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WORK TITLE: Tastes Like Chicken
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WEBSITE: http://www.emelynrude.com/
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RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born in CA; parents agricultural economists.
EDUCATION:Graduated from Harvard University.
ADDRESS
CAREER MEMBER:
National Geographic Young Explorer.
WRITINGS
Contributor to Vice and Time.
SIDELIGHTS
Emelyn Rude was born in California but raised in Asia and outside Washington, DC. After graduating from Harvard University, Rude moved to New York City and worked in the restaurant business for three years. She then traveled the world for almost a year, during which time she wrote her first book, Tastes like Chicken: A History of America’s Favorite Bird.
Tastes like Chicken is a history of the chicken as food. In 2015, Americans consumed an average of ninety pounds of chicken per person. But eating large amounts of chicken is only a relatively recent phenomenon. A hundred years ago, beef was the meat of choice, as chicken was far too expensive. When chicken was deemed to be lower than beef in calories and the first commercial hatcheries were formed, the consumption of chicken increased to the point where it passed beef in preference. Rude traces the origins of chicken as food from the fifteenth century to the present day. In the book’s introduction, Rude wrote: “Painted in broad strokes, this is a story of agricultural science and human health, of the economics of feeding a nation and the politics that encircle the making and eating of a food. But on a more intimate level, this is really just the story of dinner.”
Reviews of Tastes like Chicken were mixed, with a Publishers Weekly contributor calling the book a “largely bland culinary history.” PopMatters Web site reviewer J. MacDonald Lee felt that the author jumped around too much in the book, going from discussing medieval times to discussing Kentucky Fried Chicken and learning about animal executions in a chapter detailing chicken soup. The reviewer wrote: “It’s all distractingly indulgent, but it makes Tastes like Chicken appear to lack direction. I can’t help but get lost in all the information as we jump from one time period to another and from one juicy fact to another. Perhaps the intention is to convey a more conversational tone. This is certainly how it reads to me. Details and facts arise as they might if you were speaking with Rude about the history of chicken dinner. It can, however, be frustrating when the conversation strays from the topic.” Lee concluded: “Frustrating may be the best way to describe Tastes like Chicken. It’s frustrating when it tells us too much and when it tells us too little.” On the other hand, Library Journal reviewer Melissa Stoeger found much to like about the book and wrote: “Readers of food histories such as Mark Kurlansky’s Cod will appreciate this engaging, well-researched, and thorough history of America’s changing food preferences.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Library Journal, August 1, 2016, Melissa Stoeger, review of Tastes like Chicken: A History of America’s Favorite Bird, p. 114.
Publishers Weekly, June 27, 2016, review of Tastes like Chicken, p. 78.
ONLINE
Emelyn Rude Home Page, http://www.emelynrude.com (March 14, 2017).
Kirkus Reviews, https://www.kirkusreviews.com (June 21, 2016), review of Tastes like Chicken.
PopMatters, http://www.popmatters.com (September 20, 2016), J. MacDonald Lee, review of Tastes like Chicken.
Who am I?
Let's start from the beginning, shall we. I was born in California and raised across Asia and outside Washington, D.C. by my two agricultural economist parents. When I came of age, I shipped off to Boston to study at Harvard University where I majored in Social Studies.
After graduation I made my way to New York City, where I spent three years in various basements helping to run some of the city's most notable restaurants. After learning a lot (and eating even more), I packed up my backpack for eleven months of wandering the Earth and finishing my first book on the history of eating chicken.
Somewhere in between, I started contributing writing about food for places like VICE and TIME and was named a National Geographic Young Explorer.
If you want to get in touch with me, head over to the contact page or shoot me a line at emelyn.rude@gmail.com.
All the images on my site were also taken by me.
