Salted & Cured: Savoring the Culture, Heritage, and Flavor of America’s Preserved Meats

Roberts’s quasi-sequel to 2007’s The Atlas of Artisan Cheese follows a similar formula to its predecessor, profiling various American food producers and their products and highlighting techniques and flavors. After a strong and engaging opening, Roberts elegantly segues into an examination of cured hams in Virginia and the Carolinas before settling on a more workmanlike path as the book winds to an end. Instead of following a larger narrative arc, Roberts chooses to profile producer after producer of preserved meat, noting key production, expansion, and product-line developments. Roberts’s enthusiasm and knowledge of his subject certainly add to the experience—he imparts real insight into what makes each producer’s preserved-meat products so unique and delicious—but even the most enthusiastic carnivore is sure to develop palate fatigue as the 500-word profiles roll on. Those in the food industry and readers with a vested interest in local food history will likely find Roberts’s work to be useful and insightful, but casual readers and most foodies will end up hungry for more analysis and less reporting. (Apr.)