American Advertising Cookbooks

WBZ's Jordan Rich talks with Matt Robinson of matts-meals.com about a great book highlighting the history of American food: American Advertising Cookbooks: How Corporations Taught Us to Love Bananas, Spam, and Jell-O.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Greetings, and welcome to Connoisseur's Corner, where we talk about food, dining, restaurants,
and even cookbooks. Joining me today is Matt Robinson, the
food writer Matt's Meals mattsdash meals dot com, a cookbook
about cookbooks.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Matt, as our listeners know, I've been talking to a
lot of cookbook authors at my series at Boston Public
Market and elsewhere. I've introduced people like Wish disc founder
Janie Gruber and former Boston Herald Food credit Claire Silverstein.
And in doing the research, I came upon a really
interesting cookbook that's not just a cookbook, it's like a
cookbook about cookbooks. It's called American Advertising Cookbooks, and the

(00:35):
author is Christina Ward, who's also a former driver of
the famous Oscar Mayer wienermobile, so she definitely knows her
food and her corporate marketing, and that's kind of what
it's about. It's about the history of cookbooks that were
created by different food companies to promote their products. So
there's everything from jello to spam to doctor pepper. The
recipes are interesting, but you know they might inspire you

(00:59):
if of where those people has kind of the odds
and ends in your pantry and not sure what quite
what to do with them. It also talks about the
darker side of American consumerism, like the racist mascots like
Uncle Ben and on Jemima, the history of regional foods too.
So it's a really interesting compendium of information about food
and corporate marketing and you can find it at processmediainc
dot com. It's a fundread, would be a fun gift

(01:22):
check it out.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Definitely a novel idea. Thank you so much. Matt All,
part of Connoisur's Corner WZ Boston's news radio