Fowl treatment
Library Journal. 141.13 (Aug. 1, 2016): p114.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
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Rude, Emelyn. Tastes Like Chicken: A History of America's Favorite Bird. Pegasus. Aug. 2016. 272p. illus. bibliog. index. ISBN 9781681771632. $27.95; ebk. ISBN 9781681771984. COOKING
Americans are the most prolific eaters of chicken, consuming an average of 90 pounds per person in 2015. But our taste for chicken is a relatively new phenomenon. Journalist Rude traces the factors that contributed to this rise in popularity, beginning with chickens' domestication in Asia over 10,000 years ago up to today's modern, sprawling industry. Until the early 1900s, beef was king of the American plate. When slaves made fried chicken and sold it to passing soldiers during the Civil War, the trend increased, but its high price kept it out of reach for most. The 1920s saw the awakening of calorie consciousness and dieting, which led to a growth in fowl as a lower calorie option. After the first commercial chicken hatchery and the emergence of the broiler industry, prices dropped drastically, making it more affordable. As chicken became the favored meat, practices became standardized, creating social, environmental and ethical issues that continue to trouble the marketplace. VERDICT Readers of food histories such as Mark Kurlansky's Cod will appreciate this engaging, well-researched, and thorough history of America's changing food preferences.--Melissa Stoeger, Deerfield P.L., IL
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Tastes like Chicken: A History of America's Favorite Bird
Publishers Weekly. 263.26 (June 27, 2016): p78.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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Tastes like Chicken: A History of America's Favorite Bird
Emelyn Rude. Pegasus, $27.95 (272p) ISBN 978-1-68177-163-2
[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]
In this largely bland culinary history, food writer Rude plucks the bird clean to the bone as she traces the rise of America's culinary love of the chicken from the 15th century, through and Colonial times, and up to the early 21st century. In 2015, the average American ate more than 90 pounds of chicken, or 23 birds a person, which adds up to 8.6 million chickens being consumed over the course of a year. According to Rude, the chicken wasn't always quite so popular: in the early 20th century, roasted chicken might have been the centerpiece of Sunday dinner, but Americans ate only about 10 pounds of chicken each year. As she examines these changes, she provides recipes for various chicken dishes that illustrate diverse ways of preparing the fowl at various times and circumstances in American history: for example, chicken salad grew in popularity in the 19th century era among wealthy Americans, who drank champagne as an accompaniment. The kosher chicken business became contentious in early-20th-century New York. Chicken consumption soared in the 1940s, thanks to John Tyson and Jesse Jewell, among others, who found ways to industrialize the process of raising chickens. Rude concludes that no matter the issues surrounding the raising of chickens in the 21st century--free-range versus caged, antibiotic and hormone-free versus not--Americans now consume chicken more than ever. Agent: Peter Steinberg, Foundry Literary + Media. (Aug.)
TASTES LIKE CHICKEN
A History of America's Favorite Bird
by Emelyn Rude
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KIRKUS REVIEW
In her first book, a food historian with a feature writer’s flair illuminates the culinary history of the now-ubiquitous chicken.
Though the chicken would seem to be a subject that everybody knows about, Rude makes the humble bird’s story fresh and interesting on nearly every page. “Painted in broad strokes,” writes the author in the introduction, “this is a story of agricultural science and human health, of the economics of feeding a nation and the politics that encircle the making and eating of a food. But on a more intimate level, this is really just the story of dinner.” From chicken soup to chicken nuggets and from “chicken” as a synonym for coward to “a chicken in every pot” as a campaign slogan for prosperity, Rude covers chicken from practically every possible angle and perspective, showing how the bird that was once used mainly for its eggs and feathers now outdistances beef and pork (the “Other White Meat”) in American preference and how it has gone from a high-priced extravagance to a mass-produced bargain. Readers will learn about the 1920s “great Chicken Wars” that rivaled bootlegging in their bloodshed, about the “millions of mail-order chicks” delivered by the postal service, and about the development of “chicken eyewear” and even contact lenses to prevent the birds from pecking each other to death. There’s an unsung hero in Robert Baker, the “poultry savant, a chicken Thomas Edison,” whose legacy extends to the Chicken McNuggets boom, and Rude offers an intriguing analysis of the cross-cultural relationship between Colonel Sanders (beloved in China and Japan) and General Tso. There is also a more serious examination of the “deadly risks” in the mass production of chicken, including E. coli and salmonella.
All this from an author who admits, “I am a chicken historian who does not actually like eating chicken,” but who finds the bird as fascinating as she makes it for readers.
