Fourteenth International Conference on Food Studies

Abstract

In this study the well-known Flemish cookbook series ‘Ons kookboek’ (1927 – 2013) is analyzed using the concept of frame. Through a concatenation of signs, frames construct a cosmology of food and a script for the self. In the first and earliest frame (‘Cooking for the family’), Ons kookboek evokes a rural cosmos, with the farm, and later the house, as the chronotope aligning the housewife to her alleged duties. She is a student of the book and a servant of the house, subjugated to husband and children, economy and patriarchy. The second and later frame (‘Cooking a culture’) imagines the world of food as a series of national essences, both ‘ours’ (‘Flemish classics’) and ‘theirs’ (exotic cuisines), in the style of a travel brochure, positioning the reader as a tourist propelled by a quest for authenticity. The third and most recent frame (‘Cooking a fashion’) opens space for the new: a modern call to adapt, to innovate, to change with the whims of the times and mimic the style of -television- chefs. The self that is aligned to this frame is the reinvented self that paradoxically needs to move in order to remain. Throughout these shifting frames more and more food is estranged from its ecological roots in order to serve alienating cultural demands.