ABSTRACT
These recipes will draw some wider attention to the anthropologist's interest in food. It was clever of the editor to choose this well-established form, the cookery book. Just as righdy, she has used the form in the free, inventive way of the great exemplars. From Culpeper to Beeton and Elizabeth David, from Brillat-Savarin to the Larousse Gastronomique> the recipe is seldom left to speak for itself. Her contributors have been asked to describe something about the ingredients and the context in which the food is prepared and eaten. Sometimes this means describing a hunt, a dance, a ceremony, even a swim. But it is not for the sake of nostalgic bedside reading. She has also asked contributors to deal with foods that can be procured in most Western capitals, so she clearly expects us to try them out at home, even if it means raiding the zoo or the tropical house at Kew. So far, a charming gesture to international gastronomy. But there is much more in this idea.
