Food recommendations, tradition and change in a Flemish cookbook: Ons Kookboek, 1920–2000

The first edition of Ons Kookboek (Our Cookbook), also known as ‘the culinary bible of Flanders’, was published in 1927 by the Belgian Women Farmersʹ Union. By 2000, an estimated 2.3 million copies had been sold. This exceptionally successful and long-running series of cookbooks represents a unique source of the history of Flemish cuisine and food culture. The aim of this article is to analyse how the food recommendations in Ons Kookboek changed during the past decades, parallel with the shrinking importance of the Belgian agricultural sector. Initially, the main goal of the editors was to overcome and to alter the monotonous nature of the rural menu through the giving of information about healthy, simple and inexpensive cooking, in which own produce occupied a central place. From the mid 1960s onwards, with the growing purchasing power and internationalisation of cooking, the content changed. Ons Kookboek was no longer only a basic cookbook with strictly didactic advice. The reader was given greater freedom and was encouraged to choose from a large culinary range, which resulted in contradictory recommendations. But notwithstanding all innovations, the link with the farming sector remained as the attitude towards a vegetarian or low-meat diet clearly demonstrates.