AllerHande: A Cultural History of Dutch Food Culture, 1955-2000

Abstract

This research discussed the question: what is Dutch food culture and how and why does it change? By taking a historic cultural approach Dutch food culture has been researched between 1955-2000 based on an analysis of the AllerHande – a magazine published by the Dutch supermarket Albert Heijn. An analytical distinction has been made between Dutch food culture, consisting of actual food practises in the Netherlands and Dutch national cuisine, a category used to describe the discursively produced consensus on what is considered to be typical Dutch food. This distinction has been made to indicate that Dutch food culture cannot be understood without acknowledging its past nationalistic aspects. In this research the argument is made that Dutch food culture used to be exclusively Dutch cuisine, however, as a shared understanding of Dutch cuisine gradually faded, this ceased to be the case. As a result, new ways of defining Dutch food culture were adopted. Yet, some elements that characterised Dutch cuisine remain to be part of Dutch food culture, albeit no longer thought of as typically Dutch. Multiple factors that have contributed to this change are discussed in detail, among which the emancipation of Dutch housewives in the fifties and sixties as well as climate change that from the seventies onwards greatly disturbed the strong connection between Dutch cuisine in winter and the harsh Dutch winter climate.