book's publisher, was created by Arndt and her husband, Robert, an editor. "Culinary Biographies" is the new company's first publication. (The press will likely focus on cooking and reference.)
Like any editor of a major work, Arndt faced the heartbreak of having to stop and cut when space was limited, compounded by a publisher's pressures to stay within budget. Perhaps because of its independence, the book made it from manuscript to finished copies in an unheard-of three months.
The volume's initial print run is likely to sell out by fall, by which point Arndt will have to make some decisions: whether to issue a second edition, create an electronic database, expand the website (culinarybiographies.com) into a kind of digital hall of fame for culinary immortals, or some combination of all three.
Meanwhile, those able to secure a copy of "Culinary Biographies" will learn about Mrs. Beeton, the 19th century English cook who wrote "Book of Household Management"; Lydia Maria Child, another 19th century cook, this one living in Boston, who authored "The Frugal Housewife"; N.K. Fairbank, who invented Cottolene, the forerunner of Crisco; La Varenne, 17th century French author of "Le Cuisinier francois"; and Elena Ivanovna Molokhovets, mother of 10, whose "A Gift to Young Housewives," published in 1861, became Russia's most popular cookbook.
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