10
Popular Culture Review
Just as cooking became largely elective for the chef-loving public, they
have come to view the activity ever more in terms of sensual, aesthetic, and
emotional fulfillment. Indeed, their liberation from cooking precisely parallels
their embrace of cooking as a hobby. Already by 1979, market researchers were
pointing out the ironic sympathy between simultaneous consumer trends: A
retail survey conducted at the time revealed that the two most desired cooking
appliances in the U.S. were the microwave and the food processor.^’ The former
indicates the desire for speed and convenience in food preparation. The latter
suggests the opposite, a desire to seriously cook (albeit with the modern aid of a
food processor). A market survey in 1995 confirmed the strength of this
tendency, finding that 42 percent of Americans said they “really enjoy cooking.”
That figure was up from 38 percent in 1987.^ The Joy of cooking continued
unabated. In 2004, a Food Network survey found that 43 percent of Americans
named cooking as their favorite pastime (after watching TV).^
Americans’ appreciation of cooking, and the