How did Tim Tams get their name. Who invented the Chiko Roll? My book A Timeline of Australian Food: from mutton to MasterChef chronicles 150 years of Australian food, from the first Australian cookbook in the 1860s to MasterChef in 2010. It’s available online now or your bookstore can order it for you.
Since man first picked up a piece of flint to cut into an animal carcass, people have been devising various implements to replace fingers in the messy art of eating. Cutlery evolved to include a host of specialised knives, forks and spoons rarely used today.
Back in 1929, did Brisbane’s Italians really put dessicated coconut on their risotto? And were the smart set already using chopsticks in Chinese restaurants. A look at multicultural dining in Brisbane on the eve of the Great Depression.
Whipping up a curry was not a sign of multiculturalism in the 1950s. Indeed, curry had been part of the British cookery tradition since the 18th century, when Brits posted to the colonial outpost of India embraced spicy local dishes.
If you’ve followed an old link to this site you may be a little surprised (or even disappointed) with what you’ve found here. This site does have some posts about food history, but my food timeline now has its own address. There’s a link in this post.
Toothpicks have a long history. Bronze toothpicks have been found in prehistoric graves, while examples made of wood or precious metals were common in ancient Greece and Rome. In the 1930s, cocktail teasers – the ubiquitous cubes of cheese speared on a stick with a cocktail onion – made their first appearance.
This is the story of a family business that began with one small shop, opened by a Scottish baker in Adelaide’s rough and ready colonial days. I wrote the company history for Balfours in 2018 but the full text was never published. There’s a link to it below.
Camp Pie probably isn’t uniquely Australian. At least in its tinned version it is recorded in Britain long before being manufactured here. But for many years it was one of our local specialties.
“I’m grossly offended by the insinuation I have some personal agenda in interfering with your personal life,” So began the letter I found concealed within a book from our apartment building’s book exchange. I had to know more.
For decades, footy food mainly meant pies. In Victoria, it was a relationship assiduously fostered by the state’s best-selling brand, Four ‘n Twenty. And it took a long time to change.
Messrs. Elliott and Lindsay acquired the Excelsior Brewery in Hay in 1873, renaming it the Red Lion Brewery. Elliott went on to open several breweries under the Red Lion name, but came to an unfortunate end on Cup Day in 1895.
In the 1950s it wasn’t quite dining as we know it – only a select few Melbourne restaurants were legally able to serve a glass of wine with your meal. And you might come across the odd singing waiter.
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