TASTES AND TRADITIONS

Food for thought.

What are menus? What do they contain? And, ultimately, why do they matter? Cooke, a professor of English at McGill University, goes on a richly illustrated journey through three centuries to grapple with these questions, and more. Cooke approaches the broad banquet of menus the way a diner might approach a buffet—by sampling and savoring particular items. Her critical gaze falls first on the careful artistic and design choices menus can embody and on the artists like Picasso and Toulouse-Lautrec who have illustrated them. But above all, she writes, menus “pique our interest for the many, rich and varied stories they tell and…for the reminiscences they conjure for original diners and the journeys upon which they allow belated readers to embark.” Menus transcend the ephemeral and in their afterlife illuminate the tastes and traditions of those who came before. Cooke uses dozens of stylish menus as launching points to meditate on the foodways they represent. As belated readers, we can, for example, study world’s fair menus as documents that shed light on national values and priorities or look to the children’s menus commonly found on early-19th-century rail lines for the messages they might tell us about coming of age. Some menus are meant to be mementos of specific events, like a coronation or a meeting between heads of state. These, too, invite the belated reader to consider issues of gastronomy, social history, and more. An adventurous eater (“I myself also have cricket flour on my shelf”), Cooke is an even more undaunted surveyor of foodways past and present who moves across time and culture “both to tempt readers to ask probing questions and to offer satisfying answers to sate their appetites.”

A handsomely illustrated and diverting celebration of a rich if overlooked genre.