Her 2007 biography of television chef Julia Child won the Literary Food Writing award from the International Association of Culinary Professionals.
[21][22][23] In an effort to gain background information for her work at The Real Paper, Shapiro began reading about the women's movement of the 19th-century at Schlesinger Library, in Cambridge.
During this time, she started conducting archival research on women's lives in the kitchen, an intersection of topics she felt was overlooked, and working on what would be Perfection Salad.
[24] Maxine Margolis, writing in The American Historical Review, wrote that the book provided "a wealth of data on a topic that has been too long ignored" despite insufficient analysis in some places.
[26] The industry's actions would begin to be countered with two events in 1963: the debut of Julia Child's cooking program The French Chef, and the publication of Betty Friedan's influential feminist book The Feminine Mystique.
"[26] Kirkus Reviews praised the book's entertainment value and the quality of Shapiro's research, but they felt that its "parts don't cohere into a consistent whole" even though there are common themes.
[29] Shapiro said the short and non-comprehensive format of the Penguin Lives series allowed her to avoid "topics that were relevant but not that interesting to me, for instance comparative approaches to classic French cooking".
[30] Dorothy Kalins in The New York Times wrote that Shapiro exhibited "enormous grace and food savvy" given the limited length of the Penguin Lives entries.
[31] Kirkus Reviews wrote that Shapiro had produced a "vivid biography" of Child which characterized her as a "steadfast, vigorous, analytical person" and someone who was not a natural chef.
[34] Fresh Air book critic Maureen Corrigan said that Shapiro's analysis of the women's food stories allowed "[s]lowly the more familiar accounts of each of their lives recede and other, messier narratives emerge.