Of Recipe Books and Reading in the Nineteenth Century: Mrs Beeton and her Cultural Consequences

The ingredients of this chapter are not usually served up in the same dish. I want to blend together research in the history of publishing with the history of nineteenth-century domesticity, both as ideology and as materiality. Then, to push the metaphor perhaps beyond the bounds of good taste, I want to stir these up in a sauce of theoretical work drawn from a range of academic disciplines which have investigated cooking and eating as crucial markers, boundaries and means of transformation in the relationship of 'nature' and 'culture'. My argument throughout the chapter, the ingredient which binds the whole, is that there is a relationship between eating and reading.