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Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn in America

The history, legends, and cookery of America's favorite snack food. Whether in movie theaters or sports arenas, at fairs or theme parks, around campfires or family hearths, Americans consume more popcorn by volume than any other snack. Within American food lore, popcorn holds a special place, for it was purportedly shared by Native Americans at the first Thanksgiving. In Popped Culture, Andrew F. Smith tests such legends against archaeological, agricultural, culinary, and social findings. While debunking many myths, he discovers a flavorful story of the curious kernel's introduction and ever-increasing consumption in North America. Contains more than 160 recipes that typify popcorn cookery prior to 1924.

Excerpt
Of all the types of corn raised in the United States, however, none is more commonly recognized than popcorn. Americans eat popcorn in movie theaters, amusement parks, sports arenas and around campfires. At home we pop corn in microwave ovens, through hot air-poppers, or on the stove's top with a covered frying pan. As a snack food, we feast on ready-to-eat savory and candied popcorn confections. Over two hundred million boxes of Cracker Jack alone are crunched and munched annually, and today Cracker Jack is outsold by Franklin Crunch ‘N Munch. Our intake of popcorn in all forms has more than doubled during the past two decades, and consumption abroad has expanded at an even faster pace. As trivial as popcorn may appear when compared to the total maize crop, Americans annually devour eleven billion popped quarts, which averages out to about forty-four quarts per person. By volume popcorn is America's favorite snack food.

It was not just consumption statistics or today's popularity that convinced me to write the book. Popcorn exploded onto the American mainstream in the nineteenth century. Unlike other fads that quickly passed from the culinary scene, popcorn thrived and became enshrined in our national mythology. To many outside the United States, popcorn is almost a defining component of American culture. How popcorn was introduced and why the mainstream embraced it is a story about broader historical trends that have influenced us over the past fifteen decades.

While I am concerned with what popcorn can tell us about larger social and historical issues, I remain fascinated by popcorn itself, as fascinated as when I was a child. Popcorn's story is an exciting tale of unexpected twists and turns that are even more amusing than the frequently regurgitated popcorn myths. It is peopled with archaeologists and anthropologists, street vendors and merchants, seedsmen and farmers, processors and grocers, nutritionists and health-food nuts, scientists and salespersons, poets and songwriters, and just plain Americans. It is a story filled with hot-shot inventors, high-flying promoters, risk-taking growers, efficiency-conscious processors, hard-hitting advertisers, and lip-smacking consumers-- all of whom have contributed to transforming popcorn into an American icon. As important, the popcorn story was interwoven with significant events, inventions and social movements in American history, such as the Depression and World War II, the inventions of movies, television and the microwave, and the rise of health food consciousness in America. It was a story worth telling.


Whether in movie theaters or sports arenas, at fairs or theme parks, around campfires or family hearths, Americans consume more popcorn by volume than any other snack. To the world, popcorn seems as American as baseball and apple pie. Within American food lore, popcorn holds a special place, for it was purportedly shared by Native Americans at the first Thanksgiving. In Popped Culture, Andrew F. Smith tests such legends against archaeological, agricultural, culinary, and social findings. While debunking many myths, he discovers a flavorful story of the curious kernel's introduction and ever-increasing consumption in North America.

Unlike other culinary fads of the nineteenth century, popcorn has never lost favor with the American public. Smith gauges the reasons for its unflagging popularity: the invention of "wire over the fire" poppers, commercial promotion by shrewd producers, the fascination of children with the kernel's magical "pop," and affordability. To explain popcorn's twentieth-century success, he examines its fortuitous association with new technology—radio, movies, television, microwaves—and recounts the brand-name triumphs of American manufacturers and packagers. His familiarity with the history of the snack allows him to form expectations about popcorn's future in the United States and abroad.

Reviewed in

Sylvia Carter, “Pop Goes the Whole Grain; Popcorn Makes a Comeback — for its Great Taste and its Health Values,” Kansas City Star, November 30, 2005
Petits Propos Culinaires 64 (June 2000)
A Mary Martin, “Review Souper Tomatoes,” Library Journal 2000

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The Tomato in America: Early History, Culture and Cookery
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  "Smith brings all these elements of the history of the tomato to life, filling his book with a wealth of anecdotal evidence. Indeed, it seems that he has relentlessly scoured archives and other collections to trace the route of the fruit into the mainstream. . . the book is both engaging and written in clear language. The inclusion of historic recipes . . . and sources of heirloom seeds broadens the audience for the book." 
-- Peter Hepburn review in  E-STREAMS Vol. 5, No. 5 - May 2002

Arguably the most popular fruit in the world, the tomato holds a favored place in the US, which ranks as the world's largest producer of commercial tomatoes.

