Aunty Sylvie's sponge: Foodmaking, cookbooks and nostalgia

Why does foodmaking matter? Largely because it holds within it so much of everyday life, thought and activity across time, place and generation. This article explores women's embodied foodmaking knowledge as 'thoughtful practice' with a pinch of 'anxious practice'. It begins with a brief biography of my Aunty Sylvie and my mother, and then relates a story that illustrates intergenerational recipe sharing and baking knowledge. In doing so it examines cookbooks as a form of nostalgia and explores aspects of gustatory nostalgia in the creation of 'manuscript' cookbooks and their variation in the twenty-first century. It also reconstructs, in part, the history of a family - of sisters, aunts, grandmothers, mothers, daughters - told through cookbooks and, in particular, a recipe for sponge cake. In using a particular recipe I seek to produce a nuanced argument that illustrates the complexity of intergenerational recipe sharing via the triangulation of aunt mother, daughter. It also shows the acquisition of a 'thoughtful practice' intertwined with 'anxious practice' across the generations.