Historically, cookbooks tended to be collections of recipes and other texts that embedded recipes, explained their significance and helped the reader to navigate their everyday life. Due to multi-platforming, cookbooks start to mirror chefs’ television brands and so the way they present food changes. Language used, topics discussed and imagery start to reflect a more personalized food advice that reflects not generally accepted norms about life, but chef’s own take on life and their family’s preferred dishes. Through “synthetic personalization”, as Norman Fairclough calls the construction in discourse of a personal relationship we imagine to have with the media personalities, these cookbooks enable for us a peek into chef’s personal life, their friends, family and their tastes.
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Ana Tominc 