Sunday, September 05, 2010
Books Australian Cooking

Australian Cooking

  1. A Look at Yesteryear: Early Australian Cooking - Valerie McKenzie and Joyce Allen, 1980. A history of the way that the early cooks in all parts of the country created the food traditions of Australia with whatever was available to them, both in the towns and in the rural areas.
  2. The Passing Parade of Picnics and Pleasures: Early Australian Times - Valerie McKenzie, 1982. "From the lavish picnic to the simple camp-fire gatherings, our ancestors discovered the pleasures of their surroundings - indeed a parade of picnics and pleasures ...".
  3. A Good Plain Cook: an edible history of Queensland - S. Addison & J. McKay, 1985. A wonderful collection of recipes from all eras of Queensland's history, mixed with photographs, newspaper extracts, and advertisements from the time.
  4. Australian Colonial Cookery - Penelope Vigar, 1977. A history of Australian food, cooking and pioneer life, with recipes, ink sketches and newspaper advertisements from the 19th century.
  5. Bon Appétit - Ian Parmenter, 1993. The book from the Australian ABC TV series, Consuming Passions.
  6. Classic Country Cooking - Lady Flo Bjelke-Petersen, 1992. Good plain home-style cooking from the wife of a former Premier of Queensland (leader of the state government). Her most famous recipe is for pumpkin scones.
  7. Convicted Tastes: food in Australia - R. Beckett, 1984. The story of how Australians have fed themselves since 1788, the year of our first permanent European settlement.
  8. Cookery the Australian Way - Shirley Cameron and Suzanne Russell, 2003 (1st edition, 1966). It has been used as a textbook in schools and colleges and in kitchens for years after the person has left school. It is not easy to find in second hand bookstores or online - people keep their copy! It has hundreds of recipes. If you have this book, you don't need any other to read recipes for Australian food.
  9. C.W.A. Cookbooks - Various Country Women's Association (C.W.A.) branches at both state and local level around Australia have published collections of recipes from their members and their communities. These include: Bundaberg branch in Queensland (first published in 1928 and re-published in revised editions until at least 1986), the Esk Valley branch in Tasmania, and the New South Wales state branch (first published in 1937 and in print ever since).
  10. Don Dunstan's Cookbook - Don Dunstan, 1976. Compiled by a former Premier of South Australia, it is a fascinating insight into food in the 1970s in South Australia.
  11. Easy Australian Style - Modern Multicultural Dining - from the series published by the Australian Women's Weekly.
  12. Outback Cooking in the Camp Oven - Jack & Reg Absalom, 1982. A camp oven is a deep iron pot with a close-fitting lid. It is placed in the coals of a campfire, and more coals are shovelled on the top. The food then cooks from all sides, just like in an indoor oven. The cooking part is easy - getting the fire just right takes practice.
  13. Rabbit on a Shovel - 'Lummo', 1993. More than 100 basic bush recipes for Aussies cooking around the campfire.
  14. The 200 Years History of Australian Cooking - 1988. There are two parts to this publication, each in a separate book. The Feature book is a coffee-table format book which contains the recipes with photographs, plus the history of Australian cooking - the best summary that I have found. The Kitchen edition is a smaller-format book that contains all the recipes - easy to handle in the kitchen.
  15. The Australian Country Kitchen - Helen Vellacott, 1995. The subtitle of this book is "A book of fine old recipes for contemporary cooks." Like most of the books listed here, this one also has some wonderful snippets of information and advice from the old books about cooking, foods, and life in general.
  16. The Australian Heritage Cookbook. Recipes with an Australian flavour for all occasions - with lavish numbers of colour photographs of the food and the country.
  17. The Australian Hostess Cookbook - Hanna Pan, 1969. 40 society hostesses from around Australia share their favourite party recipes and menus.
  18. The Australian Women's Weekly Cookbook series. Many different titles in this series - good food, beautifully illustrated. Theme books like "Starters and Soups", "Almost Vegetarian", "Chinese", "Easy Thai Style", "Chocolate", etc.
  19. The Baby Boomers' Cookbook - Helen Townsend, 1991. Recipes for those who grew up in Australia in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s - some of which are better forgotten. How our food has changed since then!!
  20. The Colonial Cook Book: The Recipes of a By-Gone Australia - edited by Alison Burt, late 1960s. This was a reprint of the first Australian Cook Book, written by Edward Abbott and published in 1846.
  21. The Country Women's Association Cook Book - 70 years in the kitchen - CWA of New South Wales, first published in 1937 and in print ever since - now into the 2009 edition. It is a marvellous collection of old recipes from the country areas of New South Wales in over 350 pages.
  22. The New Classics: food we love today - The Australian Women's Weekly series, 2005. These recipes illustrate the breadth of sources from which our modern Australian cooking has developed - from Asia, from Africa, and from parts of Europe other than the United Kingdom.
  23. The Proud Tradition of Australian Cooking - Jan Berry & Helen Wearing-Smith, 1993. A collection of recipes for the 1920s and 1930s, with illustrations of advertisements from those years. The authors have updated some of the ingredients, which is a pity, but it does not spoil the overall effect.
  24. The Terrace Times Minimum Effort Maximum Effect Australian Cookbook - Helen Arbib, 1990. This is her tenth cookbook, all with The Terrace Times theme. This one contains a collection of old Australian recipes from cookbooks dating back to 1864.
  25. Yum - Terry Durack, 1996. As much a journey through his life and through his eating and cooking experiences as it is a recipe book - but a fascinating read and with interesting illustrations - starting with the front cover.

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