This book investigates how early twentieth-century American literature utilized the evolving landscape of food production and consumption to deconstruct racial categories and challenge the concept of biological essentialism. Catherine Keyser, a scholar of American literature and culture, analyzes a diverse range of texts to demonstrate how authors linked the artificiality of processed food to the social construction of racial identity. By examining the intersection of culinary history and racial discourse, the author argues that the period's literature exposes whiteness as a performative and unstable construct rather than a natural state.

Scholars in the field of food studies and American literature recognize this work as a significant contribution to the intersection of material culture and identity politics. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose and the author's rigorous application of cultural theory to literary analysis.