The Overlooked Impact of Recipe Books on Social and Cultural Identity
Photo by Brett Jordan on Unsplash
A relentless, undulant wailing fills the early evening sky, a sound that heralds the approach of a new barrage. For months now, offensives have been launched at this exact time and today is proving no exception. Spoons hastily disguised as airplanes swoop through the air, approaching the drop zone in theatrical, arcing movements. Many are intercepted, knocked clean out of the sky by the flailing, immature defences. When they fall they scatter their precious cargo, turning the battlefield below from a once pristine and sterilised white to a sticky quagmire of browns and greens. After what seems an eternity the planes begin to subside, the wailing quiets, and with a click of the highchair belt, the beleaguered resistance is set free. Both attacker and defender return to their roles as parent and infant with a communal sigh of relief.
Dramatized this account may be but ask any parent and they will tell you that these epic dinner time battles are a regular occurrence. Pitted against their sweet darling, who may yet be unable to walk and talk, many parents are surprised by the strength of their child’s personality even at this young age. These initial expressions of preference, whether it be squeals of delight when presented with mashed carrot or screams of unbridled, broccoli-induced anger, may seem insignificant, yet they mark a person’s first forays into self-determination and the beginning of their own, unique identity. As years pass, food no longer remains the sole vehicle for us to create and display our individual identity, yet it remains one of the most important. This, - according to eminent scientist Claude Fischler – is due to the human relationship to food being constructed from at least two different dimensions. The first, which runs from the biological to the cultural illustrates an interplay between nutritional value and symbolic importance. The second runs from the individual to the collective, resulting in a marriage of both the psychological and the social. This writer would suggest that these two dimensions themselves are not wholly separate but combine in a complex, four-way intersection whenever food choices are made. It is therefore unsurprising that one’s dining habits can contribute significantly to both our personal and perceived identities.
Alongside this colourful and multifaceted journey of self-determination, an individual’s cultural identity - be that the culture they currently inhabit or ancestral heritage which continues to influence their lives - can also be illustrated through the food they consume. The power food has to delineate one’s identity in the eyes of others is no more obviously seen than in this context, where one dissimilar lunchbox filling is enough for a child to be othered as opposed to welcomed and accepted. A common reality heartbreakingly illustrated by Geeta Kothari in her essay ‘If you are what you eat, then what am I?’.
Photo by Pxfuel
It is indisputable then, that food is much more than a mere combination of ingredients. Yet, despite this widespread understanding, cookbooks, the guardians of our cuisines, are habitually viewed simply as collections of recipes. How-to manuals which should be used solely for their instructive content before being returned to the shelf. This over simplistic perception is directly rooted in widespread ignorance concerning the complex set of functions cookbooks perform. Overall, they do significantly more than just provide guidance concerning the production of food. They are both historical texts which record food practices and availability, and important everyday texts that reflect and reproduce the socio-cultural milieu in which they are created by communicating present societal norms.
Regrettably, the cookbook’s ability to contribute to socio-cultural norms has often been weaponised to subtly - but no less forcefully - oppress populations through widespread socialisation. Pressuring individuals to conform to preordained societal norms based predominantly on the race, class, and gender assigned to them at birth. This was perhaps no more apparent than during post-war Britain and America where the freedoms allowed to women during the war – such as employment opportunities – were rescinded. After which women were once again expected to fulfil a one-dimensional domestic role. Titles of cookbooks from this time indicate the extent to which they contributed to the reintroducing of pre-war gender roles. “Cooking for a Man” by A-1 Steak Sauce (1941), "Dishes Men Like" by Worcestershire sauce (1952), and "Husband Tested Recipes" by Pet Milk Co (1949), all directly infer that all women not only should be but are those cooking every meal.
The direct influence of these not-so-subtle gender definitions was enormous. As pointed out by prominent feminist scholar, Betty Friedan, in her seminal work The Feminine Mystique (1963), male advertisers, publishers, and education systems had created an image of women that pigeonholed them into the domestic sphere and stripped them of their own individual identities. As highlighted in the book’s initial chapter, mass adherence to this prevailing American philosophy had led to the average age of women marrying to drop, the portion of women attending college to decrease, and birth-rates to increase. Yet, a widespread trend of unhappiness persisted in this very same cohort, debunking society’s myth that women could only find fulfilment through the domestic role.
