Cookbook Analysis Guide

Pick a book from here, but make sure it’s not one we’ve already discussed. It is well worth your time to find a book that piques your interest somehow. Spending 5-10 minutes finding a book that catches your eye will make the assignment MUCH easier and more effective as a learning exercise. The assignment demo video is posted on the YouTube Channel, and you can watch it here.

Basic Goals

• ~600-800 words
• Describe what your cookbook tells us about American Culture/Food/Cuisine
• Apply the readings and our discussions to your analysis of a historic cookbook
• Have some fun looking through a primary source for food history! This is meant to be more of a fun assignment than a laborious analysis.

Questions to ask your cookbook and write about:

• What is your overall impression of the cookbook? What is most interesting? Unexpected?
• What kind of assumptions does the author(s) make about cooking/cuisine/food?
• Who is the intended audience? What should they know? What should they care about?
• What kind of larger themes do the cookbooks appeal to (exotic, health, comfort, regional, national, classical, etc)?
• What are the various “national” or “ethnic” influences?
• Do you get a sense of where the recipes came from?
• What kinds of ingredients and recipes appear? What does NOT appear that you might have expected?
• How much does history or tradition matter to the recipes?
• What does it say about “American Food”?
• Any other thoughts or reflections on your experience looking through your cookbook?

References and Citations

Anything in your text that refers to a specific quote or idea should a have parenthetical page reference. These show the reader how you are using the book in your analysis

For example: The author claims that food is no longer good for us (13). The author of the book is implied since we only have one source. If you are citing other texts from class, use author/date format (Gibbs, 75).

Don’t forget your learning assessment (1-8 scale)

At the end of your cookbook analysis, evaluate your own effort. Use half points if you’d like.

• 1-2: Marginal. Skimmed the cookbook quickly and your analysis provides a coherent but rather simplistic description of its contents.
• 3-4: Fine. Read the cookbook unevenly, but your analysis shows that you’re starting to think critically about the questions above.
• 5-6: Very good. Read the cookbook carefully, with partial answers to the above questions.
• 7-8: Excellent. This would mean that you spent significant time with your cookbook, and wrote up an original, expressive, and sophisticated analysis of what we can learn about American food from it.

Questions

You are ALWAYS welcome to use email or better yet Slack for questions or clarifications. Writing is hard enough, and virtually impossible when you’re not sure what you’re trying to do. Please get in touch!