One continuous picnic : a gastronomic history of Australia / Michael Symons ; foreword by Gay Bilson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Symons, Michael, 1945- author.

Contributor:

Bilson, Gay, writer of foreword.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Food--History.

Food.

Cooking, Australian--History.

Cooking, Australian.

Food habits--Australia--History.

Food habits.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xviii, 366 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

Second edition.

Place of Publication:

Carlton, Victoria : Melbourne University Press, 2007.

Summary:

2007 marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first publication of One Continuous Picnic, a frequently acclaimed Australian classic on the history of eating in Australia. The text remains gratifyingly accurate and prescient, and has helped to shape subsequent developments in food in Australia. Until recently, historians have tended to overlook eating, and yet, through meat pies and lamingtons, Symons tells the history of Australia gastronomically. He challenges myths such as that Australia is 'too young' for a national cuisine, and that immigration caused the restaurant boom. Symons shows us that Australia is unique because its citizens have not developed a true contact with the land, have not had a peasant society. Australians have enjoyed plenty to eat, but food had to be portable: witness the weekly rations of mutton, flour, tea and sugar that made early settlers a mobile army clearing a whole continent; and the tins of jam, condensed milk, camp pie and bottles of tomato sauce and beer that turned its citizens into early suburbanites. By the time of screw-top riesling, takeaway chicken and frozen puff pastry, Australians were hypnotised consumers, on one continuous picnic. But good food has never come from factory farms, process lines, supermarkets and fast-food chains. Only when we enjoy a diet of fresh, local produce treated with proper respect, when we learn from peasants, might we at last have found a national cuisine and cultivated a continent.

Contents:

Intro

Title

Copyright

Contents

Foreword

Preface to the new edition

Preface to the first edition

Introduction: The uncultivated continent

Part I: History Without Peasants

1 The English heritage

The taste for home

2 Meat three times a day

Eating and drinking in 1839

3 The Aristologist

The next cookery books

Part II: Feeding the City

How we entertained a prince

4 Metropolitan paradise

The city markets

5 The Chinese exception

The tea and scones of Quong Tart

6 The tyranny of transport

Granny Smith

7 The first food factories

Mr MacRobertson

8 Bohemian restaurants

Let's go to Fasoli's

9 Family goodness

Vegemite

10 Dainty cooks and sudden drinkers

The pavlova

Part III: Fresh from the Freezer

Sliced white

11 The first munition

Coca-colonisation

12 Car park shopping

Golden Circle pineapple

13 The industrial kitchen

Frozen food

Part IV: The Coming of the Quiche

The great wine dinner

14 Oh, for a French wife!

Chefs to the court of Whitlam

15 Hard tomatoes for hard times

A fresh start

16 The art of eating in Australia

Part V: The Widening Gap

Return of the Jersey cows

17 Free the market!

Notes on sources

Select bibliography

Index.

Notes:

First published: Adelaide : Duck Press, 1982.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 344-352) and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780522871364

0522871364

OCLC:

1496394771