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Story: Cooking

The up to date housewife

In her 1926 cookbook The up to date housewife, Melanie Primmer argued that British cookbooks assumed women had servants, including cooks, so the books were less useful in New Zealand, a largely servantless nation. Primmer's book was written with New Zealand conditions in mind and she included a section on setting up a kitchen, which she knew would be mainly used by housewives.

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Alexander Turnbull Library

Reference: B-K 876

Permission of the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa, must be obtained before any re-use of this image.

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How to cite this page

David Burton, Cooking – Who cooks?, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/interactive/38547/the-up-to-date-housewife (accessed 24 June 2026).

Story by David Burton, published 18 June 2012.