The role of food writing and publishing in promoting and resisting change in Australia and New Zealand in the 1920s

Cultural histories suggest that the 1920s were an important decade in the process of modernisation of many aspects of life in Australia and New Zealand. Moreover, Australasia was not just the passive receptacle for influences and approaches from abroad but was instead, as David Carter has found, ‘a site of and for modernisation in its own right’ (2008: 74.1). There was, however, also resistance to these changes. In culinary terms, the 1920s did witness a number of new foods, products, recipes and cooking technologies both created in Australasia and introduced to local consumers from overseas, but a significant number of existing ingredients, meals and food preparation methods also endured alongside these innovations. At times, the latest culinary ideas were energetically contested, as were the publications that promoted them. This paper focuses at Australasian food writing in the 1920s to investigate how food writers, and the publications they wrote for, took an active role in championing and resisting change in both the culinary and wider arena at this time, and how readers contributed to this discussion. In doing so, this historically-based study provides an example of how we can define and discuss the way writers can, and do, engage with the issues that are important to readers.