From Kai to Kiwi Kitchen: New Zealand Culinary Traditions and Cookbooks

In the past two decades, cuisine and culinary history have attracted increasing attention. Recipes are both sensitive markers of the socio-economic conditions of their times and written representations 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. Acknowledgement of their potential contribution to our understanding of culinary history has been slow. From Kai to Kiwi Kitchen is a first in its field. This book opens with the three lectures presented by Helen Leach at Canterbury University in 2008, and also broadcast on New Zealand's National Radio. The second part of the book is comprised of essays by a number of contributors 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 19th century and the fate of the