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Hyewon Lee

Professor Sophia Bamert

UWP 1: Expository Writing

19 March 2018

The Recipe for the Cooking Discourse Community

Introduction

The flavors of cooking are continuously savored by members of the culinary discourse

community. Many people love to cook because of the creativity and self-expression involved in

putting together a homemade meal. These people form the culinary discourse community. These

members are joined together through the mutual goal of gaining satisfaction from cooking up a

fantastic dish. Through discovering information from primary and secondary sources, this paper

investigates the various communicative and social aspects pertaining to cooking. This question

will be answered to prove that cooking is not just science and nutrition but also a communicative

and social activity. This paper will be examining members who cook at home as a hobby or to

eat and not members who have gone through culinary classes or have extensive expertise in

cooking.

Socializing through Cooking

Many people usually correlate cooking to the sciences such as biology or chemistry.

However, the process of cooking also has many social aspects. Throughout life, people learn that

“…food and meals are of major importance to our social life, for the joy of eating with family,

friends and colleagues” (Brunosson et al. 1). People are able to bond and cook with their loved

ones at family dinners or birthday parties where food and cooking is almost always present. By

socializing through cooking, it “…may also be a way of creating common memories”

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(Brunosson et al. 3). Cooking helps create precious memories of times spent with others

laughing, talking, and having fun creating something together. These cooking memories “…often

linked to happy or memorable events in childhood, such as birthdays or times spent with a loved

one” (Baker et al. 402). These memories from times of socialization proves to be a crucial impact

on the people who are cooking.

Communicating through Cooking

One of the most important features of a cooking discourse community is how the

members communicate. According to Jones et al., methods of preparing “…food often provide a

basis for interaction, serve as a vehicle of communication, and constitute a source of associations

and symbolic structures” (12). Moreover, members of the community might use specialized

jargon that only members of the cooking discourse community might understand. For example,

somebody might ask someone to cut the carrots julienne or cook the pasta al dente. This kind of

specialized language is unique of the cooking discourse community and non-members might be

confused at the terms. To have a specialized language is another aspect of a discourse

community.

Although members can communicate in person when cooking to make a meal, most

members of the discourse community may also communicate through other means. According to

Doub et al., there is a plethora of different sources a member might get cooking information from

such as family and friends, cookbooks, company branded websites, nutrition interest websites,

television, Facebook, Pinterest, food blogs, food related mobile application (Doub et al. 130).

Through these different kinds of sources, members will give insightful tips on cooking, share

recipes, give feedback, post about events or classes, and learn new skills. These mediums may

also insight new members who are interested in cooking to join the community. For example,
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through Facebook, a novice might find out about a cooking class and gain knowledge of cooking

thus adding another new member to the community.

Method

In order to add to the secondary research data that I laid as a foundation, I decided to also

conduct a primary research study. To see multiple perspectives on cooking, I have decided to

interview people of different levels of association with the cooking discourse community. I

decided to interview a non-member, a novice member, and an expert member.

I asked each one of them the following questions:

 How often do you cook?

 What are your goals when cooking?

 Do you enjoy cooking?

 What kinds of memories do you associate with cooking?

 Do you usually cook by yourself or with others?

 What is your favorite food and why?

 What kinds of sources, if any, do you use to cook?

Results

The results of the study was as expected. The frequency of cooking was different for each

individual. The non-member cooked once or twice every month, the novice member cooked 3

times a week and the expert member cooked almost every day. All three participants stated that

their goals were to make a good looking and tasty meal for themselves or others. All three

participants said that they enjoyed cooking. The kinds of memories associated with cooking were

memories of family dinners or special occasions such as New Years or Christmas. The novice

member and non-member reported that they usually prefer and cook with others whilst the expert
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member reported that since they cook so much, they usually cook alone but enjoy cooking with

others more. All three of the participants said that their favorite food was one that is usually

eaten on special occasions or they have fond memories of. All three participants used the Internet

as a source of information on cooking. The three sources were Facebook, YouTube, and friends

and family.

Discussion

Looking at the data presented, all three of the participants stated that not only did they

enjoy cooking, but they also enjoyed cooking with others more. All three of the participants also

stated that their favorite food was in correlation with memories of family dinners or special

occasions. These answers re-emphasized the social aspect of cooking. All three members also

stated that their goals were the same and that they used sources of communication to gain

information about cooking. These answers re-emphasized the communicative aspect of cooking.

Personally, I am a novice member of this discourse community. I rarely cooked in high school

and now that I am in college, I told myself that I would cook. Starting off was rough but with the

resources I had such as recipes and videos from Chef Ramsay on Facebook or Pinterest, I was

able to follow the instructions and get a decent meal. My reasons for starting to cook were

functional and because I had to. However, my love for cooking started to grow as I baked with

friends and cooked with family. Throwing around flour and tasting raw cookie dough with the

kitchen full of warmth and laughter is one of my favorite memories that I treasure. Cooking is

truly a social and communicative experience. Overall, my primary research data coincides with

the secondary research data I have gathered that cooking is not just science and nutrition but also

social and communicative.

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Conclusion

Finally, the larger significance of the argument presented is how these social and

communicative aspects of the cooking discourse community affect you, the UWP professors. By

using a loose definition of discourse community where members are not just highly educated

members who attended culinary school, we were able to examine the various channels of

communication that is not restricted to just higher educated members. By having this loose

definition, we saw that members who cooked to eat or as a hobby have various channels of

communication to provide information and feedback. These mediums have their own genres and

forms to follow. For example, a cookbook and Facebook are both sources of information that

members could get recipes for. However, because of the genre, the same recipe might be

presented differently. Usually, on Facebook, when a recipe is presented, it is presented in a video

where there is usually background music and no talking. The video shows each ingredient as it is

put together and has the name of the ingredient in the corner of the video. In the end, it shows the

finished product and might even do a cross-section of it. However, in a cookbook that same

recipe will be presented differently. In a cookbook, the recipe is presented with a list of

ingredients and a step by step list of instructions. By examining the language of a recipe, “…we

begin to see how a recipe can be viewed as a story, a cultural narrative that can be shared and has

been constructed by members of a community” (Cotter 53). The recipe and Facebook video are

both seen as different genres that present the same information in different forms. By

understanding and analyzing these channels, we can see the different genres that this discourse

community uses to communicate. By using a loose definition of discourse community and

realizing that it is not only restricted to the typical definition, it redefines the meaning of

discourse community.
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References

Baker, Stacey Menzel, et al. “My Favorite Recipes: Recreating Emotions and Memories Through

Cooking.” ACR North American Advances, vol. 32, 1 Jan. 1970, pp. 402-403

www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/9107/volumes/v32/NA-32.

Brunosson, Albina, et al. “Aspects of Cooking in Food and Meal Science.” DIVA, 1 July 2013,

www.diva-portal.org/smash/record.jsf?pid=diva2%3A634685.

Cotter, Colleen. Recipes for Reading: Community Cookbooks, Stories, Histories. University of

Massachusetts Press, 1997.

Doub, A E, et al. “Identifying Users of Traditional and Internet-Based Resources for Meal Ideas:

An Association Rule Learning Approach.” Appetite, U.S. National Library of Medicine,

vol. 103, Aug. 2016, pp. 128-136. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27067739.