A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove: A History of American Women Told Through Food, Recipes, and Remembrances. By Laura Schenone. W. W. Norton, 2003.
A slice of warm, comforting lasagna, with its depth of melded flavors and link to tradition, is the perfect visualization for Laura Schenone’s A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove. This book explores American women’s connection to and impact on food from ancient times to the current day throughout ten distinct chapters. To tie it all together, Schenone layers in historical references, recollections, examples, and real recipes.
The author’s premise for the text is two-fold. First, “…food – that centerpiece of women’s work – is essential to life itself, biologically, culturally, and for many people, spiritually.†(xii) Second, “When we sit at their tables, look at their recipes, and consider how they cooked, we get a chance to ask larger questions about who American women were, how they felt about their lives, and what their place has been in society.†(xv) Essentially, by reviewing the agriculture, preparation, production, and service of food, we gain greater insights into what it means to be a woman and why the gender seems innately drawn to the kitchen.
The introduction focuses on the earliest evidence of women cooking. Anthropologists say that this started because of practicality over 1,000 years ago! The Bible indicates that our culinary gender roles began with Adam and Eve. And the evolutionary biologist believes that woman’s place in the kitchen was determined by biological code. No matter who she was or why she fed her family, the bottom line is she cooked.
Over the course of time, food has been a part of the fluctuating social position of women. The author spends the chapters recapping these variances in the context of major events and everyday occurrences. The original American woman, dubbed All Woman, took many forms in the ancient times. Goddesses, sacred Mothers, and holy spirits were honored for their ability to show and teach laywomen to feed the masses.
Within Native American communities, women were empowered and regarded. These women were the farmers and gatherers who were wise enough to sustain their families. With the settlers, women were inferior to their husbands. Making a home with proper, traditional meals in the new land was expected, no matter the mortal costs and hardships.
Female slaves garnered minimal position as cooks in the Big House by exposing their masters to the food they knew how to cook. After a slave’s long day in the kitchen, she was expected to return to the quarters to prepare a meal (out of what little they had) for her family. For immigrant women, selling the foods of their homeland alongside their husbands gave them “their first foothold in the American economy.†(224) During the wars, women were the new workforce who pulled double duty trying to maintain a somewhat traditional life, so cooking had to be wholesome and quick.
Women were seen as the “Guardians of the diet and the soul.†This was the first time food was seen as a medium for personal achievement, virtuosity, and social activism. By influencing what went into their stomachs, women could help foster and improve humanity.
Home economics made cooking more of a scientific act and seconded that domesticity was a powerful component in a successful home and social life. Women like Lydia Maria Child and Fannie Merritt Farmer were pioneers who shaped the American housewife’s meals and duties.
Although Schenone doesn’t directly discuss the subject, the fact that women were an integral part of the development of American cuisine resonates. From the fire pit to hearth to the stove, women have been taking items from the earth and transforming them into nourishment. The cultivation and exportation of crops like potatoes, tomatoes, groundnuts (peanuts), and chiles not only shaped American cuisine, but global food too. Their integration and acceptance of technology changed foodways, largely for the better by making tasks easier, more convenient, and, oftentimes, safer.
These women experimented with new ingredients, preparation methods, and combinations. More times than not, the experimentation came from necessity, but it resulted in regional cuisines like Cajun Creole and ethnic adaptations such as Chop Suey. More than that adaptation in cooking was the opportunity to create familiarity; it was a woman’s way to connect the past and the present.
Critics who reviewed this 2003 work were sweepingly satisfied with what was served up. Ron Kaplan of January said it is a “Lively, loving tribute to the female culinary experience… and “…A millennium’s-worth of history, social commentary, anecdotes, and recipes in one literary stewpot…Entertaining and informative.†(Booklist) Furthermore, the book was selected for a prestigious James Beard Foundation Award. I have to agree with their praises as this book takes a potentially monotonous subject of history and expertly seasons it to create an enjoyable and seemingly accurate read.
The overarching theme is that no matter the physical location, available ingredients, or social conditions, Woman cooks because it is her societal fate. She cooks because it is her religious fate. She cooks because it is her evolutionary and biological fate. In all cases, some higher power – be it the needs of clan, the edicts of God, or the imperatives of biology – hands over the job. In short, women cooked because they had to, because someone told them to – because they had no choice†(xxvi)
Laura Schenone whisks the reader through a thousand years of culinary adventure and development. Her detailed research satisfies the hunger of knowing why a woman’s “place†was and still is in the kitchen. I encourage any foodie or cultural historian to indulge in A Thousand Years Over a Hot Stove.
(Jessica Pope wrote this review for Development of American Cuisine course during fall semester.)
