“It was the early 1960s, and the best-known names in home cooking—Fannie Farmer, Betty Crocker, Irma Rombauer, Dione Lucas—projected a warm and cozy domestic image that was the opposite of what she and David were after.” — Laura Shapiro Copy Share Image
“Julia’s attitude toward British food—that it was inedible, that it had little relevant history apart from being inedible, and that a more sensible population… — Laura Shapiro Copy Share
“Any morsel that wasn’t low-calorie was “sinful,” “naughty,” “gobble gobble gobble,” “heavy sinning,” or “a cruel but devastating lover.” Just” — Laura Shapiro Copy Share
“Tell me what you ate when you were a child, and whether the memory cheers you up or not.” — Laura Shapiro Copy Share
“These new friends had fought for suffrage, they had won, and now they were determined to use the vote to advance women’s interests. They… — Laura Shapiro Copy Share
“At Cornell she had discovered that domesticity had a brain; here, in the beloved, safe home that was entirely hers, she was learning that… — Laura Shapiro Copy Share
“I had erected someone outside myself who was the President’s wife. I was lost somewhere deep down inside myself. That is the way I… — Laura Shapiro Copy Share
“Hitler’s aide, used to see her sitting with Hitler in his study at night, wearing a dressing gown, having champagne while he drank tea.” — Laura Shapiro Copy Share
“To be a wife was to cook. Not to eat—that was a different matter entirely—but to cook.” — Laura Shapiro Copy Share
“But what struck me as I followed the paper trail through each life was that while extraordinary circumstances produce extraordinary women, food makes them… — Laura Shapiro Copy Share
“Her favorite place to watch human behavior was a restaurant, for there she could sit quietly in the background while people interacted with food.… — Laura Shapiro Copy Share
“Culinary historians looking back at the first decades of the twenty-first century will be blessed with vast quantities of material to study, thanks to… — Laura Shapiro Copy Share
“We’re meant to read the lives of important people as if they never bothered with breakfast, lunch, or dinner, or took a coffee break,… — Laura Shapiro Copy Share
“After all, academic reputations were at stake. Home cooking was associated with women, which was bad enough, and housework, which was fatal. Luckily” — Laura Shapiro Copy Share
“she quickly hired a housekeeper and a kitchen staff for the White House and then threw herself into what mattered far more to her—civil… — Laura Shapiro Copy Share
“Toward the end of February 1954, James Beard was at work in his Greenwich Village kitchen doing what he most loved to do: cooking… — Laura Shapiro Copy Share
