The Truth About Baked Beans is an interesting book. It isn't just about the foods of the US, but also the history of the United States. Generally the foods considered "American" aren't necessarily the typical foods eaten by the early settler of the United States. "American food" typically is more streamlined than those eaten by the immigrates who made the United States their home.

This title was fun and informative - a great look at the food of an area that I am from and that has a special place in my heart. I enjoyed reading about the food and why the region is how it is. Would highly recommend!

The title caught my attention- as not only am I from New England but baked beans were for Saturday supper! This book dives deep into the history of New England and incorporates food throughout the history. I enjoyed the depth at which the author dives into the food and history. A huge bonus for me was the recipes!! By illustrating history with the recipes from that time period, made me feel even closer to understanding our ancestors. I would highly recommend this book to history buffs, readers interested in cooking and anyone from New England.
Thank you NetGalley for an advanced copy.

**I received and voluntarily read an e-ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.**

I was excited to read about the "edible" history of New England. Spoiler alert- a lot of the dishes exist due to racism and classism. History (in this case a culinary history) is written by the victors, and so the dishes we associate with New England were born.

While there was some great information, unfortunately, this book was a little on the repetitive side for me. The book could have easily been shortened by a third. At times I'm pretty sure that I read the same thing in multiple different chapters.

I'm not sure if it's because of the author's style of writing or if it's because there was so much information in the book, but at times I found my mind wandering away from the words in front of me.

Overall, it's a nice book, but one I would recommend only to those who love history and/or food.

I am a bit behind in putting together my book reviews but that should in no way be taken as a knock against this book. It just means that I may be a bit lazy and that nothing beats reading. The Truth About Baked Beans written by Met Muckenhoupt is one of those books which is about so much more than what the title states. It also is one in which the reader feels compelled to read aloud many passages whether or not there is another human in the room or e enjoy the house. Fortunately, the dog and often the car but always the dog enjoy being read to regardless of subject or if they have been listening to previous chapters.

The Truth About Baked Beans is really the truth about New England. Our history, our re!relationship with food, each other, the resources we found here and those we brought with us, our terrain, our oceans, our environment and how we take care of it or don't. It seems we don't take very good care with the fish in our streams, bays, etc. and that is why so many of the fish we eat may not be around much longer. That certainly worries me as I am very fond of eating fish for one and also, more importantly, the idea that certain fishes are so overfished they become extinct is disturbing. That my future grandchildren may never have a chance to see let alone eat a particular fish due to mismanagement is disturbing.

I enjoyed seeing what we really eat here in New England. Great idea to break it down by national origin, it is good to see what our ancestors contributed and how they lived. We are looking forward to trying the recipes in the book and wish there were more. Maybe (hint, hint) the author will put a cookbook together - that would be an instant hit!

There are little facts spread out throughout this book. I was especially struck by the origin story of the craisin! I'm partly miffed because we all thought they were the entire fruit like it's inspiration, the raisin but I do admire that Yankee thrift and ingenuity!

If you or someone you know is interested in food history, New England, or history in general, The Truth About Baked Beans may well prove to be a winner. Give it try but don't blame me if your family and friends get tired of your reading out facts to them, it's just a side effect from reading a very I interesting and shareable book!

Sometimes food history can be dry as toast, but not this book that looks at what New Englanders have traditionally eaten. It’s a social history of food and not just that of the Pilgrims. Muckenhoupt looks at the Native Americans and other immigrants who came to this part of the US. Included are some recipes which were adapted for the modern kitchen. You might be surprised at what was really served at the first Thanksgiving and the importance of Fannie Farmer in 1896 when she standardized recipes.

Really enjoyed this unique perspective on New England's history and culture through the perspective of its food. This book tackles how authentic our regional culinary stereotypes are and reveals how they came to be. Lots of fun facts and figures. Also contains recipes!

This was a well-researched and interesting book, with enough humour to keep it from being too dry. It's best to pace yourself rather than try to read it all in a couple of sittings. While I didn't try any of the recipes yet, they seemed representative of the rest of the book's content.