Image by Oberholster Venita from Pixabay
The second wave of feminism, inspired in part by The Feminine Mystique, saw women begin to reclaim some autonomy over their lives by discarding the societal roles previously assigned to them. Often the cookbook was rejected, along with cooking itself which - due to its symbolic association with the patriarchy - was seen by some subsets of feminist ideology as a gendered burden. However, other subsets set out to reclaim cooking and the cookbook, with the goal of turning them from a tool used by the oppressor, into a liberating force which espoused new ideals of feminism, femininity, and sexuality.
Cookbook by Dorothy Iannone (1969) is one such example. Written by the famed painter whilst fully immersed in the throes of love with Swiss artist, Dieter Roth. Cookbook is more sketchbook, diary, and scrapbook than the understated title would suggest. In fact, the recipes themselves are near irrelevant, their main purpose being to perform as a backdrop for diaristic musings and bright annotations which weave like eels through recipes, pages, and paragraphs.
“Female was the transitional word from girl” (Strawberry Bavarian Cream) “which I always almost choked on” (Spinach Parmesan).
Yet, the majority of her musings are focused on the love she had for Roth. Not only illustrating the incalculable depths of her passion for him - which would have been seen by many as radical enough in that time - but also her frustration, concern, and apprehensiveness towards her spouse:
“For a man who rejoices in his contradictions, you are quite an absolutist” (Lapin Chasseur).
It is through these raw, eye-catching, and insightful entries that Iannone provides a counternarrative to the binding societal ideals of the time, revealing a life which is undoubtedly feminist in its ability to reject the view that - for women - love must entail the creation of a family, a giving up career aspirations, and a loss of self-identity. Instead, she offers a glimpse of an alternative kind of love. A restless, euphoric, and flawed love which does not impede her independence, identity, or sexuality. This radical counternarrative is presented without conforming to the extreme – and thus easily dismissed - contrary that feminist women should abandon cooking completely. Instead, Cookbook carves out its own niche as an art piece and cultural challenge, marrying strong feminist values with perhaps the most traditional of normative gender roles, demonstrating that one need not reject the passions, or people that they love, to be a feminist.
It must be said that the recently painted picture of domestic drudgery and its ensuing discontentment routinely affected the White, middle-class cohort during this period. However, that is not to say that other groups avoided having cookbooks weaponised against them. In fact, the Black population during the same post-war period was itself beginning to reckon with the damage caused by widespread stereotyping prevalent in both the culinary and marketing industries. These same powerhouses which had successfully pressured wealthy White women into performing a preordained domestic role, also created brands such as "Aunt Jemima" and "Uncle Ben," that projected to White Americans a readily digestible stereotype of African Americans as "natural-born" cooks and servants, as opposed to culinary artists. The effectiveness of this stereotyping was so great that it stole African Americans' ability to self-determine, not through pressuring them to fulfil these roles themselves – as was the case for middle class White women - but by teaching White society to view them as such, irrespective of the Black individual themselves.
These stereotypes alongside deeply entrenched racism ensured that other cultures were often elevated above African American culture. Italians, who to many Americans in early twentieth century were on roughly equal footing with the African American population, began to grow in social esteem during the post war years. The shift in White America’s perception of Italians began as they slowly worked their way into the suburbs alongside the rapidly growing middle class. The growing approval of Italians was made no more apparent than in the domestic culinary sphere where Italian cuisine became an almost overnight sensation. Products, recipes, and cookbooks that labelled themselves as ‘authentically Italian’ were wildly popular across America, indicating that instead of being shunned, Italians and their culture were now synonymous with style, flavour, and desirability. A notion epitomised by the ultimate evidence of acceptance: the spaghetti-induced kiss in 1955’s Lady and the Tramp. It is hard to imagine that the same scene, taking place over a plate of shrimp and grits, would have been received by the White masses quite as readily.
Photo by Jamie on Flickr
Post-war cookbooks - which were almost exclusively published for the White middle class – demonstrate how delineated differences between the characterizations of Italian women and Black women contributed to the growing social gulf between them. The White, domestic wife who was cooking from these books was encouraged to use products and recipes that enabled her to cook like an Italian woman, whilst products and cookbooks used in the creation of African American food emphasized how the products could be used. Ensuring that undoubtedly delicious African American food could be enjoyed by White society, without the White women who cooked it - or the White people eating it - having to identify with, or pay homage to, a people they believed to be inferior.
