The formation of a national cuisine in costa rican cookbooks and its impact on regional cuisines as markers of identity

Abstract

In Costa Rica, transnationalisation of consumption gives rise to a fear of losing the national food culture. This fear results in a rise in publications and cookbooks on the national cuisine. This chapter examines the construction of a new concept of the national cuisine occurring in the course of this process of rescue and publication and—taking the relevance of the local food cultures as markers of both national and regional identities into account—investigates how the institutional concept is negotiated on a local level.