4 April 2024Lately I have become interested in how recipes published in cookery print media - columns and feature articles in newspapers and magazines, cookery books – shaped Australians’ understanding …
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Big Mulch
Long form articles published and unpublished
Paul van Reyk March 2024One of the unexplored areas of Australian culinary history is the place of colonial nurserymen (and the documentary evidence is that they were all men) in …
Paul van ReykThe Aristologist: vol 14: p 9- 35. Napier, New Zealand. 2023Recently my culinary curiosity has been circling around the story of the eggplant in Australia. The fat, glossy …
February 2024For the last twenty years I have been a food historian/ food writer focusing on Australian cuisine. In the course of doing research for my book True to the …
The Rabbit: Only fit for pies or curries?
2 January 2024
December 2023Rabbits are a dry meat, only fit for pies or curries; and excellent served as the latter …Abbott, Edward, The English and Australian Cookery Book: Cookery for the Many, …
More than salad dressing and frying fish: The culinary uses of olives and olive oil in Australia 1865 – 1949
19 December 2023
October 2023'Contrary to popular belief olive oil was fairly common in many colonial kitchens ... While olive oil was sold, used and marketed for medicinal purposes by chemists it was predominantly …
Tripe: more than just white sauce
23 November 2023
November 2023I had occasion lately to bring up the subject of tripe with my coffee-and-dog-walking crew - I’d recently seen the bible/book version of it in a Chinese butchery. I …
November 2023I grew up with condensed milk till my early adolescent years. In Sri Lanka, home for the first 10 years of my life, I got my hit mainly from …
Thomas Shepherd – ‘the oldest professed gardener in the Colony’
4 November 2023
October 2023Thomas Shepherd is one of the contributors to the early development of the Australian foodscape who has been left out of its history. This article seeks to redress …
Pineapple with the lot
12 October 2023
October 2023It’s often said that Australians will add pineapple to anything foodwise, the classic Aussie hamburger, chops on the barbie, pineapple on pizza being proffered as evidence The last is …
August 2023The guava is my favourite fruit firmly established in this position from my childhood days in Sri Lanka picking guavas from trees of our neighbours. It was the combination …
Not a feed for a hungry man: a sketch of okra in Australia
18 August 2023
2023Okra are seen in the markets more and more but are a relative newcomer.The Australian Women’s Weekly 1981The story of Anglo-Celtic Australian cuisine from the first days of the colony …
August 2023No farm should be without rosellas. They are easily grown, they bear heavily, they make an excellent preserve, and are infinitely preferred to the mulberry for puddings. The fruit …