Buying, Not Cooking
R eady-to-eat F ood in A merican U rban W orking-class N eighborhoods , 1880–1930
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12800247 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Katherine Leonard Turner (University of Delaware, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2006 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 13-39 |
| Publication date | 2006-03-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Food Culture & Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1552-8014 • E-ISSN: 1751-7443 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.2752/155280106778055127 |
| OpenAlex | W951823043 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
Working-class Americans living in New York, Pittsburgh, Chicago and other industrial cities had ample opportunities to buy ready-cooked food around the turn of the twentieth century. Bakeries, saloons, lunchrooms, delicatessens, and pushcarts all offered ready-to-eat meals and snacks at prices workers could afford. Workers had many reasons for choosing ready-cooked food. Among other considerations, fuel for cooking was expensive, good stoves were rare and a worker's time could be better spent earning wages than producing cooked food at home. I argue that workers' adoption of cooked food signaled a fundamental step in the peculiar industrialization of the kitchen. The changes in cooking that occurred during industrialization are not only due to the growth of national food-processing industries with mass-advertised products, as some have argued. In fact, worker's cooking and eating habits show that the critical changes began with local sources of ready-cooked food in urban neighborhoods
Agricultural economics · Business · Convenience food · Cooking methods · Economics · Food preparation · Food processing · French fries · Industrialisation · Market economy · Stove · American History and Culture · Architecture, Design, and Social History · Chemistry · Culinary Culture and Tourism · Engineering · Food Science · Marketing
| Citations per year | 0.27 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2011 - 2026 (16) |
| Highly cited | No |