Excerpt
On Sunday, January 30, 1949, CBS broadcast live over national radio a reenactment of Robert Gibbon Johnson eating the first tomato in America. This episode of the You Are There series depicted an event purportedly held in September 1820 in Salem, New Jersey. According to the CBS broadcast, prior to this date Americans considered the tomato poisonous. Johnson, one of Salem's most prominent citizens, had imported tomato seeds from South America and planted them in his garden. When they produced fruit-bearing vines, he announced that he intended to eat a tomato on the courthouse steps. From hundreds of miles around, spectators traveled to view the sensation. An Italian witness even journeyed all the way from Salem, Massachusetts. (As there were no railroads in southern New Jersey in 1820 and steamboats were still novelties along the Delaware River, a newspaper columnist reviewing the broadcast commented dryly, "The stage coaches, saddle horses, sloops, and schooners must have done a landslide business."
On the appointed day, as the CBS version had it, hundreds of onlookers gathered to see the spectacle of Johnson eating a tomato, expecting him to fall frothing to the ground, then die a painful death. Not all in the crowd, however, believed Johnson would necessarily succumb. The actor playing the part of Dr. James Van Meter, Johnson's personal physician, declared in an interview with the You Are There reporter that, while ordinary people would be poisoned by tomatoes, Johnson might not because he had an unusually strong constitution. In the radio version, Johnson mounted the courthouse steps and turned in scorn on the throng. "What are you afraid of? Being poisoned?" he asked. "Well, I'm not, and I'll show you fools that these things are good to eat." He then sank his teeth into one of the supposedly lethal fruits with dripping relish. Some actor-onlookers fainted. Others gaped in astonishment. But much to almost everyone's surprise, You Are There reported, Johnson survived and launched a new and mammoth tomato industry.
The CBS broadcast was not the first rendition of this story. The first known version appeared in 1908, when William Chew, the future publisher of the Salem Standard & Jerseyman, asserted simply that Johnson brought tomatoes to Salem in 1820. Sixteen years later Alfred Heston added that after Johnson introduced tomatoes, Salemites considered them inedible but admired them for their appearance. Joseph S. Sickler's initial version of the story, published in 1937, was not much different from Chew's and Heston's statements, but he altered the status of the tomato from an ornamental to an edible plant. Sickler, an amateur local historian, went one step further, claiming that after Johnson introduced the tomato, he patiently educated the natives as to its qualities, showing that it was edible and nutritious. Perhaps he misread Heston or alternatively assumed that, if Johnson introduced the tomato, he probably ate it and persuaded others to do so. Sickler's hypothesis, however speculative, had some basis. Johnson owned a book, published in 1812, that contained a recipe for making tomato ketchup; he therefore knew at least that the cooked tomato was edible

Reviewed in

Carol Cubberley, “Review of The Tomato in America,” Library Journal 119 (November 15, 1994): 84.
Peter Hepburn, Resident Librarian, University of Illinois at Chicago Library, phepburn@uic.edu;  http://www.e‑streams.com/es0505/es0505_1886.htm

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Pure Ketchup: A History of America's National Condiment - with Recipes.

 
This "is the only serious work I know on this ancient condiment, how it started, how it came to America, above all how it came to be Americanized, so much so that it is almost a national symbol of our food." –Karen Hess.

Popular stereotypes to the contrary, ketchup was not a American creation. In the beginning, ketchup was not thick, sweet or tomato-based. Early recipes published in Great Britain in the eighteenth century fashioned ketchup from kidney beans, mushrooms, anchovies and walnuts. British colonists in North America adopted and adapted these early recipes. On both sides of the Atlantic, non-tomato ketchup consumption expanded and reached its zenith during the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Reviewed in

Ted Anthony, “Would You like Fries with That Ketchup?” Associated Press, 1996.
Andrea Mather, “One World under Ketchup: over 840 Million Bottles Are Sold Each Year,” Vegetarian Times (July 1997)
Elisabeth Giacon Castleman, [Tomato in America?],  Slow, the International Herald of Tastes 13 (April-June 1999):
Hsiao-Ching Chou, “Ketchup Reigns Supreme; Tomatoey Topper Universally Loved,” Denver Post, July 14, 1999.

