For the past ten years, Jean Anderson has been on a quest: to search out the most popular recipes of the 20th century and to chronicle 100 years of culinary change in America. The result is a rich and fascinating look at where we've been, at the recipes our mothers and grandmothers loved, and at how our own tastes have evolved.

The more than 500 cherished recipes in these pages are mainstays of American home cooking, the recipes that have remained favorites year after year. For the smallest sampling。

Winner of six best-cookbook awards and a member of the James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame, JEAN ANDERSON is one of America's most trusted cookbook authors, a careful researcher and painstaking recipe-tester. She credits her Cornell food chemistry courses plus years in the New York test kitchens of THE LADIES' HOME JOURNAL for teaching her the absolute necessity of recipes that work.

In addition to writing cookbooks, Anderson writes food and travel pieces for major American magazines and newspapers, among them BON APPÉTIT, FAMILY CIRCLE, FOOD & WINE, the late, lamented GOURMET, MORE, THE NEW YORK TIMES, and TRAVEL & LEISURE.