golden age of cooking, The

Policy Review, Oct/Nov 1999 by Schnetzer, Amanda Watson

What draws my senses to things culinary, though, is not just these miscellaneous pursuits. I am lured to food by the remembrances of hearth and home that simple jewels like sweet summer fruits, a buttery fried egg, a bouquet of herbs, and a bit of bread and wine can evoke. In my mind's eye I see grandmother in the kitchen baking juicy rhubarb and raspberry cobblers and jarring sweet "bread and butter" pickles. I can feel my grandfather's large hand gently pushing mine under a chicken in search of the day's freshest eggs. There is also the smell of sassafras, or file as we call it in Louisiana, that takes me home on a Saturday afternoon. While a pot of shrimp creole steams on the stove, my father is mixing it up in the kitchen, dancing a waltz or two with my mother. The gentle bubbling of the pot keeps time. As for the bread and wine, they are the eternal foods that "preserve thy body and soul unto everlasting life." In my Christian upbringing, there is no better eating.

The "new American cuisine" and the other bounties of our golden age of cooking manage to capture these antithetical cravings for the fresh and the familiar and capitalize on our search for artistry, heritage, and liberation in the pleasures of the table. As Escoffier believed of French cuisine, it is "proof of our degree of civilization." In a world of "getting and spending," to borrow a phrase from Wordsworth's "The World Is Too Much With Us," our preoccupation with the most mundane and familiar of habits might signal a ring for simple, approachable beauty, for lingering communion with others, and for a link to days gone by.

The wealthy table

THE UNITED STATES IS ENJOYING unprecedented levels of economic performance and prosperity. Americans today have more free time and spend larger proportions of their income on recreation than just a generation ago. We also spend smaller shares of our income on food. This illustrates, as economists Herbert Stein and Murray Foss note, "one of the best established laws of economics, namely, that as the income of families - or nations -- increases, the proportion spent on food diminishes."

The fact that we are spending proportionally less of our wages on food, though, does not mean that American food producers are poor. In fact, our food and beverage industries have been prime beneficiaries of this rising prosperity. Their name recognition alone can be worth billions of dollars. Recently, for example, the international consultancy Interbrand placed eight American food and beverage producers - Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Heinz, Budweiser, Kellogg's, Pepsi-Cola, Wrigley's, and Burger King on its list of the world's 60 most valuable brand names. Coca-Cola edged out Microsoft for the highest slot with a brand name value of $83 billion, compared to Microsoft's $56 billion. McDonald's placed eighth with a brand name value of $26 billion.

Patterns of growth in restaurant sales are similar to those for gross domestic product and disposable income. In current dollars, this amounted to an average annual rate of growth in sales of 7.9 percent between 1970 and 1995, or an increase from $42.8 billion to $295.7 billion. Industry analysts expect sales in 1999 to top $354 billion. In 1997, Americans spent almost 40 percent of their food bills on food prepared away from home. When broken down by income group (before taxes), the share spent on food away from home ranged from 36.7 percent for households with incomes of less than $5,000 to 47.8 percent for households with incomes of $70,000 or more, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.