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Souper Tomatoes: The Story of America's Favorite Food

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On cold winter afternoons, countless American children have been warmed by hot lunches of comforting tomato soup. Here the author tells the definitive story behind this familiar food. This saga, he writes, "is a juicy tale filled with unexpected twists and turns. It is action packed, peopled with seeds men and farmers, grocers and scientists, commercial artists and hard-hitting advertisers, and just plain old everyday consumers – all of whom have contributed to the transformation of tomato soup into one of America's favorite dishes.

For decades, countless children across the U.S. have eagerly consumed bowls of a steamy reddish-orange liquid that is as easy to make as it is comforting to eat: tomato soup. In Souper Tomatoes, culinary historian Andrew F. Smith tells the definitive story of how tomato soup has become a regular staple in practically every American kitchen. This saga, he writes, "is a juicy tale filled with unexpected twists and turns. It is action packed, peopled with seedsmen and farmers, grocers and scientists, commercial artists and hard-hitting advertisers, and just plain old every-day consumers-all of whom have contributed to the transformation of tomato soup into one of America's favorite dishes."

Smith explores the prehistoric origin of soup and traces its development through the nineteenth century. He then focuses on how the tomato was introduced in Europe and America. Now America-and New Jersey-take center stage, as Smith examines the rise of the canning industry, particularly in New Jersey, and the complex distribution and advertising networks that transformed tomato soup into a household staple. The reader will learn how a scientific whiz at the Joseph Campbell Preserve Company in New Jersey produced the world's first successful condensed soup and persuaded American homemakers to make this bit of canned wizardry a staple food product.

Excerpt
Soups are diverse. In their simplest form, they contain liquid enriched with almost anything edible: fowl, flesh, fish, seafood, fruit, vegetables, cereals, milk, wine, salt, spices, seaweed, or even birds' nests. Their temperatures fluctuate from steamy to chilly to icy. Their consistencies range from thin to thick to chunky. Some are clear; others are creamy. They may contain a single, spiced ingredient; others blend multiple components so that none predominates; and still others maintain the integrity and individuality of solid ingredients. Some soups are served as appetizers for the meal, while others are the meal.
Despite this diversity, soups have common characteristics. By definition they have a predominance of liquids as opposed to solids and are served in a bowl or mug. They can be consumed with only a spoon. Still, soup's borders remain fluid. Where indeed are the boundaries between soups and sauces, stews, gravies, or other liquid dishes? The challenge of definition is partly due to the diverse linguistic roots of what is today called soup. Over the centuries, potage, broth, consommé, and bouillon have vied with the term soup for supremacy in the English language. To make this matter more confusing, the word soup has shifted in meaning over the years, as have the other related terms, making it difficult to determine what was actually meant at a particular time. Today's all-encompassing conception of soup is a relatively recent development: the word soup did not fully acquire its overarching status in English until very late in the eighteenth century.

Centennial Buckeye Cook Book; Introduction and appendixes by Andrew F. Smith.


By any standard the Centennial Buckeye Cook Book "was the most important cookbook to have originated in Ohio in the 19th-century. It included more than three hundred pages of good recipes for jellies and jams, soups and sauces, fruits and vegetables, meats, poultry and fish, and confectionery, cakes and pastry, and many more. It was, however, much more than just a cookbook. Some editions featured information about medicine and the chemistry of food, how to do the laundry, how to make icehouses, hints for the sick and most unusual, hints for the well."

Excerpt
The Centennial Buckeye Cook Book was compiled by a committee of women at the Congregational Church in Marysville, Ohio, and was dedicated to the "plucky housewives of 1876 who master their work instead of allowing it to master them." As the Centennial Buckeye Cook Book was not connected with the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, it did not receive the national visibility that the other two enjoyed. The Centennial Buckeye Cook Book had been scheduled for release before the festivities scheduled for July 4, 1876 in Marysville, but it was not published until the fall–months after the centennial hype had died down. At the time, charitable cookbooks sold a few thousand copies. However, the Centennial Buckeye Cook Book sold well and its successor editions sold even more. Revised nine times, full of innovative recipes, the work survived and thrived throughout the rest of the century. By 1900, it had sold over one million copies making it the largest selling American cookbook in the nineteenth century and one of the most widely-distributed books in United States.