Csapó Katalin - Füreder Balázs - Sári Zsolt: Reneszánsz ételek – Ételek reneszánsza Időszaki kiállítás 2008. március–május (Budapest, 2008)

Cookery books - What kind of literature? The Hungarians' attraction to cooking can be measured by many things. We are, many claim, a culinary superpower in spite of our conditions and results, so it is not surprising then that we have become obsessed with collecting recipes. Even our great-grandmothers used to pen recipe books, and many families have preciously cherished collections handed down to them. Recipe collections on Internet blogs serve rather a similar purpose nowadays. Due to food shortages and, in particular, a shortage of choice, the communist era saw relatively few culinary publications. As with everything else, publishing cookery books was a state monopoly. The first periodical did not come out until 1976 and ruled the market until the mid-Nineties when new cookery magazines were being launched practically every week. Cookery books are today everywhere, ranging from cheap recipe collections to expensive albums. Most people agree that nobody is born a cookery book writer, but can become one, with a bit of luck. Famous people seem to have a compulsive urge to write cookery books, and cookery books have almost become an area of tabloid press. Literary writers including Balázs Draveczky Alaine Polcz, Iván Bächer and István Váncsa have written some highly entertaining literary cookery books. Traditional Hungarian cuisine has also been an inexhaustible source of inspiration for cookery books, and books specialising on regional food (of the Jászság, Tiszavidék, Nyírség, Borsod, Transdanubian regions), and comprehensive guides such by Elek Magyar, Mariska Vízvári and Károly Gundel. Dozens of books on international cuisine have come out, and not only on Italian, Spanish and Greek cooking, but also oriental and Jewish, as well as curious publications on hangover cooking, erotic food, and translations of cookery books by fictitious characters such as Winnie the Pooh, or the food of the peoples of the former Soviet Union. Books on vegetarian, ecoand diet cooking could fill entire libraries. Every single food ingredient has its own literature, too. Hungarian editions of foreign star chefs stated coming out in the Nineties, such as Jamie Oliver's books, cookery books by the meat-loving Two Fat Ladies, Jennifer Paterson and Clarissan Dickson Wright; by Nigella Lawson, by now an institution in her own right, and the English gentleman boozer Keith Floyd.