From Kai to Kiwi Kitchen

Edited by Helen M. Leach

In From Kai to Kiwi Kitchen, the contributors explore New Zealand’s
cuisine and culinary history from early Polynesian cooking and
colonial cookery to the present day.

Much of the information they present is based on studies of cookbooks from the past, especially those produced as community fundraisers. The result is a food history anthology that will entertain anyone interested in food, New Zealand history or domestic culture.

In the past two decades, cuisine and culinary history have attracted increasing attention, with both popular and academic books reflecting the growth of interest. Recipes are both sensitive markers of the conditions of their times and a record of a culture’s culinary repertoire yet, despite the vast number of cookbooks that survive, they have not been the primary focus of research projects.

The book opens with the three Macmillan Brown Lectures given by Helen Leach at Canterbury University in 2008 and broadcast on National Radio in 2009. The second part consists of essays by a number of contributors, including food writer Michael Symons, from a major research project that looked at Kiwi cookbooks, supported by the Marsden Fund.

The essays explore several themes in New Zealand’s food history, including the  adaptation of British and Maori culinary traditions in the nineteenth century and the fate of the Maori tradition in the twentieth, external infl uences on New Zealand cookery (previously thought to be predominantly British until after World War II), the transmission of cookery knowledge between and within generations, the impact of changing technology on cooking methods and recipes, nutritional advice in community cookbooks, and the transition from modernism to postmodernism, as seen in the cookbooks of Aunt Daisy and Lois Daish.

Helen Leach is Emeritus Professor of Anthropology at the University of Otago. Her most recent book, The Pavlova Story: A Slice of New Zealand’s Culinary History (Otago University Press, 2008), was a finalist in the Montana Book Awards in 2009.

Otago University Press, $40.00
9781877372759