cover image American Tradition: A Classic Guide to Regional Cooking

American Tradition: A Classic Guide to Regional Cooking

Carole Clements, Martha Lomask, Norma MacMillan. Popular Culture Ink, $29.98 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-8317-0296-0

This glossy tome is the work of three food writers: Clements, The French Way ; MacMillan, Tex-Mex Cooking ; and Lomask, The All-American Cookbook for Non-American Cooks . The book perpetuates many of the most tired cliches of American cooking, from the ``dramatic lobster'' (``the banner of Maine'') to cherry pie. Each section, devoted to a single region, opens with a photographic essay that features sumptuously scenic stock pictures more appropriate to a travel magazine than a cookbook. And many are mislabeled: a Texas cowboy breakfast, replete with sausage, eggs and coffee, is captioned as a ``sizzling Texan barbecue,'' while Montana's Glacier National Park is listed as being in Alaska. Similarly, the logic behind placing recipes in different regions can be misleading: chocolate chip cookies, for example, which originated at the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts, are ascribed here as from ``The Mountains and the Plains.'' (May)