This is such a delightful book, I totally enjoyed it. Anyone who is interested in food history would find it very interesting, and notice how truly it rings. I should probably admit at this point that I am the daughter of a home economics teacher who was a member of the AHEA (American Home Economics Association). I also had two years of Home Ec in junior high school. I took as a matter of faith that everything written in cookbooks was the unvarnished truth; that the Pilgrims and their descendants ate sweetened baked beans for their Sunday dinners, for example, and that bland, if sometimes very tasty, foods promoted by Ye Olde New England cookbooks were the authentic foodways of New England.

I should have known better. I lived in Rhode Island after all, and could see the evidence all around me that immigrants had brought their native cuisines with them, and that those cuisines had taken root in the New World. But what was posited as the Yankee way of cooking still held sway in my imagination, and in the lessons I learned in Home Ec. Meg Muckenhoupt blows all of the myths about New England cooking to hell, and she does it in such an interesting way that the reader is charmed.

I am not going to recount all of the fascinating discussions in the book – you can read them for yourself (and you should). One that particularly struck me, however, is the role of Fanny Farmer and the Boston Cooking-School Cook Book of 1896. Fanny Farmer standardized recipes so that anyone who read the cookbook would be able to reproduce food which they had never seen. Today we take the standardization of recipes as a given, so it never occurred to me, as Muckenhoupt points out with the benefits of standardization came the diminution of the cook’s creativity. Not everyone follows recipes of course, my grandmother didn’t and she was the best cook (I am being objective here). Most of us do follow them, of course, but are we the better for it? Read this book and find out!

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC. The opinions are my own.

Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in return for an honest review.

This is an incredibly detailed and well-researched exploration into the history behind some of New England’s most famous foods, not just baked beans. Starting with the classic New England food, baked beans, the author searches for the answer to when did Bostonians start making Boston baked beans? Did the dish really come about as a Pilgrim adaptation of the Native American way of preparing beans with maple syrup and bear fat? The author then moves on to the myths and truths surrounding other of New England’s iconic foods such as brown bread, clams, cod, lobster, maple syrup, pies and Yankee boiled dinner.

If you love the history of food, this is definitely the book for you. It is packed with details on the roots of the region, from the Pilgrims to 20th century immigrants, and the mark all these diverse groups left on the region’s food.

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This book is way too dense to be enjoyable for me. I also didn't appreciate or find appropriate the political angle about how awful white people are. I didn't finish the book, which is disappointing because I was really looking forward to learning the history of food in New England!

Thank you to Net Galley and NYU press for the chance to review The truth About Baked Beans by Meg Muckenhoupt

There is a scene in Disney’s Darby O’Gill and the little people, where The daughter tells her father to eat his “stir about”. I've always wondered what the heck that was. I was assuming it was something with potatoes, since they were in Ireland. Well, I now know courtesy of Meg Muckenhoupt.

This is a book about the foodways of New England. And how they created such an unnatural regional menu, harking back to some nonexistent golden age. It's detailed and engaging. She explores the mythology of food culture in such a way to lock you in immediately.

There are first person accounts of what people actually ate. Muckenhoupt details the immigrants and their foodways that were tossed aside for some imaginary idyllic menu of the region. She did such a wonderful job showing the different populations as they came in. You really get a view of what the landscape looked like. She describes in detail the waves of immigrants and their influences. For example, What it was like to work as an Irish woman, or whatever culture she was describing in each section. You get a feel for what kind of jobs they would have had as well as what they might have eaten and the cultural baggage surrounding them at the time and in turn the menu that they would have really eaten versus what was imagined they should have been eating. Its really a lesson in how xenophobic people were.

She also delves into the cooking technologies chronologically and foods as they were introduced, which I found fascinating. For example the rising agents used in baking.

I really loved this book.I thought it was written so well. There are historically accurate recipes in here as well. I was introduced to things I've never heard of before, like a boiled New England dinner and of course things I've heard, but never knew what they were, like “stir about”.

The Truth about Baked Beans is a fascinating miscellany history of the culinary traditions and roots of New England and the people who live there. Due out 25th Aug 2020 from the NYU Press, it's 352 pages (in hardcover) and will be available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats.

