Gourmet cooking

Gourmet cooking has now become an food industry classification as well as just a culinary and cultural ideal. The rise in the numbers of people interested in cooking refined quality food has accelerated in recent years, due to the proliferation of gourmet cooking recipes, television shows, and an overall awareness of healthy eating and alternative national cuisines. There are a number of cooking magazine publications that are dedicated to gourmet food recipes, and many others who write about gourmet food and culture alongside health related and easy to cook recipes.

The publication of gourmet recipes goes back a long way, with the very earliest cookbooks on record being dedicated to gourmet or haute cuisine. At first, cookbooks were probably just an attempt to keep a record of recipes in a format where they could also be given to other people for reproduction. Today, however, cookbooks and cooking magazines concern themselves with the entire spectrum of food culture and nutritional information. The earliest surviving recipe collection in Europe is the ‘De re coquinaria’, written and compiled in Latin in the first century AD. Medieval recipes have survived from about 1300, with German and French books such as ‘Daz buch von guter spise (”The Book of Good Food”)’ and ‘Le Viandier (”The Provisioner”)’ coming from the 14th century.

While the very first recorded recipes were of gourmet food, the 20th century saw cooking books become much more practical and basic in nature. It is only since the 1980s that the gourmet culture has become strong enough to support the publication of large scale and dedicated cookbooks and gourmet magazines. The word gourmet comes from a French term ‘taste-vin’, translated as a wine broker, and the gourmet culture has always been strong in France. The gourmet industry has now become a global phenomena however, with many of the new magazines being published all over the world. The magazine ‘Gourmet’ is perhaps the most popular, and regularly includes specialised recipies alongside food and nutritional information, wine information and other columns relating to aspects of gourmet culture.

The rising interest in good food comes from many different sources. A globalisation of taste and an abundance of food media like ‘Nigela express’ and ‘Gourmet’ magazine are two of the main ones. As people continue to be attracted to haute cuisine and gourmet culture, we are sure to see an even greater abundance of dedicated gourmet cookbooks and magazines hit the shelves