A History of Cookbooks: From Kitchen to Page over Seven Centuries (Volume 64) (California Studies in Food and Culture)

Description

A History of Cookbooks provides a sweeping literary and historical overview of the cookbook genre, exploring its development as a 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. Cover Contents Illustrations Preface Acknowledgments PART ONE. FOOD AND TEXT—COOK AND WRITER Prologue: A Rendezvous 1. The Cook 2. Writer and Author PART TWO. THE TEXT AND ITS FORM 3. The Origin and Early Development of Modern Cookbooks 4. Printed Cookbooks: Diffusion, Translation, and Plagiarism 5. Organizing the Cookbook 6. Naming the Recipes 7. Pedagogical and Didactic Approaches 8. Paratexts in Cookbooks 9. The Recipe Form 10. The Cookbook Genre PART THREE. THE TEXT AND ITS WORLD 11. Cookbooks for the Rich and the Poor 12. Health and Medicine in Cookbooks 13. Recipes for Fat Days and Lean Days 14. Vegetarian Cookbooks 15. Jewish Cookbooks 16. Cookbooks and Aspects of Nationalism 17. Decoration, Illusion, and Entertainment 18. Taste and Pleasure 19. Gender in Cookbooks and Household Books Epilogue: Cookbooks and the Future Notes References Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Z