It has an accessible and engaging narrative. The author starts by examining the origins of the iconic Yankee staple: Boston brown bread and baked beans. I had grown up never once questioning the story that it was handed down from "Indian" cooks. The author makes a compelling argument for a much later origin in the 19th century coinciding with a strong drop in local sugar prices (and a wish to market the area's cultural and tourist attractions to an upwardly mobile traveling middle class).

There are some historically period recipes reproduced here for things varied (and delicious sounding). Recipes for fried dough, plum cake, pierogis, greek pizza and more add some interest and will be fun to reproduce and try, but by far the emphasis is on the history behind the development and blending of the cultures which make up New England.

The book is meticulously annotated throughout. The author has cited both period and modern scholarly research to support the narrative. There are numerous chapter notes, and an index (to come in the release version). The chapter notes alone will keep keen readers reading for ages.

The author has a casual academic style of writing; accessible and careful, with proper annotation, but not overly convoluted or impenetrably difficult to read. She manages to convey a wealth of information without being pedantic or preachy. I really enjoyed reading this historical catalogue of how closely food is intertwined with place, with social development and expansion, and with the people who live in New England.

This would be a great choice for libraries, local historians, food historians, period reproduction cooks, Bed & Breakfast/hospitality, or for fans of New England cuisine.

Five stars. It's abundantly clear that the author has poured prodigious effort and careful academic research into this tome. I can't imagine there's much left unanswered about New England's culinary traditions. I feel much enlightened anyhow.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

If the history of food is something you enjoy this book is for you. It traces a variety of foods rooted in the eastern US- I learned a lot.

The Truth About Baked Beans is an incredibly detailed and well-researched book on the history of food in New England and the people who ate it. Here we take a look behind the "traditional" New England foods, from maple syrup and lobster to cod and baked beans, and discover what New Englanders have actually been eating throughout history.

It will probably not come as a surprise to discover that the "traditional" New Englander and their dinners were invented in the late 1800s. Times were changing, people were moving to cities, immigrants were moving to the United States, and a few Victorians began to think that life must have been better back in the day. Their racism, classism, and outright xenophobia erased the Irish, Italian, Polish, Greek, and other European and African immigrants and slaves from the region, replaced them with a few helpful Native Americans who showed the Pilgrims how to plant corn before conveniently disappearing into the mists, and behold! The "traditional" New Englander and his food was born. This attitude blended with the new scientific approach of the late 1800s-early 1900s where a few "experts" worked hard to convince poor people that what they were eating wasn't healthy and that they could eat better and cheaper with plain, boiled, tasteless meals that required hours of cooking and no vegetables.

The book is a social, environmental, and cultural history of New England since the 1600s. It tries to answer questions about what people were living in the region, what they were eating, what they had access to, and how attitudes towards different foods changed over time. However, I didn't find myself as interested in this book as I expected to be. Possibly this was because there was so much research that, despite Muckenhoupt's humor throughout the book, it ended up reading more like a scholarly work than a light food history read. There was also a lot of repetition, some due to how the book was structured, and the combination made it a much more difficult book to get through than I expected. The pacing dragged and I had a hard time staying interested for long periods of time. Overall, this is an interesting book, but maybe more for intense thesis scholars than the rest of us.


I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review

The importance of food in the history of any civilization cannot be overemphasized. The history and foodways of a people will always provide the reader with a deeper knowledge of and greater appreciation for those being studied. In this volume, the author does a wonderful job of connecting the people, their history, and their foods.

While the title refers to the baked beans that are more commonly associated with New England, additional foods are examined as well as the ethnic groups connected with those foods. In the process, the author dispels commonly-held but erroneous beliefs linked to so-called traditional New England foods. By doing this, a more accurate past is opened up to provide a clearer understanding of this region as it separates facts from myths.

This book is excellent for the reader interested in history (culinary or American), foodways, or cultural studies—whether student, layperson, or professional.

I voluntarily reviewed an Advanced Reader Copy of this book provided by the publisher and Net Galley. However, the thoughts expressed are totally my own

What a pleasant surprise! I enjoyed reading this book. I thought it might just be a history of baked beans. Turns out it's a recipe book! Filled with anecdotal stories about various new England foods. Foodies will love this book, as well as might New Englanders. This book covers vegetables of many sorts and fishing industry's offerings. Fun filled historical look at the foods of New England, early settlers and Native Americans. The recipes sound wonderful!

