Global Connections and Culinary Conceptions of Cultural Identity in Austrian Food Literature of the Nineteenth Century

Abstract:Culinary writings in late nineteenth-century Austria illustrate how food culture provided a space for cultivating notions of collective belonging that were more expansive than the dominant nationalist-inflected discourses of the day. By showcasing foreign recipes and ingredients, cookbooks and magazines invited readers to reimagine the contours of "Austrian-ness" to include tastes and ideas from around the world. Food thus melded day-to- day household routines with the Habsburg project of becoming imperial. Culinary culture worked from within individual homes to expand the meanings of Austrian-ness and solidified Austria's location at the crossroads of the nineteenth century's global exchange of goods and ideas.