One Continuous Picnic A History of Australian Eating

Australians first confronted the oddities of their national cuisine when this gastronomic classic appeared 25 years ago. Because Australia never had a peasant farming class with local cooking customs, the book explains, camp food became the mainstay of the Aussie dining tradition. Portable weekly rations of mutton, flour, and tea had turned the early settlers into a mobile army, and their suburbanite descendants still survive on tins of jam, condensed milk, camp pie, and beer. A cry for action, the book successfully launched a new Australian taste for fresh produce, farm markets, and international flavors more than two decadesone that still exists today.

Michael Symons is a former journalist for the Sydney Morning Herald and the author of The Pudding that Took a Thousand Cooks and A Shared Table.