The author also fills the book with anecdotes, stories, and historical notes on the dishes, as well as — to the extent possible — the original recipe. Again, you may quibble over some ingredients and procedures of the recipes you know best, and some recipes may have been simplified to make them more practical for today's cooks, but this is a great snapshot of many of the important regional American dishes. Some recipes are very old; some quite modern.

Produced in black & white only, the overall look of the interior of the book is a little grim, and the font used for the recipes is a hair too light. We'd also like to see the recipes categorized regionally in the index.