A 2000 year old curry ? A culinary journey from South Asia to South East Asia
31 March 2025

March 2025 In July 2023 a team of archaeolgists announced that they had found evidence at Oc Eo, an archaeological site in South Vietnam dating back 2000 years, of the use …

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Small Mulch


Caramel, Potatoes,  and Liver and Bacon. Victoria Department of Public Instruction Cookery Instruction Cards 1930
29 March 2025

March 2025 Sometime between 1887 – 1906  the Victorian Department of Public Instruction published a set of 30 Cookery Instruction Cards. A set cost 1 shilling and individual cards could be …

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Meat and a skewer. One hundred years of the kebab at the multi culinary Australian Table
29 March 2025

March 2025 I have wanted for some time to write about elements of South Asian cuisines other than curry. For instance, the tandoor, the thali, sweet confections like gulab jamun, and …

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Parmesan Cheese, the early years 1830 – 1880. A vignette
23 March 2025

March 2025 As I was dusting Parmesan cheese onto my spaghetti Bolognaise the other night I fell to wondering what the backstory of Parmesan in Australia was. When was it first …

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Billycan in my hand. Australian folk songs about food
22 March 2025

2025 The unofficial Australian national song, ‘Waltzing Matilda’ is about a swagman (an itinerant) stealing a sheep that has come to drink from the billabong at which the swaggie has set …

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Pineapples, Pineapples, Pineapples. The Golden Circle Tropical Recipe Book
20 March 2025

20 March 2025 It’s the most vibrantly coloured cookery book in my collection – the Golden Circle Tropical Recipe Book. Across its 96 pages it gives recipes for using pineapple in …

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Carmen curlers, extra marital lovers, and some damn good food. The quartet of Bernard King’s 1977 seasonal cookbooks as camp texts.
12 March 2025

March 2025 Through the course of 1977 Celebrity Chef Bernard King released a quartet of cookbooks, one for each season beginning with Autumn. King was an openly camp gay man on …

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Diggings 10 March 2045
10 March 2025

Pies to pavlovas. The culinary landscape of the Australian Hostess Cookbook (1969) In I969 the Australian Hostess Cookbook was published, edited by Hanna Pan. The Cookbook is in the form of …

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Fags and Dykes at the Table of Love. Finger-food from a meal in progress.
8 March 2025

A paper presented at the 2nd Australia’s Homosexual Histories Conference at the University of Melbourne, 5-6 November 1999 Two moments in the global history of fags, dykes and food resonate across …

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Kangaroo Tail Soup and Warrenheip Gin. A sixpenny dinner at the Colonial Exhibition of 1886
7 March 2025

March 2025 The Australian Agents-General propose to startle the culinary connoisseurs of London with a series of sixpenny dinners at the Colonial Exhibition of 1886, the viands being exclusively Australian. The …

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Variations On A Theme.  Homemade Sausage Rolls 1864 – 1964
7 March 2025

March 2025 In 1864 Edward Abbott gave a perfunctory description of the sausage roll, you can hardly call it a recipe, in The English and Australian Cookery Book. Cookery for the …

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‘The fortunate and indefatigable apothecary of Pitt-street’. J. Tawell Apothecary, Druggist, and Spice-Dealer
4 March 2025

July 2024 Since first encountering them I have been fascinated by apothecaries in the early years of the colonies and the part they played in the foodways. This advertisement of 21 …

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‘Cooking electrically is Simple, Safe, Speedy and Certain’. Electrical Association of Women Cookery Book 1938
3 March 2025

March 2025 The Electrical Association for Women (EAW from here) was formed in March 1934 by Florence Violet McKenzie based on a similar British Association. The EAW was a membership-based organisation. …

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