Memories of Recipes in Twentieth-Century Irish Cookbooks

This paper analyses and categorises the ways in which authors and their publishers have chosen to include the author’s culinary, food and personal memories within the texts of twenty twentieth century Irish Cookbooks. Cookbooks are subjects of culinary nostalgia with the reading of a recipe capable of triggering in the reader a memory of a meal enjoyed, a dish cooked in times past by a loved one, or recollections of the disgust felt for a food hated in childhood. Independent from the reader, the culinary memories of the author can be captured at the time of publication in the text of their cookbook. The recipes of community cookbooks may include personal memories of contributors, cookbooks authored by professional chefs frequently include the storytelling of their kitchen careers, while the texts of domestic science can be devoid of any personal reminisces. Chains may be formed by these memories where authors have made explicit references to other authors’ recipes, or where a reading of the text of recipes suggests an implicit memory relationship between cookbooks. Timelines of autobiographical culinary recollections can be explored in the context using of memory to locate a recipe in place and time. This analysis aims to shed light on an informal network of culinary memories within and between the recipes of Irish Cookbooks that traces the exchange of culinary knowledge from author to author.