Better yet, deny their contributions all together. For at that same time as proudly "authentic" Italian food was filling cinemas and flying off shelves, African American food was only made palatable to White society by rebranding it as "Southern". A word whose mere utterance was enough to make the White middle class go misty eyed with imaginations of hot, sticky, and idyllic evenings spent on the white wooden veranda of a grand plantation house. Unsurprisingly, the ‘creation’ of Southern cuisine provided a golden opportunity for White individuals to claim credit for, and profit from Black culture. A fact attested to by the 1935 Southern Cookbook of Fine Old Recipes which alongside racist caricatures, slurs, and poems stated:
‘It should be remembered that not all the good cooks of the Southlands were coloured mammies … Southern city folks are also famous for their hospitality, their flare for entertaining and the magnificence of their palate-tickling culinary efforts. Most of the recipes in this book were gathered from this latter source...’
When association with African Americans was unavoidable, the image of servility served to preserve a safe distance between Black recipe and White domestic cook. The lady cooking in the suburbs might owe the recipe to an African American from the South, but that African American had given it freely and willingly, as was her servile nature. Or so the school of thought generally went. This notion was not however a new one, it was in fact reflected in wider society where African Americans were acceptable but only if they were working in a subservient position to Whites. Aunt Jemima, Uncle Ben, and numerous other marketing firms were all too happy to play along, profitable as this method proved to be, sadly ensuring that the illusion of voluntary Black enslavement and servitude was created in perpetuity.
These images have cast long and almost inescapable shadows for many of today’s African American chefs. All of whom have had to battle against racist tropes and expectations their whole professional lives. Caught between the societal expectation to cook traditionally African American dishes or risk having to face accusations of turning their back on their culture, many African American chefs have struggled for space in a cuisine which their forefathers created. To compound matters Black chefs have had to suffer the indignance of having their food dismissed as unhealthy, unsophisticated, and poorly prepared whilst the White-led narrative of "Southern cuisine" continues to be met with international acclaim.
Fortunately, many African American chefs, historians, and scholars are reclaiming their ancestral history, and producing cookbooks which redefine the narrative surrounding African American food and re-educating a White populace which is all too often woefully and wilfully ignorant. Jubilee by Toni Tipton-Martin is one such cookbook, created on the back of her previous book The Jemima Code, which presented an accurate history of African American cooking through the collation and presentation of her own vast collection of Black authored cookbooks, some of which date from the early 19th century.
Where The Jemima Code (2015) used hard facts to shatter White created fallacies surrounding African American cuisine, Jubilee (2019) uses pots, pans, and produce to illustrate just how inaccurate these deeply rooted misconceptions are. It is near impossible to claim that African American food is unhealthy or one dimensional when Tipton-Martin has provided us with a cookbook brimming with immensely broad culinary interests and recipes. This educative process will prove - for those that undergo it – memorable, enjoyable, and irrevocably transformative. Dish-by-dish and kitchen-by-kitchen, the rigid misconceptions of the past will be shattered as individuals, families and friends are gently taught that African American cuisine isn’t, and has never been, what they thought it was. For this Tipton-Martin has contributed – perhaps more than any other - to a more complete and complex history of African American cooking being understood by all. She has shifted the whole axis of conversation about African American food, tilting it towards one which is more truthful, understanding, and accurate. Ensuring that the cultural effects of Jubilee will be felt for decades to come.
We have seen how the war for identity has been waged back and forth upon the food spattered pages that silently line our kitchens. Yet even this relentless struggle for self-determination pales in comparison to the gargantuan task facing the cookbooks whose purpose is to champion the cuisine of a stateless culture. Here the importance of a national cuisine is magnified tenfold, as typical markers of state identity such as land, language, and international recognition continue to collapse. This is currently no more exemplified than by the Palestinian state whose citizens, due to continued annexation, have long had to resort to constructs other than geography to nurture their sense of regional and national belonging.
National dishes such as Mussakhan, fatta, and hummus, are a source of pride for all Palestinians and can be used to demonstrate and share Palestinian culture with the world. Regional dishes on the other hand such as sayyadiyeh (cod with cumin, lemon, and tahini tarator sauce), provide continued testament to the villages and towns which have been destroyed by the Israeli state. Ensuring that those within Gaza for example (where 70% of the population are refugees) can teach their children about their long distant home. Here food not only provides comfort, and education, but also a form of resistance, a method of cultural celebration which is unique in its incapacity to be silenced, annexed, or destroyed. It would seem then that culinary culture has provided Palestinians with a proving ground to reclaim their country if not physically, then at least psychologically and emotionally. A both literally and metaphorically inexpensive platform for Palestinians to connect with their cultural identity.
