. You should use the database “Food and Drink in History” to complete this assignment (click this link and login with your Utorid) https://librarysearch(dot)library(dot)utoronto(dot)ca/discovery/fulldisplay?docid=alma991106562269106196&context=L&vid=01UTORONTO_INST:UTORONTO&lang=en&search_scope=UTL_AND_CI&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=Everything&query=any,contains,food%20and%20drink%20in%20history&offset=0 alternatively, you can use a printed Asian cookbook from your shelf. If you do not know how to conduct research in this database, please consider completing the bonus quiz first.
*Note: This online database hardly contains any recipes in their original languages dating earlier than the 17th century. If you know your Asian language, and you are interested in writing a report to examine an early modern or even medieval recipe or cookbook, feel free to do so, but make sure to follow the instructions carefully.
Steps:
Think of an Asian dish, recipe, or cuisine that you are interested (e.g. Japanese cuisine, noodle or ramen, a chicken biryani). Be aware of the concept of “global” and “diasporic” foodways. This is to say that if you are not interested in authentic cuisine (e.g. Japanese, Filipino), you may conduct a research about diasporic foods (e.g. Chinese American, General Tso Chicken.
Think of a historical period during this dish or cuisine might have already become popular (e.g. 1950s, late 19th century, etc.).
Search your material, and decide one to work on, this could either be a single recipe of a dish or an entire cookbook.
Come up with a research question and an initial thesis that would explain why you want to work on this specific recipe or cuisine, and how does this research facilitate your interpretation of Asian food history in general. When you write this part, you may think about some important concepts, including but not limited to: taste, flavor, culinary infrastructure, cooking techniques (difficulty or easiness), authenticity, diaspora, localization, globalization, home-cooking, restaurant dining, and nutrition.
Write your analysis report.
Writing:
The report should be anywhere between 500 and 1000 words. Keep your writing concise and clear, but also coherent.
Do not write bullet points. Write full sentences and paragraphs.
Structure it well with introduction, thesis (research question incl.), analysis of the content of the recipe, and a short conclusion to draw some implications of your source, basically indicating how this research may be further conducted and developed into an essay project. (This depends on how sophisticated your research question sounds and where it will lead you.)
You may cook a recipe that you try to examine, include some pictures of the results of your cooking, and evaluate the quality of it (taste, flavor, smell, and the procedure of cooking). This is not mandatory, but optional!
By all means, treat the source as a primary document. Make sure to specify the author, date, publisher, main content, and the purpose of the author writing the recipe or cookbook by reading its preface (if any).
It is important to capture and describe the details of the source, as thorough as possible. Imagine that you are writing a short blog for an audience who are interested in the recipe of cuisine you choose, but they need good information to understand the its value. Your job, most importantly, is to make it sound interesting and enticing that a reader, after reading it, wants to cook the dish or explore the cookbook or cuisine him-/herself. So do not hesitate to include screenshots of the source or pictures to exhibit the dish.
For citations, use Chicago Style 17th edition (https://owl(dot)purdue(dot)edu/owl/research_and_citation/chicago_manual_17th_edition/cmos_formatting_and_style_guide/chicago_manual_of_style_17th_edition.htmlLinks to an external site
