Aunty Sylvie’s Sponge: Foodmaking, Cookbooks and Nostalgia

Why does foodmaking matter? It does partly because it holds within it so much of everyday life, thought and activity across time, place and generation. This article explores women’s embodied foodmaking knowledge as ‘thoughtful practice’. It examines cookbooks as a form of nostalgia and explores aspects of gustatory nostalgia in the creation of ‘manuscript’ cookbooks and their variation in the twenty-first century. It also reconstructs, in part, the history of a family – of sisters, aunts, grandmothers, mothers, daughters – as told through cookbooks and, in particular, a recipe for sponge cake.