The Recipe Reader

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The Recipe Reader

Narratives, Contexts, Traditions

Edited by Janet Floyd and Laurel Forster

At Table Series

264 pages

Paperback

March 2010

978-0-8032-3361-4

$25.00 Add to Cart

About the Book

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.

Author Bio

Janet Floyd is a senior lecturer in American studies at King’s College in London, the author of Writing the Pioneer Women, and the coeditor of Domestic Space: Reading the Nineteenth-Century Interior. Laurel Forster is a senior lecturer in media studies at the University of Portsmouth, coeditor of British Culture and Society in 1970s Britain: The Lost Decade, and author of numerous articles on feminism and women’s writing.

Praise

“If you’re a recipe reader . . . you’ll find plenty of insights and substantial exploration within the pages of The Recipe Reader.”—Gastronomica

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
1. The Recipe in its Cultural Contexts -- Janet Floyd and Laurel Forster
TRADITIONS
2. Of Recipe Books and Reading in the Nineteenth Century: Mrs Beeton and her Cultural Consequences -- Margaret Beetham
3. Redefining 'Rudimentary' Narrative: Women's Nineteenth-Century Manuscript Cookbooks -- Andrea K. Newlyn
4. 'Talking' Recipes: What Mrs Fisher Knows and the African-American Cookbook Tradition -- Andrew Warnes
5. Domesticating Imperialism: Curry and Cookbooks in Victorian England -- Susan Zlotnick
6. 'In Close Touch With her Government': Women and the Domestic Science Movement in World War One Propaganda -- Celia M. Kingsbury
INDIVIDUAL INTERVENTIONS
7. The Importance of Being Greedy: Connoisseurship and Domesticity in the Writings of Elizabeth Robins Pennell -- Talia Schaffer
8. Simple, Honest Food: Elizabeth David and the Construction of Nation in Cookery Writing -- Janet Floyd
CONTEMPORARY CONTEXTS
9. Liberating the Recipe: A Study of the Relationship between Food and Feminism in the early 1970s -- Laurel Forster
10. Regulation and Creativity: The Use of Recipes in Contemporary Fiction -- Sarah Sceats
11. Nigella Bites and the Naked Chef: The Sexual and the Sensual in Television Cookery Programmmes -- Maggie Andrews
12. Adapting and Adopting: The Migrating Recipe -- Marina de Camargo Heck
Bibliography
Name Index
Subject Index

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