Steve, I’m at http://www.beerinfood.wordpress.com

Looking forward to another Lucy Saunders entry, that’s for sure.

Cookbook or history book? Call it a historical cookbook, and with that in mind, it becomes necessary to detail not only American beer’s earliest uses in food, but also the long and winding road of American beer itself. Beer’s use in food or with food changes as the drink itself does and where it’s served.

I, for one, subscribe to the idea that most contemporary food recipes are products of evolution, not invention; not only in food recipes, but in the pairing of beer with certain foods too. Michael Jackson might have suggested bringing together stout with oysters, Fred Eckhardt with his notion of beer and chocolate, and virtually every beer/food writer praising the pairing of beer with cheese, but as the reader will see, it’s all been done before.

In many ways, what’s going on with the craft beer industry and the contemporary promotion of good beer with good food can also be seen in the days after Prohibition. Back then, the question was how do you get beer (or today, craft beer) into American homes? The answer often was “through the kitchen.”

In the case of beer and food, history does repeat itself, beginning with the colonial era, not the advent of lager beer. With a number of the food recipes sprinkled throughout the first part of the book, it’s interesting to see that dishes like beer soup, beer bread or various stews and chowders have their origins back in the date when “waste not, want not” was of utmost importance.