Photo by Alfred Kenneally on Unsplash
However, the unique importance Palestinian food has to both individual and state identity also leaves it vulnerable, namely via the process of appropriation. The relabelling of Palestinian foods as Israeli – much like the rebranding of African American food as Southern – can have damming effects on the state of Palestine. What may seem like innocuous mislabelling to others, can prove fatal to Palestinian’s already precarious sense of national identity and clout in the amphitheatre of international politics. Presenting a Palestinian food as Israeli - whether deliberate or not - forms part of the colonial process. One which benefits the Israeli state through the continued rise of culinary Zionism, where the production of Israeli cuisine is used as a good for export; a tool in representing narratives that collectively signify the success of the Zionist project and a method to normalise the ongoing conflict with Palestine.
Of course, it is undeniable that Middle Eastern food, especially the food of Israel is the by-product of an almost unprecedented meeting of cultures. Historical influences from a global population of Jewish immigrants (and indeed many others), have met and melded with a wide array of Arab traditions, products, and cultures. As such, discerning the ‘true’ origin of many dishes is difficult at best, and near impossible at worst. Yet, the truth remains that adoption without acknowledgement is nothing more than appropriation. A process which has seen Israel gradually take over, nationalizing what were originally Arab–Palestinian dishes, most infamously falafel and hummus. These two internationally acclaimed foods have become recognised across the globe as symbols of the Israel state. A cultural theft, which although audacious in its implementation has been met with acceptance in the West. A strange notion indeed when our own cultural markers have been so jealously guarded.
The cookbook’s role in these culture wars has changed dramatically over time. Historically, Israeli cookbooks were written predominately in Hebrew and marketed as tools to help Jewish individuals adapt to living in this new area. An example being the 1936 book sponsored by The Women’s International Zionist Organization which was titled “How to Cook in Palestine”. A book in which the very title demonstrates a recognition of - and subsequent inherent respect for - the state of Palestine. However, a recent increase in Israeli cookbooks written in English for an international audience suggests that the publishers are no longer creating books for domestic consumption. Rather, these cookbooks function as a form of political representation that markets the Israeli state’s cultural successes internationally for the continued benefit and legitimization of their state alone. This often occurs simultaneously alongside a process known as foodwashing where a focus on food, cuisine, and culinary engagement serves as a cover that either enables the appearance of a progressive narrative or offers a means to disguise the violence of the region. The prevalence of foodwashing makes it hard to discern whether Israeli cookbooks that do address, albeit carefully, the issue of Israeli and Palestinian coexistence do so with the intent of demonstrating how food serves as a means to explore and build bridges of communication with the Other or not.
In order to respond to in this arms race for authenticity many explicitly Palestinian cookbooks have been published in the English language. The Gaza Kitchen (2013) by Laila el-Haddad and Maggie Schmitt, Palestine on a Plate (2016) by Joudie Kalla, and The Palestinian Table (2017) by Reem Kassis are not only repositories of recipes, but also political treatises written with the intent of reclaiming their collective cultural goods and sharing them on their own terms for the benefit of their native state. A fact not lost on the authors themselves. The introduction to Palestine on a Plate for example, states that “Palestinian food is an identity.”, whilst Kassis notes that the role of Palestinian cookbooks is in part to counter the move through which the concept of “Israeli food” “erases Palestinians from history”. This erasure is in part driven by a current theme of ‘apolitical’ cookbooks which look to distance themselves from politics by not mentioning the conflict at all. However, in reality this approach is far from apolitical. Rather it further dismisses the Palestinian struggle as a reality, subtly discrediting both the state and its citizens.
As attested to here, past, and present cookbooks do not always make for pretty reading. Far too often they have enabled the fabrication of identities; contributing to the creation of societal moulds into which whole groups of people have been continuously thrust. Yet, cookbooks can also be used as excavators, shattering what was once set in stone and allowing individuals, groups, and whole populations to access long blocked gateways to discussion and understanding. Yet a rare humility is required from all; a desire to listen and understand that a viewpoint once held dear, may in fact be built upon fallacies that do nothing but damage people, food, and culture in general. If the goal is a greater understanding of another’s identity then there is no better place to start than in the crinkled pages of a cookbook. For, as the American civil rights activist Cesar Chavez once famously stated, ‘The people who give you their food, give you their heart.’
Jacob Smith
Jacob is a writer whose focus centres on the ever-evolving relationship between peoples. He has a long-held affinity for food and cooking, a fact chiefly attributable to his mother, Liz. Outside of writing, Jacob is the Social media and Communications Officer for Incomindios UK, the British branch of a Swiss-based indigenous rights organisation and is currently concluding his MA Conflict, Security & Development at the University of Exeter.