Food History

I’ve run out of Melbourne time.

I had planned to fill in my New Year period with a bunch of posts about my stepfather’s favourite food books. Between honey cakes and the trip to the country, the time has just flown.

I intend (not for a while, though) to blog other people’s lists of books, and it gets the idea off to a really bad start if I don’t even list the rest of the lovely pile of books Les made for me, so here they are. Just a list and a paragraph on each. Not a full post.

And I think this is how I might do it in future - ask someone the books they most love when thnking about food and food history and give you a single post covering them. We all get to met a lot more fabulous books that way. There are more interviews coming, too. All in all, the New Year is looking rather fun.

The books

1. The Book of Cheese, by Evan Jones (Macmillan, London, 1980).

One thing about books that have passed their quarter century is that the age gives you a lot of insight into the place adn time of their writing. Opinions about cheese change and this is a lovely volume that tells bunches of stuff. Jones has a very readable style and isn’t afraid of personal anecdotes, which means that, although the book is dated in some ways, it’s a perennial and worth reading. It also has some rather fine recipes.

2. The Perfect Pickle Book, by David Mabey and David Collison (3rd edition, BBC Books, 1994).

This is a mostly-recipe overview of pickling. Not much depth and a rather ambitious world coverage, but a really good browsing book with some excellent recipes. All Les’s favourite books have excellent recipes - I know this because he cooks from them. We’ve all enjoyed some of the pickles from this book. That’s the good bit. The bad bit is that it has street addresses at the back, for those who just happen to be in Britain in the 1990s and want to buy specialist ingredients. I need a TARDIS to take advantage of this list, though I admit (from a history point of view) it’s interesting to see where the specialist shops were located back then.

3. Russian Jew Cooks in Peru by Violeta Autumn (101 Productions, San Francisco, 1973).

I covet this book. It’s just a joy and a delight. It doesn’t have any of the encyclopediac facets that most of Les’s choices have, but it has a really interesting culinary premise and a bunch of fabulous recipes to match.

This volume captures a culture in time - Russian Jewish culture before it fully assimilates into its new country. Not really Russian, though: when I looked at the introduction I was surprised to find that the migrants in question were really Moldavian (what was Bessarabia when they left). Not far from where some of my ancestors come from, in fact.

It’s very honest. Right at the beginning it points out that “Any similarity to Kosher cookery is purely coincidental.” One day I’ll find myself a copy, I promise. If I do, I’ll give it a whole blog entry - it has enough quirk and charm and curiosity and culture-specific recipes to need it.

4. Favourite Middle Eastern recipes by Pat Chapman (Piatkus, 1989).

I think I know why Les loves this book. He spent some time in the Middle East as a young adult and several of his close relatives are still there. It’s a bit more than nostalgia, though. This is a good reference book with some very handy techniques. It has really good diagrams for rolling Middle eastern pastries, for instance, and glorious colour pictures.

5. Chinese food is Les’s faovurite, so it’s not at all surprising that in his top 8 is Yan-Kitso’s Classic Food of China (Macmillan, London, 1992).

This is also covet-worthy and another one I’m going to find for my collection one day. Given the size of China and the range of its cultures, Classic Food of China doesn’t have many recipes (about 150) but they’re wel-selected, well-presented, and terrifyingly mouthwatering. The best thing about this book for me is that it introduces the different regions clearly. Read it from cover to cover - it’s a good primer and will help make sense of other cookbooks that deal with (or claim to deal with) Chinese cooking.

6. The Illustrated herb Encyclopedia by Kathi Keville (Simon and Schuster, Australia 1991.

At 224 pages, this isn’t as complete as it claims (its subtitle makes some very large claims indeed) but this book has good pictures.

It also has a nice, clear layout. Take the Wormwood page, for instance. It starts with the botanical name then gives a common name. After that we get family, description, habitat, cultivation, garden design, constituents, related species, very brief history, very brief culinary, very brief medicinal then two sections for things that didn’t fit in the other sections.

The strength of this book is that all this fits onto one A4 page ie you can find the basics very quickly indeed, as long as you’re looking for the right herb. I prefer Mrs Grieve, but I have to admit that this is much faster to check.

What’s interesting in Les’s 8 books is his preference for the reference. He loves good recipes and he loves ingredients, but mostly he enjoys being able to find what he needs. Just as importantly, all the writers of each and every one of the books he chose have good writing styles. I’ve caught him time and time again sitting down with a coffee and opening one of these books and reading a few pages, just for the pleasure of it. They’re not just cookbooks.

What food books comprise your favourites and why? If you email me lists with your thoughts, I’ll blog them. If I have any of the books in your list (or can get hold of them easily) I’ll add my comments to yours.

Why am I doing this? (And why don’t I explain things upfront?) Because understanding how we relate to written sources and espcially to food books, helps us understand an important aspect about food history. It isn’t all about the food itself, you see - it can be just as much about how we learn about the food and what role books about food play in our lives.

I guess I could just have expounded theory at length, but it’s much more fun to explore people’s favourite books. There are so many books out there, and so little time to fall in love with all the ones that deserve it, that meeting other people’s favourites is way more sensible than eschewing books and going straight to theory.