Tutti a tavola

Christopher Menz

Cookery books by immigrants or their descendants on the food of their homelands form a rich sub-genre of migration literature. Several books have been published in recent decades that celebrate the food of Greek, French, Chinese, and German immigrants. Clearly, old food habits die hard. Even when other aspects of an immigrant’s culture have long been abandoned – language, mores, dress – culinary tastes often endure. I well remember meals in 1970s Adelaide with Lachsschinken, Mettwurst, Heringssalat, Pumpernickel, and rye bread, all a remnant of my father’s German ancestry. Nothing unusual about that, except that his great-grandparents had settled in Adelaide in 1849. Even though they assimilated quickly, their descendants retained their taste for German tucker. On the other hand, the food they made and sold for a living – in 1850 my great-great-grandmother established a store that became a large biscuit and confectionery business – was firmly allied to the Anglo food tastes of their customers (though some of their manufacturing equipment was indeed German).