A history of cookbooks : from kitchen to page over seven centuries
2017
Book
"A History of Cookbooks provides a literary and historical overview of the cookbook genre, exploring its development as an important part of food culture beginning in the Late Middle Ages. Studying cookbooks from various Western cultures and languages, Henry Notaker traces the transformation of recipes from brief notes with ingredients into detailed recipes with a specific structure, grammar, and vocabulary. In addition, he reveals that cookbooks go far beyond offering recipes: they tell us a great deal about nutrition, morals, manners, history, and menus while often providing entertaining reflections and commentaries. This innovative book demonstrates that cookbooks represent an interesting and important branch of nonfiction literature."--Provided by publisher.
Item Details
ISBN: 9780520294004
Description: xiv, 384 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 353-373) and index.
Contents:
- Prologue: a rendezvous
- The cook
- Writer and author
- The origin and early development of modern cookbooks
- Printed cookbooks: diffusion, translation, and plagiarism
- Organizing the cookbook
- Naming the recipes
- Pedagogical and didactic aspects
- Paratexts in cookbooks
- The recipe form
- The cookbook genre
- Cookbooks for rich and poor
- Health and medicine in cookbooks
- Recipes for fat and lean days
- Vegetarian cookbooks
- Jewish cookbooks
- Cookbooks and aspects of nationalism
- Decoration, illusion, and entertainment
- Taste and pleasure
- Gender in cookbooks and household books
- Epilogue: cookbooks and the future.
LCCN: 2017009465
Control Number: 2630276
Publisher: Oakland, CA : University of California Press, [2017]