Old Australian Cookery Books
Australian eating habits were altered irrevocably - and for the better - with the advent of post-war migrants, but how did our forebears cope with the cuisine and associated formalities introduced by Australia's first migrants, the British? And how did our great-grandmothers, with large families and no servants, manage in the days before mixers, microwaves and refrigerators? What heroic efforts were required of bush housewives on "killing day"? Why were hot baked meals in this climate a health precaution?
Colin Bannerman's gentle passion for food and old cookery books has produced a delightful insight into the Australian way of eating in what he calls "the Federation years" from the colony's first centenary in 1888 to the outbreak of World War I. Against an evocative historical backdrop, he has drawn from books published in that period to reveal how British cuisine and its associated formalities were gradually re-shaped to suit Australia's more relaxed lifestyle.
He uses a wide variety of sources: a reformer whose ideas were ahead of his time, a journalist, teachers, country cooks, a hotel-keeper, a gas cooker demonstrator, and women whose "good receipts" kept the Presbyterian Cookery Book raising funds for the missions for 100 years. All provided the material for this informed observation of what was good, what was ostentatious and, spiced by Bannerman's dry asides, what was just plain awful. This is a book not only for cookbook collectors, but for social historians, and for those who enjoy good food.
