Introduction: Beer In The Home

"Conundrum: 'It lies in a word; it wears a little cream bonnet; it brings you good health and cooks depend on it.' What is it? The answer is beer. Once a riddle for children -- too easy for the sophisticates of the Choral Society or the Euchre Club. But today include it in the question bee you spring on the crowd. Even the smarties get the gong on this one." -- Eloise Davison, Beer in the American Home, introduction

Hidden in the stacks of the John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Library at Brown is a pamphlet written by Eloise Davison in 1937, entitled Beer in the American Home. Judging by the book's title and by Davison's listed credentials--she held a Master of Science degree from Iowa State College--this would appear to be a scholarly study of the American people as they interacted with beer during the Depression era--a desirable tool for any researcher studying beer (such as myself). These illusions tend not to hold up for long after one notices who paid for Davison's work. Beer in the American Home, published by the United Brewers Industrial Foundation of New York City, is beer propaganda. Once this becomes clear, the pamphlet is still desirable, but for an entirely different reason.

Note the date of its publication: 1937, just four years after the great experiment that was the American Prohibition came to an end. From 1920 to 1933, the manufacture or sale of any alcoholic beverage was illegal in this country. As this time period dragged on, support for this unpopular, oft-violated law eroded to the point of unsustainability, and Franklin D. Roosevelt signed it out of its federal-level existence while famously quipping, "I think this would be a good time for a beer."

With Prohibition over, the American brewing industry (and the United Brewers Industrial Foundation) attempted to reclaim its place in society, but due to the length of the Prohibition, the current young-adult generation, particularly young women, had little experience with beer--as Davison herself put it, "this... generation [of women] was in pinafores and pink hair ribbons when beer made its sudden demise." Hence Beer in the American Home. To successfully sell their product to the homemakers that comprised the majority of adult women in those days, the UBIF turned to Davison, who as an educated woman and a writer for the New York Herald Tribune Food Institute could speak to the American housewife on a level none of them could approach.

In her masterpiece, Davison reassured the public of beer's many virtues--it is a nourishing "liquid food;" it aids the digestion; it prevents cramps on warm days; German physicians are convinced of its medicinal effects. She gave a brief overview of the science of brewing and its long, storied history. She asserted that anyone who acquired a beer gut was themselves to blame for laziness ("I would not blame alcohol for making men fat, but I would blame the fat for not controlling their gluttony, and for being too indolent even to try to exercise"). She explained how to properly choose a good beer and how to properly care for it upon purchase. She helpfully provided a number of recipes involving beer: Beer Bread, Beef Kidney with Beer, Cheese and Beer Sauce on Asparagus, and Beer Cabbage Slaw feature prominently among them. In short, she gave the beer industry a boost in becoming as central to American life as it had once been and as it hoped to be again. I will frequently refer to Beer in the American Home as I explore beer's part in our lives, because this lucky find sums it up like only an industry-approved propaganda piece could.

"Beer With Egg
-1 glass cold beer (1/2 pint)
-1 egg
Almost fill glass with beer. Add egg. Beat up with fork. This makes a gold colored, bland drink.
Yield: 1 portion." --Eloise Davison, Beer in the American Home, recipe section. Deeeelicious.

Back to Beer: Table of Contents