Nathalie Cooke's Latest Book: Tastes and Traditions
Tastes and Traditions: A Journey Through Menu History by听Professor Nathalie Cooke
Published by Reaktion Books
Inviting readers on a visual and intellectual feast, 听(Reaktion Books, 2025)听explores centuries and continents through the lens of menus. Beyond a mere list of dishes, menus serve as peepholes into broad social trends, culinary innovations, precise moments in history and even our evolving sense of health and fulfilment. From menus printed for prisoners of war dreaming of meals they could never eat to royals feasting on state dinners shaped to reinforce authority and national identity, Cooke explores the emotional and symbolic purposes menus serve.
While readers will certainly enjoy the lavish illustrations, Cooke also draws their attention to important stories emerging from between and around the lines of menu text. She reveals how ideas of health and wellness have shifted over time, from listing Coca-Cola as a nutritional drink in the 1930s to promotions of cigarettes and cigars in menus of the 1960s.
Darra Goldstein, founding editor of Gastronomica and editor-in-chief of The Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Food Studies, observes, 鈥�This dazzling volume guides us through several centuries of menus that reflect changing tastes and听societal norms. [鈥 From luxury trains to refugee ships, from high-end restaurants to prison bills of fare, the menus in Tastes and Traditions go far beyond gastronomy to explore important issues of aesthetics, social history, marketing and desire.鈥�
A beautifully produced and intellectually rigorous work, Cooke鈥檚 Tastes and Traditions proves that menus are not just听ephemera. Rather, they are narratives of taste, time, and transformation.
Don't miss Nathalie Cooke's talk "What Stories Can Menus Tell?"听at the听Westmount Public Library on September 28, 2 pm.听
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