About the Journal

Petits Propos Culinaires (PPC) was founded in 1979 by Alan Davidson, editor of the Oxford Companion to Food and his wife, Jane, also a food historian, aided by a circle of friends including Elizabeth David, Richard Olney, Claudia Roden, Jane Grigson, Harold McGee,  and Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz.  PPC quickly became the UK's pre-eminent food history periodical. Davidson edited the journal until 2000 when he was succeeded by Tom Jaine who retired in 2023, succeeded in turn by Sam Bilton. The journal moved to Equinox in January, 2024.

During the journal's 45-year history, it has focused on publishing original research, especially historical articles dealing with Anglophone and European food cultures, the history of  cookbooks as a genre, biographical studies of culinary personalities, and lexicographical investigations. Alongside academic articles it has always found a space to record memoirs and oral histories and to publish opinion pieces,  photo-essays and even original fiction. 

With more than 130 issues to upload and enhance with abstracts and keywords (all of which must be done manually), it will take another few weeks to complete PPC's presence on this site (we have completed 23 issues so far). However, subscribers will eventually have access to the full run barring the few issues which unfortunately are not available to us for scanning at this time. 

As Kitchen Arts & Letters Bookshop (New York) commented in 2023,  Some of the world’s most adventurous food historians contribute to this thrice-yearly journal… .  

PPC welcomes submissions on all aspects of food and culinary history and is international in scope. See Guidelines for Contributors for more information.

 

Each issue is normally 128 pages and includes refereed and invited articles, news items as well as book reviews. The journal is available in print and online. 

Frequency: 3 issues per year -- April, August and December

Print: ISSN 0142-7857
Online: ISSN 3029-0651