[Sca-cooks] Baking Powder Wars

[Johnna Holloway]

The University of Illinois Press has just published a book on the history of baking powder.

Baking Powder Wars
The Cutthroat Food Fight that Revolutionized Cooking
A microhistory of America's main ingredient

First patented in 1856, baking powder sparked a classic American struggle for business supremacy. For nearly a century, brands battled to win loyal consumers for the new leavening miracle, transforming American commerce and advertising even as they touched off a chemical revolution in the world's kitchens. 

Linda Civitello chronicles the titanic struggle that reshaped America's diet and rewrote its recipes. Presidents and robber barons, bare-knuckle litigation and bold-faced bribery, competing formulas and ruthless pricing--Civitello shows how hundreds of companies sought market control, focusing on the big four of Rumford, Calumet, Clabber Girl, and the once-popular brand Royal. She also tells the war's untold stories, from Royal's claims that its competitors sold poison, to the Ku Klux Klan's campaign against Clabber Girl and its German Catholic owners.

http://www.press.uillinois.edu/books/catalog/98ppx5cp9780252041082.html

This is a very USA focused work, but a very well researched one. It’s not going to answer all our questions about possible early Middle Eastern connections which have come up in the past but it will answer most questions regarding the commercialization of baking powder in the 19th century.

The hardback is priced for libraries, but the paperback is reasonably priced on Amazon.


Johnnae