The 1920s sees home electrification and small electric motors, radio and flappers, automobiles and road building, Prohibition and the Red Scare, Modernism and Art Deco.
The 1920s witness a rapid increase in the use of power appliances in the home, primarily by fractional horse-power electric motors. For the most part, these motors power washing machines, sewing machines, vacuum cleaners. Estimates claim that, at the beginning to the 1920s decade, the number of people living in homes with electricity increased from about 35 million to around 85 million at the end, or from 33 to 70 per cent of the total population.
The 1950s sees do-it-yourself homes and the two-car garage, TV and pop culture, the GI Bill and education, the interstate highway system and 18-wheeler tractor-trailers, anti-communism and the Cold War.
Both decades followed the economic and social changes and industrial innovation generated by a major war, WW I and WW II. The two decades, were, each in their own right, periods of rapid social, economic, industrial change.
Parallel Nature of Cookbooks and Woodworker's Manuals
For the Woodworker, woodworker's manuals, in their function in the amateur woodworker's shop, are virtually identical to that role served by cookbooks in the housewife's kitchen.
In both cases, these respective operations are almost always conducted in a home setting. Since, though, eating is something done by every human, cooking occurs on a larger scale than amateur woodworking. In ? it was estimated that -- out of a total of ? households -- one million households in America were woodworking homes. both cookbooks and woodworker's manuals have a strong prescriptive theme, prescriptive meaning that authors "prescribed" to readers how cooking procedures were conducted.
Cookbooks, perhaps to a greater extent, even, than woodworker's manuals, have been tools used by individuals responsible for designing and maintaining kitchens, pantries, dining areas, for acquiring cooking appliances and utensils, for acquiring raw food, for composing meals, and for creating individual dishes, (Since all my life I have been simply an onlooker in such operations, I have probably not included essential ingredients -- pun intended -- in this conceptualization. By examining cookbooks decade-by-decade, cultural historians definitely could begin to visualize the impact of technological advances and such matters as dietary changes impacted given populations.
For this analogy between cookbooks and woodworker's manuals, the model cookbooks, I have in mind are Fannie Farmer 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book and Irma S. Rombauer's Joy of Cooking.
Considered the one of the greatest of American cookbooks, Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book is acclaimed for a number of its innovations. It is the first to use measurement, now considered standard in American cooking, for example, a level cupful, teaspoonful and tablespoonful.
As well as giving reader's simple directions, Farmer shows a hitherto neglected concern for nutrition. Novices and experienced cooks contemporary to the period were introduced to a large amount of information, from instructions for building a fire to how to bone a bird. By 1947, when it is a half century old, two and one half million copies are sold.
The most popular cookbook in the United States, Joy of Cooking, is first published in 1931, but if you look at this edition, and compare it with later ones, right away you recognize how, after the 1931 edition, Rombauer's vision takes a radical shift of what information a cookbook should have and what organization it needs. Rombauer (1877-1962) simplifies many recipes for American kitchens and modernizes recipes for changing tastes.
Since 1931, almost 10 million copies have sold, and it has never been out of print. Updated numerous times, edition-by-edition, new editions reflect the changes and innovations in both technology and dietary practices in the American kitchen.
Not surprisingly, cookbooks in the 20th-century mirror the history of middle-class life. With their roots firmly in the "scientific" cookery tradition of the 19th-century, modern cookbooks reflect both the widespread move away from the hired cooks and servants in the middleclass home and, after about 1920, the changes in kitchen technology and food processing.
For social historian, Ruth Schwartz Cowan, the 1920s constitutes the "industrial revolution in the home":
kitchens are as much a locus for industrialized work as factories and coal mines are, and washing machines and microwave ovens are as much a product of industrialization as are automobiles and pocket calculators. A woman who is placing a frozen prepared dinner into a microwave oven is involved in a work process that is as different from her grandmother's methods of cooking as building a carriage from scratch differs from turning bolts on an automobile assembly line; an electric range is as different from a hearth as a pneumatic drill is from a pick and shovel...
