What's Cooking in America?

Abstract

This study looks at cookbooks published in the United States as narrators of ethnicity. It contends that cookbooks are social texts through which ethnic culinary knowledge is articulated into the dominant culture. Cookbooks reveal the means through which ethnicity is detached from its holders, modified by agencies of the dominant culture and reassigned an ethnic version. Through this process, food writers reduce ethnicity to the level of practical knowledge made available for sharing among people of various backgrounds. The study of the propagation of ethnic culinary culture in America is of particular interest because its discipline entails a changing negotiation about American (mainstream) and ethnic cuisines.

Keywords:

• cookbooks
• ethnicity
• immigrants
• ethnic groups
• culinary knowledge