Cooking, Cuisine and Class: A Study in Comparative SociologyThe preparation, serving and eating of food are common features of all human societies, and have been the focus of study for numerous anthropologists from Sir James Frazer onwards from a variety of theoretical and empirical perspectives. It is in the context of this previous anthropological work that Jack Goody sets his own observations on cooking in West Africa. He criticises those approaches which overlook the comparative historical dimension of