(See her "Industrial Revolution in the Home: Household Technology and Social Change in the 20th Century,” Technology and Culture 17, No. 1 January, 1976, pages 1-23. )
In my narrative sections on the 1920s, I will show that the revolution in the home is also reflected in the amateur woodworker's shop. Electrification, which begins in the mid 'teens, is widespread in urban centers by the 1920s, and begins to penetrate into rural areas by the 1930s. Most important for a "revolution" in woodworking, fractional horse-power induction motors furnish the "on-the-spot" power that scaled-down woodworker's machines need. At the close of the 1920s -- with manufacturers like JD Wallace, Delta, Boice-Crane, Walker-Turner -- many small-scale power machines circular saws, jointers, lathes, combination machines, where on the market for consumers.
On another matter, the growth of interest in home workshops: To sustain enrollment in industrial arts classes -- enrollment declines because, with mass production of furniture, the old apprenticeship system is collapsing -- Industrial Arts teachers create the "home workshop movement".
The Evolution and Impact of Cookbooks
Naturally, the cookbook industry—and, in the context of a growing emigrant population, the ideas emerging about domesticity and gender— follow the rise of consumerism and a newly energized domestic ideology aimed at middle-class homemakers.
General cookbooks in the 1920s and 1930s increasingly represent cooking as an artistic outlet for dutiful middle-class housewives. Authors seek to redefine cooking as an important and pleasurable part of the modern woman's domestic duties—a signal feature of white middle-class womanhood. Even while social and technological changes dramatically alter the middle-class American home, cookbooks bear evidence of how many Americans continue to believe that a woman's primary responsibility is her home.Parallel Nature of Cookbooks and Woodworker's Manuals
For the Woodworker, woodworker's manuals, in their function in the amateur woodworker's shop, are virtually identical to that role served by cookbooks in the housewife's kitchen.
In both cases, these respective operations are almost always conducted in a home setting. Since, though, eating is something done by every human, cooking occurs on a larger scale than amateur woodworking. In [ date ? ] it was estimated that -- out of a total of [total number? ] households -- one million households in America were woodworking homes.
(The question marks in the preceding sentence are both a sense of puzzlement and irritation. While collected and dutifully published by woodworking magazines, never is the data backed up by documentation, as if the these numbers simply appeared magically. I'll keep looking, though.)
'Prescriptive' Nature of Cookbooks and Woodworker's Manuals
Both cookbooks and woodworker's manuals have a strong prescriptive theme, prescriptive meaning that authors "prescribed" to readers how cooking procedures are conducted. For beginners of both cooking and woodworking, it should be obvious why these "prescriptions" -- without detailed instructions, beginners would be "sunk", so to speak, to put it in colloquial terms -- are necessary. As "prescriptive" texts for virtually illiterate first-generation immigrant Americans seeking guidance for both "how to cook" and "learning table manners", the Fanny Farmer Cookbook -- details below -- was published late in the 19th century. A similar equation befell woodworking. With the virtual collapse of the system of apprenticeship as a means of learning the woodworking trade -- see details here -- a method of guiding beginning woodworkers through the step-by-step procedures required to dimension wood and fashion it into finished productswas desperately needed. This need was initially provided in Boston in the 1880s with the famous Woodworking Tools: How to Use Them
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Cultural Role of Cookbooks
"[C]ookbooks are as much about reading and fantasizing and experiencing how other people do things in the kitchen as they about cooking per se."
Source: Daisy Maryles and Dick Donahue, "Who's Minding the Stove?" Publishers' Weekly, July 26, 1999, page 36, as cited by Jessamyn Neuhaus, page 280.
In the preceding sentence, instead of a cookbook, to shift from cooking to woodworking, think of woodworker's manual, change a few words, and -- in my opinion, anyway -- you have a viable concept of a wannabe amateur woodworker, dreaming about what to produce in the woodshop.
