ABSTRACT
Practical Cookery illustrated English and Welsh cheeses and exotic fruits including the ubiquitous banana and slightly more exotic kiwifruit. Culinary texts reflect the role that food and cuisine play in constructing culture and our identities within them. Cookbooks are some of the oldest surviving written works. However, academics have ignored them as sources of scholarly enquiry. Yet cookbooks provide important platforms for understanding people and cultures. As Arjun Appadurai suggested, Cookbooks, which usually belong to the humble literature of civilizations, tell unusual cultural tales. They combine the sturdy virtues of manuals with the vicarious pleasures of the literature of the senses. Culture and cuisine, as Barbara Santich observed, are interchangeable synonymous constructs. Best exemplifying this as a "culinary country" is France and French cuisine. The discourse and practice of the French, or what is said and what is done, have always provided the framework for action far beyond France: the French invented the cuisine of culinary professionals.
