Abstract

The publication of Martha Crawford’s (1830-1909) Foreign Cookery 造洋飯書 in 1866 marks the first time in culinary history that a cookbook of non-Chinese recipes was published in Chinese language. Although Crawford’s intention was less to promote cultural exchange as to instruct her Chinese servants how to properly prepare her dinners, the book’s eventual popularity with Chinese readers offers a glimpse into the potential importance of cookbooks as engines of culture. Curiously, despite its importance, this text has been consistently overlooked by academics conducting research on Crawford or gastronomy. The limited academic attention that the cookbook has received has not introduced readers to its content, and the handful of articles that mention the text are unanimous in their Sino-centric approach, lacking substantial discussion of the cultural context from which Crawford drew her culinary inspirations.
This study is an attempt to address the above insufficiencies. By resituating Foreign Cookery within global gastronomic history and highlighting some of the more interesting aspects of its content, my aim is twofold. First, I am interested in learning more about Crawford as a person through her selection of recipes to include in her cookbook. By considering such factors as the author’s upbringing, the development of the practice of recipe writing at the time, and the discrepancies between British, American, and regional Alabama cuisines, I intend to establish a parallel between food and identity and to show how recipe writing can be read as an extension of cultural affiliation. Secondly, I would like to further establish the cultural significance of food and eating from a socio-historical perspective. In particular, through using Foreign Cookery as a case study, I seek to comment on the extent to which cookbooks can be read as vessels that facilitate different cultural dialogues and the construction of identity.