The history of food has interested me for a long time. I wrote a paper at Temple University on the roots of American cooking, how the first Europeans adapted their traditions to the foods available in the New World.

Meg Muckenhoupt's The Truth About Baked Beans: An Edible History of New England caught my eye a looked like a fun read. I expected it to cover regional and social history and regional foods and cooking.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the author goes further--considering the wide variety of immigrants whose contributions to American cooking have been overlooked and eclipsed.

The first European settlers did not have sweeteners available. They imported honey bees! Later, maple syrup and molasses were added to the kitchen basics, and plain recipes using cornmeal and baked beans became sweetened--and sweetened!

Corn, squash, and beans are considered essential New England foods...and they all came from Central America.

Mythic idealizations of historical New England cooking arose during the Centennial and 'scientific' movements promoted non-ethnic foods in favor of white, bland foods.

Readers learn of the real first Thanksgiving foods and how the traditional eating holiday developed over time. And, finally, settled the question of what are 'real' New England foods; would you believe it includes Marshmallow Fluff and Whoopie Pies?

The book includes recipes for those mentioned in the book, including historic, updated, regional favorites, and restaurant favorites.

I found the book to be as enjoyable to read as I had hoped.

I was given a free egalley by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

This is an incredibly thorough look at the myths about what people traditionally ate in New England and how those myths were created (spoiler-- mostly racism, xenophobia and classism). I was particularly fascinated by the ridiculous period ideas by "experts" of the 1800's like advice to avoid vegetables since they were not healthy and were just for flavor and cookbooks by folks like Fannie Farmer who replaced the food that immigrants were cooking with bland white food and complicated instructions. It shatters just about every culinary identity of the region and does a deep dive into what people were really eating. A small historical recipe section is especially fun.

The author does repeat herself and the subject matter fairly often, and I had the feeling more than once that it could have been a much shorter book without sacrificing information if it were arranged a little better. In several areas, I actually thought there was a mistake in my ARC and that I was reading the same material I'd already read, but it turned out that it was just the same material from a different slant.

While I've lived in New England (I've lived just about everywhere in the U.S.) and I love cooking and history, I wasn't ultimately as interested in the subject as I thought after a while and found my attention wandering. It's fascinating history, but it's a lot of it.

Those who love the region and its history will devour this book (pun slightly intended).

I read an ARC of this book for review.

*This book was received from NetGalley as an advanced readers copy.

Muckenhoupt is right when she lists out all the foodstuffs I associate with New England; baked beans, lobster, cranberries. Except, maybe those aren't the foodstuffs that are regularly eaten there, in history, or now.

The Truth about Baked Beans cover the social history of New England food. Not just describing the roots of the food, but the communities and culture that made it. Which starts with defining, who precisely were New Englanders? They're not just the Caucasian pilgrims who had that first Thanksgiving feast (and even that feast wasn't probably what we think it was), but the Native Americans, immigrants, slaves, and other people who called New England their home throughout history. From there, it goes into specific foodstuffs themselves and the history behind them. Where they were served, why they were served, who was actually eating them. And in the middle of the whole book, adapted recipes were provided.

I always love reading about food history. That being said, some books have a tendency to get a bit dry even though it's over a fascinating subject. This book, unfortunately, fell prey to that a bit. The author is a good writer, and definitely has some wit judging by the comments thrown in here and there, but sometimes it felt like the book was meandering. Or repeating; there were several times I'd get to a section and think, "didn't I just read this?" Only to go back and re-read and discover there were differences in sentence construction, but the subject matter was repeated. But past that slower pace of the book, it was still full of cited, good information (there are numerous citations in the back, research was extensively done for this book).

This was well written and well researched. I think it might be a little much for someone looking for a light food history read, but if you're immersed in the subject and voraciously devouring anything about food and the social history around food, I don't think this is a book to be missed. A solid 3.5 stars from me.

Review by M. Reynard 2020