Semiotic recipes for society: a diachronic analysis of frames and binary codes in Our Cookbook from 1927 to 2013

Renewing frame analysis with ideas on binary codes, we investigate semiotic evolutions in Our Cookbook, a Flemish series of cookbooks published from 1927 to 2013. In the first and earliest frame, Our Cookbook evokes a rural cosmos with the farm and later the house as centers of domesticity, with the housewife serving the family by cooking according to the rules of the Liturgical Calendar. The second frame imagines food as a metonym for nationhood with the assumed reader in the role of the tourist driven by a quest for authenticity. The third and most recent frame celebrates the “new.” In a world in flux, the cook is summoned to renew and follow trends, for example by seeking lifestyle advice from celebrity chefs. By opposing the sacred signs in each frame with their profane counterparts we explore the moral code of each frame in relation to changing positions of foodstuff, conceptions of community, space and temporality, and questions concerning the gendered identity of the cook.