Pub Date: Aug. 15th, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68177-163-2
Page count: 272pp
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: June 21st, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1st, 2016
'Tastes Like Chicken' Will Have You Wanting Seconds
BY J. MACDONALD LEE
20 September 2016
ALL THE GREAT INFORMATION IN EMELYN RUDE'S TASTES LIKE CHICKEN IS DISTRACTINGLY INDULGENT AND AT TIMES APPEARS TO LACK DIRECTION.
cover art
TASTES LIKE CHICKEN
EMELYN RUDE
(PEGASUS)
US: AUG 2016
AMAZON
Pigs accounted for more than half of all animal executions in the Middle Ages. One sow was publicly executed for the crime of eating a four month-old girl. Tastes Like Chicken doesn’t reveal the method of execution or if the sow was eaten. I’d imagine a beheading with a nice slow braise to get that pork shoulder fork tender.
This has nothing to do with chicken or what it tastes like, but it is a sample of the fact soup prepared and served rather cold by Emelyn Rude.
Rude explains in the introduction how Tastes Like Chicken will tell “a story of agriculture science and human health, of the economics of feeding a nation and the politics that encircle the making and eating of food. But on a more intimate level, this is really just the story of dinner.” Rude also pursues a more specific question: how and why is chicken so popular today when it spent much of its domesticated life neglected in favor of pork and beef?
This question and the story of dinner never becomes a thesis and the information presented never reaches a finer point. We wander from the early days of domestication in South East Asia to the southern fried chicken of the American Civil War to the 99 billion meals and counting from the McDonald’s restaurants of today. As we move through these eras we’re given a lot of historical information about culinary life and health, and much of it is genuinely fascinating. Unfortunately, the pursuit of this information can lead us astray from the topic of the chapter. Medieval animal executions being just such an example.
Let’s take a moment to retrace the steps from the opening of chapter two, ‘A Healing Broth’, to the point about animal executions. Rude begins by discussing President Harrison’s need for chicken broth to combat what was likely typhoid fever (it didn’t work). We move on to Moses Maimonides and his belief in the healing properties of chicken soup, or what is now called “Jewish Penicillin”. Then it’s the English who use chicken soup to settle stomachs—they did not consume much chicken, otherwise. The English prefer beef. The Romans were predisposed to plants and thought the meat eating Britons were barbaric.
Now we’re on Galenism and its regulation of the medieval English diet. There’s a brief history of Galen of Pergamon and how his medical philosophy led the English to love the meat of land animals. From there we’re told that the symbol of France is a rooster, thus making their rivals in England suspicious of the bird. Besides, scrawny medieval chickens were not even considered a meat, which brings us to a discussion of the term ‘meat’. Besides, scrawny medieval chickens were not even considered a meat, which brings us to a discussion of the term ‘meat’. From there we learn about the beef eating habits of the English. Then it’s over to the Americas for a discussion of pork consumption. Then we’re back to medieval Europe learning about pigs and how they were crafty nuisances worthy of capital punishment.
I can see how this all fits together, it’s in service of showing how the idea of chicken soup as a meal for the ill developed over time. Every such point raised is something I would be interested in knowing more about. Yet some of these facts are so glancing or inconsequential discussed that they may as well not be included. Opening the topic of animal executions and specifying the crime for which a particular sow was executed isn’t necessary in a chapter about chicken soup.
But now that I know this—and I do enjoy knowing this—I have so many more questions. In the Middle Ages, were chickens executed as the pig was? Does publicly executing, rather than slaughtering or putting down an animal, suggest that people believed the birds possessed a conscience or a sense of guilt? And were they eaten? Rude and Tastes Like Chicken do not have the answers.
It’s all distractingly indulgent, but it makes Tastes Like Chicken appear to lack direction. I can’t help but get lost in all the information as we jump from one time period to another and from one juicy fact to another. Perhaps the intention is to convey a more conversational tone. This is certainly how it reads to me. Details and facts arise as they might if you were speaking with Rude about the history of chicken dinner. It can, however, be frustrating when the conversation strays from the topic. Frustrating may be the best way to describe Tastes Like Chicken. It’s frustrating when it tells us too much and when it tells us too little.
There’s so much good information complied in Tastes Like Chicken I might recommend it for the purpose of amassing some great trivia. Rude does deliver on one key question: Why do so many other foods taste like chicken? The answer is given early on, so I don’t think spoilers really apply (you can also just Google it). “The hypothesis is that all four-limb vertebrate animals share a common ancestry, and therefore a common flavor.” Coloumbus remarked on the chicken-like flavor in iguana meat and it’s possible the Tyrannosaurus Rex might have tasted like chicken, if one were inclined to give it a try.
TASTES LIKE CHICKEN
Rating: 6/10 stars