‘Some people may think I’m a cissy’. Men and Cookery Competitions 1904 – 1954

    11 October 2024

    October 2024

    The male sex had taken to cooking, specifically in this case cake making, a considerable time before this. The first instance I found was at Saint Luke’s Christmas Fair in 1904. Mr. J. Wicking entered a bachelor’s cake and Mr. Trinnick entered a married man’s cake. In this article I track men contestants in cake baking competitions 1904 – 1954.  I look at what cakes they entered, what prizes they got, and their motivations where that was recorded. I end with a comment on Australian masculinity occasioned by men cake-makers.

    Read more.

    Share

    Small Mulch

    Paul van Reyk
    My first essay on food was in Year 10 - people seemed to like it. It took me 56 years to come back to it, so I have a lot of catching up to do. My focus is on Anglo-Saxon settler culinary ways in Australia, roughly from the first days of colonisation to the 1960s - 1970s. I particularly write about stuff that has not been written about before but is very much a part of the Anglo-Saxon Australian table. I hope you enjoy reading as much as I do writing.