Product Description

More than a cookbook, this is the story of how a little girl, born in the South of Yankee parents, fell in love with southern cooking at the age of five. And a bite of brown sugar pie was all it took.

"I shamelessly wangled supper invitations from my playmates," Anderson admits. "But I was on a voyage of discovery, and back then iron-skillet corn bread seemed more exotic than my mom's Boston brown bread and yellow squash pudding more appealing than mashed parsnips."

After college up north, Anderson worked in rural North Carolina as an assistant home demonstration agent, scarfing good country cooking seven days a week: crispy "battered" chicken, salt-rising bread, wild persimmon pudding, Jerusalem artichoke pickles, Japanese fruitcake. Later, as a New York City magazine editor, then a freelancer, Anderson covered the South, interviewing cooks and chefs, sampling local specialties, and scribbling notebooks full of recipes.

Now, at long last, Anderson shares her lifelong exploration of the South's culinary heritage and not only introduces the characters she met en route but also those men and women who helped shape America's most distinctive regional cuisine—people like Thomas Jefferson, Mary Randolph, George Washington Carver, Eugenia Duke, and Colonel Harlan Sanders.

Anderson gives us the backstories on such beloved Southern brands as Pepsi-Cola, Jack Daniel's, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, MoonPies, Maxwell House coffee, White Lily flour, and Tabasco sauce. She builds a time line of important southern food firsts—from Ponce de León's reconnaissance in the "Island of Florida" (1513) to the reactivation of George Washington's still at Mount Vernon (2007). For those who don't know a Chincoteague from a chinquapin, she adds a glossary of southern food terms and in a handy address book lists the best sources for stone-ground grits, country ham, sweet sorghum, boiled peanuts, and other hard-to-find southern foods.

Recipes? There are two hundred classic and contemporary, plain and fancy, familiar and unfamiliar, many appearing here for the first time. Each recipe carries a headnote—to introduce the cook whence it came, occasionally to share snippets of lore or back-stairs gossip, and often to explain such colorful recipe names as Pine Bark Stew, Chicken Bog, and Surry County Sonker.

Add them all up and what have you got? One lip-smackin' southern feast!

A Love Affair with Southern Cooking is the winner of the 2008 James Beard Foundation Book Award, in the Americana category.

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Product Details

Publisher	William Morrow Cookbooks
ISBN	0060761784
Features	ISBN13: 9780060761783 Condition: New Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
Format	Hardcover
Author	Jean Anderson
EAN	9780060761783
Label	William Morrow Cookbooks
Dewey Decimal Number	641.5975
Studio	William Morrow Cookbooks
Number Of Pages	464
Title	A Love Affair with Southern Cooking: Recipes and Recollections
Release Date	2007-10-16
Publication Date	2007-10-16
Manufacturer	William Morrow Cookbooks

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Customer Reviews

A great cookbook!!!

Review by JOJO, 2010-07-27

I bought this for my husband who loves to cook, and he did enjoyed it very much.

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Great content but hard to read

Review by kuregal, 2010-05-26

Ordered two copies -- one for me, one for a friend. Am returning the one intended as a gift because the print is far too light and small. When using a cookbook, I like to place it upright in a cookbook holder and refer to it as I prepare the dish, but there's no way you could prepare one of these recipes without copying it onto something that could be read without a magnifying glass! I believe some of the type used is actually 7 point! Very disappointing because the content is outstanding.

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loved this book..

Review by J. Nitsch, 2009-11-10

I enjoyed the quirky recipes and stories. I read this straight through like a novel. This book is is not your traditional type of cook book. It contains many recipes that quite honestly, you would have to have grown up with to appreciate. She has offered some substitutions for health reasons, lard being all but outlawed now. This book contains some very old recipes that I had only heard of, but if you grew up in one of those homes that saved the bacon grease to cook with, this book is a keeper. A great cookbook on true southern recipes.

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True south

Review by midcarol1, 2009-09-11

This book has great southern recipes and anecdotes, especially for native Tar Heels. The author is from Raleigh, NC.
Great credentials and a great book to add to your collection.

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Great Primer on Southern Style...Cooking and Otherwise

Review by Barbara Maclellan, 2009-09-09

Got this lovely book from the library and read it ( yes read it) cover to cover, cooking all the while.

Before I had even finished it I was on Amazon ordering it. So much more than a cookbook - a history of the Southern approach to food and hospitality, the difference between Southern flour and Northern flour and the results of each, and the very best recipes. I buy a cook book about once every 15 to twenty years and this is surely the one for this decade. A return to real cooking - real kettle fried chicken, real fried green tomatoes and buttermilk all over the place. In the month I have owned "A Love Affair...." I have entertained family and friends and mostly my husband recovering from knee surgery with outstanding results.

The recipes are very clear and concise. There is a wonderful glossary for those who don't know what ramps are. Extraordinary book.

Read it for the stories, enjoy the recipes. Buy this book.

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