Food writing is writing that focuses on the topic of food, both widely and narrowly defined

Food writer Mark Kurlansky gives the scope of food writing when he observes: “Food is about agriculture, about ecology, about man’s relationship with nature, about the climate, about nation-building, cultural struggles, friends and enemies, alliances, wars, religion. It is about memory and tradition and, at times, even about sex.”

Food writing regards food not only as a substance, but also as a cultural phenomenon.

Because food writing is topic centered, it is not a genre in itself, but writing that utilizes a wide range of traditional genres, including recipes, journalism, memoir, and travelogues. Food writing can also refer to poetry and fiction, such as Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time), with its famous passage in which the narrator recollects his childhood memories as a result of sipping tea and eating a madeleine.

Often, however, food writing is used to specify writing that takes a more literary approach to food, such as that of the famous American food writer M.F.K. Fisher, who describes her writing about food as follows:

It seems to me our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it . . . and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied . . . and it is all one.

In this literary sense, food writing aspires toward more than merely communicating information about food; it also aims to provide readers with an aesthetic experience. Examples of such food writing include work by Elizabeth David, A.J. Liebling, Betty MacDonald, and Fisher herself.

As a term, “food writing” is a relatively new descriptor. It came into wide use in the 1990s and, unlike “sports writing,” or “nature writing,” has yet to be included in the Oxford English Dictionary. Consequently, definitions of food writing when applied to historical works are retrospective. Classics of food writing, such as the 18th century French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s Physiologie du goût (The Physiology of Taste), predate the term and have helped to shape its meaning.