Dreaming About Class

Rebecca Traister remembers The Silver Palate, the cookbook which democratized fine dining:

"The Silver Palate" wasn't just about the ingredients. It was about a kind of life, a life that was comfortable and full of bounty. Rosso and Lukins didn't just print recipes, they composed menus of their food, suggesting dishes for a "country weekend lunch," or a "Mediterranean supper menu." Sometimes they pointed out that a given recipe could be served warm or cold, perfect for picnics. A note about Julee's original sour cream coffee cake read, "This elegant cake is just so scrumptious served to a large brunch party, and it's perfect, too, with late-afternoon coffee and a good book." Country weekends! Picnics! Brunches! Late-afternoon coffees and good books! With "The Silver Palate" in hand, I felt confident that I was embarking on an adulthood that would contain, as Rosso and Lukins might (and did) put it, "pesto possibilities!"

I surely didn't realize that I was, of course, fantasizing about class. I understand now that this was a book of recipes that allowed harried middle-class families to wean themselves from the Shake 'N Bake pouch and eat more like wealthy people. This kind of food -- the noodle salads and cold soups and skewered shrimp -- was more urbane and elegant than what we'd been eating in suburban Philadelphia. It's not that it was simply "rich people's food"; though there was a whole chapter on caviar, there were also soda breads and potato salads. It's just that Rosso and Lukins had begun to take labor-intensive methods and high-quality ingredients consumed by fancier people than we and translate them from the original "unattainable" into the modern "practical." Not to mention tasty.

One odd cross-indicator of rising income inequality has been the determined democratization of culture in this country. Containers of garlic hummus and free range eggs that would have been judged luxury items a few decades ago now dot the shelves at Safeway, mega-bookstores of the kind only available in wealth urban centers now populate every shopping mall, espresso drinks that could only have been procured at fine Italian and French restaurants are now offered on every street corner, the multiplicity of news sources once accessible only by the geographically advantaged is exponentially surpassed by those available to anyone with a computer, and so on.

There's no doubt that wealth inequality has increased in this country, and that primary expenses ranging from housing to fuel to health have rapidly increased in cost. But there's simultaneously been, I'd argue, a drop in consumptive inequality, and a significant convergence in the experiences of the rich and, if not the poor, the middle. Traister once required a cookbook to imagine what it was like to eat as the wealthy do. Now all you need is a nearby Whole Foods, or Trader Joes, or even Giant. Doesn't mean you can eat as the rich do, but the ingredients are near, and tangible, and part of your world. Or so goes my impression. We know that consumption-based measures show much rosier pictures of the economy than poverty or income based measures, but how you'd test if we've seen a convergence in consumption patterns (types of goods bought) is beyond me.