Eat your history: the book

Sydney Living Museums and our resident gastronomer, Jacqui Newling, have published Eat your history: stories and recipes from Australian kitchens, a beautifully curated book to read and cook from.

Visually rich, and featuring over forty recipes and myriad stories, the book shares forgotten tastes, lost techniques, and delicious culinary treasures discovered through historic kitchens, collection items, cookbooks, menus and manuscripts, and the histories of Sydney Living Museums’ cherished houses and heritage places.  

“There is a popular belief that Australia lacks a food culture or an identifiable national cuisine. Yet our history is replete with food stories, and our food and the way we eat are products of our past. What we eat and the tastes we accept are dictated by environmental and cultural – and therefore historical, political, economic and social – factors; it has been this way throughout history,” says Jacqui in her introduction to Eat Your history.

My role as curator and resident gastronomer at Sydney Living Museums has allowed me to explore our food heritage and to share some of the stories and recipes of those who helped to create our history. Gone are the days when history was dictated and dominated by wealthy white men. Influential characters such as John Macarthur and William Charles Wentworth have their places in this book, but so do their wives, their servants and their homes.

“ Jacqui picks through the chipped and broken crockery and fine silverware found in the kitchens and dining rooms of the houses that are cared for by Sydney Living Museums to tell the story of how we, as a nation, have eaten” says Barbara Sweeney, Sydneysider and food writer.

“[Jacqui] has brought a slice of history alive and her book promises many happy and engaged hours of reading. That you can read it as well as bake from it is a happy prospect .”

Eat your history is available online and in our museum shops for $49.99 (RRP)