History of Cookbooks

Henry Notaker is a literary historian who taught courses in food culture and history for over a decade. He was a foreign correspondent for the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation and a TV host of arts and letters shows and documentaries. He is the author of numerous books and articles on European and Latin American contemporary history, food history, and culinary literature.

• IllustrationsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsPART ONE. FOOD AND TEXT-COOK AND WRITERPrologue: A Rendezvous1. The Cook2. Writer and AuthorPART TWO. THE TEXT AND ITS FORM3. The Origin and Early Development of Modern Cookbooks4. Printed Cookbooks: Diffusion, Translation, and Plagiarism5. Organizing the Cookbook6. Naming the Recipes7. Pedagogical and Didactic Approaches8. Paratexts in Cookbooks9. The Recipe Form10. The Cookbook GenrePART THREE. THE TEXT AND ITS WORLD11. Cookbooks for the Rich and the Poor12. Health and Medicine in Cookbooks13. Recipes for Fat Days and Lean Days14. Vegetarian Cookbooks15. Jewish Cookbooks16. Cookbooks and Aspects of Nationalism17. Decoration, Illusion, and Entertainment18. Taste and Pleasure19. Gender in Cookbooks and Household BooksEpilogue: Cookbooks and the FutureNotesReferencesIndex

"Notaker’s impressive work of research calls for cookbooks to be read and valued the same as literature . . . . A History of Cookbooks also serves up a wonderful history of publishing, since that first printed Italian cookbook coincides with the advent of Gutenberg’s press"