Before we eat

Before we eat:
A delicious slice of Tasmania’s culinary life
By Paul County and Bernard Lloyd
Published by The Culinary Historians of Tasmania
ISBN 0-646-42903-5

This is not a cookbook. Not a recipe in sight. Instead a glorious potage of what makes Tassie cuisine, the people who make it, and in slices of history, the people who helped make it — from the Aboriginal earliest inhabitants to the early settlers, determined to create an Antipodean England, to today when immigrants from all around the globe have put down roots here and added their touch of individuality.

Tasmanians drink more beer than anywhere else in Australia, and don’t drink as much wine (at least they didn’t in the 1995 National Nutrition Survey). But ate far more potatoes than everyone else in Australia. Food scientist Barbara Santich unearthed these statistics for her foreword to this delightful book. Tasmania still retains its own character, culture and distinctly different culinary history, all of which are featured.

Early advertisements are rivetting: “Lovely Women are Not Flat-Chested!’ trumpets one, offering Dr Falliere’s “Flesh-Food” to fill scrawny outlines. Early prices are tempting: Purity Food Markets (remember them?) offering Edgell’s Green Beans at 1/9d a tin and Bushell’s sweetened coffee and chicory for just 2/5d a bottle. Historical snippets from all eras add up to a highly entertaining as well as informative book. You don’t have to be a ‘foodie’ in the modern sense to eat it up.

Undoubted highlight is the series of Paul County photographic portraits, in “the spirit of visual puns, quirky juxtapositions and historical conjunctions” to quote the inside jacket blurb. Enjoy.

And for a taste of the quirky photography in this delicious book click here. PH

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