Vardagslivets medialisering Mat och medier i privata receptsamlingar

Abstract

The Medialization of Everyday Life. Food and media in manuscript cookbooks

This article describes and analyses foodways and media in everyday life, through collections of recipes and media material in private manuscript cookbooks. The research is based on about 200 private manuscript cookbooks from the south of Sweden, created from the late 19th century to the middle of the 20th century. This period saw great changes in foodways as well as media use. Many people moved from the countryside to the cities, new technologies were introduced in the food industry as well as in private kitchens and new ingredients and dishes were imported. Newspapers and weeklies became guides in this new world of food, and the recipes in manuscript cookbooks were often collected from the papers.

The article shows that early cookbooks were compilations of recipes from the collector’s social networks of family, friends and neighbours. Gradually the sources of the recipes shifted from social networks to media. Recipes in the cookbooks from the 20th century were often cut or copied from papers or taken from radio or television. These recipes introduced new ingredients and foreign dishes, but also traditional everyday recipes and basic kitchen tasks. Recipes from the media helped the collectors to adopt new ways of cooking, but also cooking in its most basic form, e.g. how to fry. The collecting women did not learn as much from their mothers and social network, they got their recipes and skills from papers and published cookbooks.