Our Grandmas Didn´t Just Eat Porridge

• Published in: Kultura (Skopje) Vol. 5; no. 9; pp. 113 - 122
• Main Author: Kristina Zábrodská (Šemberová)
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: MI-AN Publishing 01.08.2015
• Subjects: Gastronomy, Czechoslovakia, 1918 – 1938, family food, eating habits, womens magazines
• ISSN: 1857-7717; 1857-7725

What are your favourite meals? Did you eat them at your grandma’s table? The meals we consume in our early childhood form our eating habits for the rest of our lives as well as our attitudes towards our national cuisine. Our grandma´s cuisine is usually seen as traditional, rich in nutrition and tasty. Its roots and recipes can be traced back to past generations. But how can we identify the origins of this food? Contemporary cookbooks and media, both widely read and available during the 1920s – 1930s, provide ideal sources. This paper looks at articles dealing with gastronomy topics in Czech lifestyle magazines focused on women from 1918 – 1938. This period was very significant in the history of the Czech Republic, as it relates to an era of independence, democracy and freedom between the wars. Czechoslovakia at that time was the leading democratic republic in Central Europe, especially in politics, the economy and gastronomy. Prague, along with Paris and Vienna, was one of the most interesting and innovative culinary European cities. Did the media reflect the development and changes in the cuisine of this period? How did they form the nutrition and cooking habits of the postwar generation? This paper answers such questions through an analysis of articles in eight different Czech magazines and provides an outline of the topics, trends and gastronomical landscape of Czech households during this time. The published recipes and food articles found not only give an insight into daily life in the 1920s and 1930s, but also offer tips on how to survive through years of financial crisis, an issue highly relevant to Europeans today.