Cookbooks, perhaps to a greater extent, even, than woodworker's manuals, have been tools used by individuals responsible for designing and maintaining kitchens, pantries, dining areas, for acquiring cooking appliances and utensils, for acquiring raw food, for composing meals, and for creating individual dishes, (Since all my life I have been simply an onlooker in such operations, I have probably not included essential ingredients -- pun intended -- in this conceptualization. By examining cookbooks decade-by-decade, cultural historians definitely could begin to visualize the impact of technological advances and such matters as dietary changes impacted given populations.
For this analogy between cookbooks and woodworker's manuals, the model cookbooks, I have in mind are Fannie Farmer 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book and Irma S. Rombauer's Joy of Cooking.
Considered the one of the greatest of American cookbooks, Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book was acclaimed for a number of innovations. It was the first to use measurement, now considered standard in American cooking, for example, a level cupful, teaspoonful and tablespoonful. As well as giving reader's simple directions, Farmer showed a hitherto neglected concern for nutrition. Novices and experienced cooks contemporary to the period were introduced to a large amount of information, from instructions for building a fire to how to bone a bird. By 1947, when it was a half century old, it had sold two and one half million copies.
The most popular cookbook in the United States, Joy of Cooking, was first published in 1931. Rombauer (1877-1962) simplified many recipes for American kitchens and modernized recipes for changing tastes. Since it first appeared in 1931, almost 10 million copies have sold, and it has never been out of print. It has been updated numerous times, and each new edition is designed to reflect the changes and innovations in both technology and dietary practices in the American kitchen.
(For more on the cultural impact of Rombauer's Joy of Cooking, checkout this 20-page, online paper by Elaine Cheong, a third-year student at the University of Maryland, 2000. Entitling her paper, "Cooking with Politics, Economics, Science and Technology: Book History and the Joy of Cooking, and citing over twenty sources of information, she covers such topics as "overview and editions", prohibition, great Depression, World War II, Global economy, science and food, technology and the kitchen.)
Not surprisingly, cookbooks in the twentieth century mirror the history of middle-class life. With their roots firmly in the "scientific" cookery tradition of the nineteenth century, modern cookbooks reflect both the wide-spread move away from the hired cooks and servants in the middle-class home and, after about 1920, the changes in kitchen technology and food processing.
For social historian, Ruth Schwartz Cowan, the 1920s constitutes the "industrial revolution in the home":
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(In my narrative sections on the 1920s, I show that the revolution in the home was also reflected in the amateur woodworker's shop. Electrification, begun in the mid 'teens, was widespread in urban centers by the 1920s, and had begun to penetrate into rural areas by the 1930s.
Most important for a "revolution" in woodworking fractional horse-power induction motors furnished the "on-the-spot" power that scaled-down woodworker's machines needed.
At the close of the 1920s -- with manufacturers like J D Wallace, Delta, Boice-Crane, Walker-Turner -- many small scale power machines circular saws, jointers, lathes, combination machines, where on the market for consumers.
On another matter, the growth of interest in home workshops: To sustain enrollment in industrial arts classes -- enrollment was declining because, with mass production of furniture, the old apprenticeship system was collapsing -- Industrial Arts teachers created the "home workshop movement". )
The Evolution and Impact of Cookbooks
Naturally, the cookbook industry?and, in the context of a growing emigrant population, the ideas emerging about domesticity and gender? followed the rise of consumerism and a newly energized domestic ideology aimed at middle-class homemakers. General cookbooks in the 1920s and 1930s increasingly represented cooking as an artistic outlet for dutiful middle-class housewives. Authors sought to redefine cooking as an important and pleasurable part of the modern woman's domestic duties, a signal feature of white middle-class womanhood. Even while social and technological changes dramatically altered the middle-class American home, cookbooks bore evidence of how many Americans continued to believe that a woman's primary responsibility should be her home.
Cookbooks echoed a national debate about women's social roles in general and represented particular kinds of food and cooking as gendered. They helped to reinforce the notion that women had inherently domestic natures.
Source: Jessamyn Neuhaus. Manly Meals and Mom's Home Cooking: Cookbooks and Gender in Modern America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003, page 2.)
Cultural Role of Woodworker's Manuals
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