Full Description
Although the last decade has seen an intense and widespread interest in the writing and publishing of cookery books, surprisingly little contextualized analysis of the recipe as a generic form has appeared. This essay collection asserts that the recipe in all its cultural and textual contexts—from the quintessential embodiment of lifestyle choices to the reflection of artistic aspiration—is a complex, distinct, and important form of cultural expression. Contributors address questions raised by the recipe and its context, cultural moment, and mode of expression. Examples are drawn from such diverse areas as nineteenth- and twentieth-century private publications, official government documents, campaign literature, magazines, and fiction, as well as cookery writers themselves, cookbooks, and TV cookery. The Recipe Reader brings new perspectives, contexts, and arguments into the existing debate about cookery writing and will interest scholars of literature, popular culture, social history, and women's studies, as well as food historians and professional food writers.
Contents
Notes on ContributorsAcknowledgements1. The Recipe in its Cultural Contexts -- Janet Floyd and Laurel ForsterTRADITIONS2. Of Recipe Books and Reading in the Nineteenth Century: Mrs Beeton and her Cultural Consequences -- Margaret Beetham3. Redefining 'Rudimentary' Narrative: Women's Nineteenth-Century Manuscript Cookbooks -- Andrea K. Newlyn4. 'Talking' Recipes: What Mrs Fisher Knows and the African-American Cookbook Tradition -- Andrew Warnes5. Domesticating Imperialism: Curry and Cookbooks in Victorian England -- Susan Zlotnick6. 'In Close Touch With her Government': Women and the Domestic Science Movement in World War One Propaganda -- Celia M. KingsburyINDIVIDUAL INTERVENTIONS7. The Importance of Being Greedy: Connoisseurship and Domesticity in the Writings of Elizabeth Robins Pennell -- Talia Schaffer8. Simple, Honest Food: Elizabeth David and the Construction of Nation in Cookery Writing -- Janet FloydCONTEMPORARY CONTEXTS9. Liberating the Recipe: A Study of the Relationship between Food and Feminism in the early 1970s -- Laurel Forster10. Regulation and Creativity: The Use of Recipes in Contemporary Fiction -- Sarah Sceats11. Nigella Bites and the Naked Chef: The Sexual and the Sensual in Television Cookery Programmmes -- Maggie Andrews12. Adapting and Adopting: The Migrating Recipe -- Marina de Camargo HeckBibliographyName IndexSubject Index
