America,  Book Reviews,  Food,  History,  Immigration,  NON FICTION

97 Orchard by Jane Ziegelman ** (of 4)

http://www.harpercollins.com/harperimages/isbn/medium/7/9780061997907.jpgIt’s an interesting thesis.  Jane Ziegelman, a food historian working at the Tenement Museum traces the food history of five immigrant families that settled on the lower east side of Manhattan:  German, German Jewish, Irish, Russian Jewish, and Italian.  She suggests that immigrants were aggressive assimilators with one exception.  They hung onto the food of their homelands and Americans absorbed their foreign foods, taking on new things like pale ales, frankfurters, hamburgers, bagels, pasta, etc.  Unfortunately, the book is short on story and long on fact making it read more like an endless encyclopedia entry than a compelling piece of non-fiction.