Eight Flavors Audiobook By Sarah Lohman cover art

Eight Flavors

The Untold Story of American Cuisine

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Eight Flavors

By: Sarah Lohman
Narrated by: Sarah Lohman
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The United States boasts a culturally and ethnically diverse population which makes for a continually changing culinary landscape. But a young historical gastronomist named Sarah Lohman discovered that American food is united by eight flavors: black pepper, vanilla, curry powder, chili powder, soy sauce, garlic, MSG, and Sriracha. In Eight Flavors, Lohman sets out to explore how these influential ingredients made their way to the American table.

Eight Flavors introduces the explorers, merchants, botanists, farmers, writers, and chefs whose choices came to define the American palate. Lohman takes you on a journey through the past to tell us something about our present, and our future.

We meet John Crowninshield, a New England merchant who traveled to Sumatra in the 1790s in search of black pepper, and Edmond Albius, a 12-year-old slave who lived on an island off the coast of Madagascar, who discovered the technique still used to pollinate vanilla orchids today. Weaving together original research, historical recipes, and Lohman's own adventures both in the kitchen and in the field, Eight Flavors is a delicious treat - ready to be devoured.

©2016 Sarah Lohman (P)2017 Tantor Food & Wine Gastronomy World Africa Latin America

Critic reviews

"Her enthusiastic charm and what you sense is genuine Midwestern niceness shine through...Lohman is assiduous in tracking down early recipes and describing cooking techniques." ( New York Times)
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I came away with more respect for American cuisine after listening to this book. Our food is not merely an imitation of other cuisines; it is a complex reflection of history, immigration, and the creation of new foods. The only thing I was sad about was that the audio version didn't come with a print out of the recipes included in the book.

Yummy

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Excellent read even if you don't like to cook. Really enjoyed the author's outlook in life.

Excellent read!

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Part cookbook, part history, and part travelogue, this is an interesting look at how different flavors have influence American food from before the founding of the country to the present. As the title states, Lohman examines how eight different items (black pepper, vanilla, chili powder, curry powder, soy sauce, garlic, MSG, and sriracha) came to be used and influence the foods that Americans love. She uses historical and modern recipes, from Martha Washington's Black Pepper Cookies to Thai omelets with sriracha, to demonstrate how the flavors have been used and so the reader can try them out themselves, if so inclined. She describes her visits to places where the spices are grown, describes the ebbs and flows of the public's taste for these items and delves into the science behind questions like "does MSG cause headaches?"

The only hesitation about the book is that it works better as a print book than an audio book. If you want to try the recipes, you'd rather have them printed out, I'm sure, and if you don't, then it isn't terribly interesting listening to someone read a recipe (and there are a good many recipes in the book).

History and recipes make for a tasty book

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Good story, well researched, challenging recipes. I enjoyed the cooking and cultural review. Bon apetite.

Interesting and light

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Wonderful way of learning about the history of different ingredients that flavor a history of American cooking.

Great listen and informative!

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Please, no more stereotypical accents but great history. Could be better formatted but like I said, good rest

Great read... Terrible accents

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I really appreciate it how well-researched and interesting this book was. Plus, the recipes make it worth the read alone! Can't wait to try some of them out!

super interesting with lots of yummy recipes!

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First, some positive: great book concept and earnest, heartfelt approach to it. I learned plenty...but not enough. Ultimately, these topics are too deeo for her casual blogger writing style that spent too much time veering into personal anecdotes and the "cheeky exploits" of some historical figures (i.e. Chef Ranji Smile) to really penetrate the subject matter. Too many girly-sounding filler phrases like "yum!" and "yes, please!" and "I don't know why, but it's awesome!" (It's actually your job, as a writer, to explore "why", so you don't need to waste the reader's time with meaningless statements like that).

So even though her journalistic approach might be relatable for some (20-something women, maybe), I struggled to take her seriously. She tackled so many worldy things that were beyond her comfort zone, she often comes off as an oblivious white girl. It seems a little tone deaf to focus on one specific American company that was "kind and respectful to the Indonesian island where they got their pepper", while barely acknowledging the centuries of pillaging, slavery and murder around spice trade. And by also serving as the reader, she seemed a little in over her head tackling the all the necessary pronunciations and accents (don't bother, please, just read in your own voice when quoting other people) across languages she clearly wasn't comfortable with. As her and her friends would probably say: "so cringe."

Other factual mistakes are small enough to be forgiveable (i.e. saying Kecup is "soy sauce" in "Indonesian" - oops Indonesian's not a language, they usually speak Behasa there), but definitely harm her credibility. And am I crazy, did I hear her say that Soy Sauce is Japanese and Tamari is Chinese - isn't it the other way around? Ultimately, she sounds like a dedicated enthusiast that uncovered some interesting tidbits about food history. But also too immature andn to be taken seriously as an expert, so don't come here looking for rich insights or much proximity to the gritty realities behind most food history.

P.S. I know, I know, you can't say everything in a book, and she's not responsible for covering all the exploittion behind every ingredient or diasporic cooking tradition. But I believe this is the weight of food as a history topic: you're gonna get called out for what you deliberately leave out, especially if it's a big elephant like the racism and brutality behind some food items.

Not the book for you if you want to go deep

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