Tastes Like Chicken: A History of America's Favorite Bird

by Emelyn Rude

Overview

From the domestication of the bird nearly ten thousand years ago to its current status as our go-to meat, the history of this seemingly commonplace bird is anything but ordinary.

How did chicken achieve the culinary ubiquity it enjoys today? It’s hard to imagine, but there was a point in history, not terribly long ago, that individual people each consumed less than ten pounds of chicken per year. Today, those numbers are strikingly different: we consumer nearly twenty-five times as much chicken as our great-grandparents did.

Collectively, Americans devour 73.1 million pounds of chicken in a day, close to 8.6 billion birds per year. How did chicken rise from near-invisibility to being in seemingly "every pot," as per Herbert Hoover's famous promise?

Emelyn Rude explores this fascinating phenomenon in Tastes Like Chicken. With meticulous research, Rude details the ascendancy of chicken from its humble origins to its centrality on grocery store shelves and in restaurants and kitchens. Along the way, she reveals startling key points in its history, such as the moment it was first stuffed and roasted by the Romans, how the ancients’ obsession with cockfighting helped the animal reach Western Europe, and how slavery contributed to the ubiquity of fried chicken today.

In the spirit of Mark Kurlansky’s Cod and Bee Wilson's Consider the Fork, Tastes Like Chicken is a fascinating, clever, and surprising discourse on one of America’s favorite foods.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681771984
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	08/02/2016
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	23 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Emelyn Rude has been a food writer for TIME and Vice and media manager for some of New York City’s most acclaimed chefs and restaurateurs. She is a contributor to National Geographic’s “The Plate” and is a National Geographic Young Explorer. This is her first book.
Emelyn Rude has been a food writer for TIME and Vice and media manager for some of New York City's most acclaimed chefs and restaurateurs. She is a contributor to National Geographic's "The Plate" and is a National Geographic Young Explorer. This is her first book.

Table of Contents

A Fowl Introduction ix

1 The Early Bird 1

2 A Healing Broth 12

3 The General Chicken Merchants 27

4 Of Chicken and Champagne 40

5 The Poor Man's Chicken 55

6 America's EGG Basket 68

7 Calories and Constituents 84

8 The Kosher Chicken Wars 95

9 Celia Steele's Modest Endeavor 108

10 They Saw in Hens a Way 121

11 A Chicken for Every Grill 130

12 A Nugget Worth More Than Gold 149

13 The Tale of the Colonel and the General 166

14 The Modern Chicken 181

The End and the Beginning 193

Endnotes 201

Recipe Citations 239

Photography Permissions 245

Bibliography 249

Acknowledgments 265

Index 267

Editorial Reviews

06/27/2016
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.)

Publishers Weekly

"The irrepressible yardbird struts through Tastes Like Chicken as Emelyn Rude engagingly explains how this descendant of dinosaurs became the default American dinner."

Joyce E. Chaplin

"Rude lays out the fascinating history of how a once-maligned bird became a staple of the American dinner plate. Rude has a great eye for the strange moments along the way. A fine window into how our ancestors cooked, ate, and thought."

Boston Globe

"In a breezy narrative brimming with retro recipes, culinary historian Rude focuses on the history of US chicken consumption, currently 8.6 billion birds a year. From New York immigrants' foul ‘ornithological parks’ of the 1880s and 1890s to the rise in global demand—which can push production at the expense of animal welfare—Rude reveals chicken as a troublesome taste."

Nature

"Until now, I've never read such a comprehensive look at one of my favorite foods and a protein that is so integral to any kitchen. Emelyn does a fantastic job of explaining why chicken is such an important part of our country's culinary fabric."

Marcus Samuelsson

"A fun and smart read. As one of the most popular ingredients in the world, I found it fascinating to explore the history of how we eat and cook this bird has evolved over the centuries. Emelyn Rude is a brilliant writer and by far the most whimsical chicken historian I have ever met."

Einat Admony

"Rude keeps it interesting with light writing and scandalous chicken tales. She also provides recipes, making this an easy cookbook to pack for a light historical read."

HeraldNet

"In a breezy narrative brimming with retro recipes, culinary historian Rude focuses on the history of US chicken consumption, currently 8.6 billion birds a year. From New York immigrants' foul ‘ornithological parks’ of the 1880s and 1890s to the rise in global demand—which can push production at the expense of animal welfare—Rude reveals chicken as a troublesome taste."

Nature Lib

Rude lays out the fascinating history of how a once-maligned bird became a staple of the American dinner plate. Rude has a great eye for the strange moments along the way. A fine window into how our ancestors cooked, ate, and thought.

The Boston Globe

08/01/2016
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

Library Journal

★ 2016-06-21
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.

Kirkus Reviews