This volume is the second foray of the Royal Irish Academy into food history in recent years. The first was a themed issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy: archaeology, culture, history and literature published in 2015.Footnote ¹ Weighing in at a mere 450 pages, it was roughly half the size of the current volume. Nonetheless, both texts suggest that interest in the history of food in Ireland is far from exhausted. This reflects a more general flourishing of Irish food culture in the twenty-first century. While the ice-cream scoop of mashed potato can still be found, the country now boasts thousands of artisan food producers and no less than twenty-one Michelin starred restaurants. We have become very serious about serious food.

The appeal of food as a topic for the historian is broad. This book examines food (and drink) as a necessity, as archaeological evidence, as reflection of agricultural and economic change, as a form of cultural expression, as a site for studying the Irish language and as a producer of material culture. The chapters cover prehistory up to the present, concluding with a chapter on the chef and entrepreneur Myrtle Allen. Allen’s Ballymaloe Cookery School can claim considerable credit for the flourishing food culture in contemporary Ireland. The strength of the volume is also its weakness: the huge diversity of approaches and time periods prevents any profound general conclusions from being drawn. The difference can be encapsulated in the approach to scholarly apparatus. Finbar McCormack’s article on the archaeological evidence of animals in the Irish diet from the Mesolithic to the early medieval period uses almost 100 footnotes, while Grace Neville’s examination of food in Daniel O’Connell’s correspondence uses just eighteen. This is not a critique of either approach, just an indication of the diversity contained in the volume. There are beautifully reproduced images throughout within a varied and attractive layout. There are also poems on food, including several appearing in Irish with an English translation by Mac Con Iomaire. This is an excellent volume for pleasurably dipping in and out of. Due to its size and weight, you will want to be seated at your desk.

The book includes an admirable historical sweep from prehistory to the twenty-first century. It is divided into six sections, which run roughly chronological. The medieval period is well covered using a wide variety of approaches from archaeology to textual analysis, while the early modern period has received the least attention. As I am a modern historian, I hope the reader will forgive me for focusing on a selection of those contributions in the volume that relate most closely to my own interests and knowledge. The preponderance of material covering the modern period reflects the significance of food, food crises and agriculture in modern Irish history. Nonetheless, the three sections (fifteen chapters) covering the nineteenth century onwards show a real diversity in approaches and suggest the almost endless possibilities for the exploration of food in Irish culture. Although dearth is not absent from the book (Ian Miller and Bryce Evans, for example, deal explicitly with food shortages), neither is it a central focus. In the first major work on food in Irish history published this century, L.A. Clarkson and E. Margaret Crawford gave almost equal space to issues of scarcity and to a view of nutrition more aligned with economic or quantitative histories.Footnote ² The closest this volume comes to similar analyses is in the evaluations of diets using archaeological evidence from the prehistoric and medieval periods. Instead, this volume focuses more on cultural and social history, concerning itself with practices, ideas and attitudes.

For example, John D. Mulcahy’s contribution on the history of sending food parcels is a fascinating glimpse into an enduring practice. Mulcahy pieced together scattered evidence including newspaper advertisements, the minutes of Cumann na mBan’s Prisoners’ Sub-Committee and oral histories. What emerges is the importance of sending food as love and care in difficult times, the senders undeterred by rotten turkeys and smashed eggs. There is surely more to be written on this topic.

Claudia Kinmonth’s essay on the material culture of home butter-making is typical of her work in its meticulous attention to visual and material culture. When reading this chapter, I was struck by the diversity and specificity of knowledge, skills, industries and materials that went into maintaining the practice of butter-making. Each stage of the process required specific tools and methods that would provide the right conditions without tainting the product. Clodagh Doyle’s chapter on hearth furniture is based on a similar attention to objects as well as architectural sketches, many reprinted beautifully here. My favourite image in the book is an elaborate, curlicued oatcake toaster (498). It is a testament to other ways of cooking and eating but also to the reverence allotted to routine activities and ordinary foods.

Máirtin Mac Con Iomaire and Dónall Ó Braonáin argue for the importance of Irish language sources by way of the ‘seventy-two words for potato’. This essay is more addressed to the first task than the second. The potato vocabulary is given short shrift, and the glossary provided only includes some of the words. Nonetheless, the authors’ point about language is well made. Patricia Lysaght seems to directly heed the call, contributing a colourful and rich account of wake hospitality that relies on Irish language sources, both textual and oral. Jonny Dillon and Ailbe van der Heide further elaborate the many possibilities of the National Folklore Collection for researching food and foodways.

Dorothy Cashman leads the final section of the book with an examination of the domestic economy instructress of the early twentieth century. A study of these women offers insights not only into cookery but into the politics of female education and professionalisation in a tumultuous period. For example, Marion Laird (a cookery teacher) published Cookery notes in 1911 via the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction, but the volume remained in print over three decades and 113,000 copies later. Plain and practical books like Cookery notes were the precursors to Maura Laverty’s writings, reviewed in the volume by Caitriona Clear.

Chapters by Bryce Evans and Ian Miller are stark reminders that ‘full and plenty’ was far from the experience of many citizens of the new Irish state. The difficulties of the Anglo-Irish trade war, the Great Depression and the Emergency contributed to creating food crises but, as Miller argues, poverty and hunger were constantly present. The contrast with the state dinners described by Elaine Mahon is stark. For example, the menu of De Valera’s St Patrick’s Day reception at Dublin Castle in 1933 included ‘petit rolls of lobster’ (679). For Mahon, the dinners are an illustration of Irish leaders’ international ambitions.

I have not done justice to the variety of contributions in this volume. Food studies is flourishing in Ireland and being approached from a wide range of disciplinary perspectives. The editors deserve praise for the scope of their ambition in bringing this collection together. Every paper suggests potential further avenues of research.

The articles I have highlighted benefit immensely from the incorporation of rich imagery to support them. The Royal Irish Academy’s publishing wing has been outstanding in its attentive approach to this component of historical and archaeological work, and for that we owe them a significant debt of gratitude. This book is an incredible resource that scholars will refer to for generations, as well as a beautiful object that anyone with an interest in Irish food culture will treasure. It is a bargain at €45.