Irish food history book wins best of the best award at ‘Oscars’ of food publishing
Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire accepting the Food History and Heritage Award for the book he co-authored with Dorothy Cashman at the Irish Food Writing Awards. Picture: Damien Eagers / Paul Sherwood Photography
The awards keep coming for an acclaimed Irish food history book that has just won Best of the Best Award for Ireland, as in, the best food book published in Ireland over the last 30 years, at the ‘Oscars’ of the food publishing world.
(Royal Irish Academy) will be acknowledged with the special accolade at the 31st Gourmand World Cookbook Awards, with the award to be accepted by the book’s co-editor Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire, in Riyadh, in Saudia Arabia on Thursday, November 27.
Having already won Best Culinary History Book in the World 2024 at last year’s Gourmand World Cookbook Awards in Lisbon, this ‘best of the best’ accolade is a major step up again, with 96 countries from five continents represented at this year’s ceremony.
In addition, fingers will be crossed as it is also in the running for a further even more prestigious accolade again, with the hefty volume also nominated in the ‘Best of the Best’ category of all the annual winners over the last 30 years to have won Best Culinary History Book in the World. This award will be announced on Friday, November 28.
is an edited collection of 28 chapters written by experts in a variety of fields covering the story of food, drink and gastronomy in Ireland from the Ice Age to the present day, and was published in hard copy by the Royal Irish Academy in 2024 and as an open-access ebook online by EUT+ Academic Press.
Co-edited by Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire and Dorothy Cashman, it almost immediately caught the public eye, winning the 2024 An Post Book Award for food and drink publication and huge public demand saw it then selling out its first print run by early December of the same year.
Beginning with the end of the Ice Age when reindeer, brown bears and giant Irish deer still roamed the land, the book’s scope spans the centuries since, covering the introduction of farming and livestock, and on through medieval times, including feasting, then the Famine, right up to the present day and includes food-related poetry from Seamus Heaney, Paula Meehan and Raiftearaí.
It’s rare for academic publications to snag the imagination of the general public in such a fashion and it was the subject of a special edition of last June and recently won the Food History & Heritage Award at the Irish Food Writing Awards 2025.
“It’s been downloaded nearly 12k times, which is highly unusual,” said Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire, “and is almost to the end of the second print run of 4k — so you’ll need to get out there and buy it quickly if you want to give it as a Christmas present!
“More seriously, as Darina Allen said, it is a landmark book, and it has finally silenced those who have argued over the years that Ireland does not have a food culture — in fact, the book demonstrates Ireland has had a rich and sophisticated food culture since ancient times, with the importance of hospitality always to the fore.”
Previous Irish winners at the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards include Denis Cotter’s (Best Vegetarian Cookbook in the World 2003), and by Michael O’Meara (Best Seafood Book in the World 2016), while the France-based Irish cookbook author Trish Deseine has won multiple international accolades at the awards.
The retrospective Best of the Best category was introduced when the awards hit the 20-year mark and is revisited every five years, with Darina Allen’s receiving the accolade of Best of the Best in Ireland for the last 25 years, in 2021.
“For our book to be picked as the best to come out of Ireland over the last 30 years, by such an august body with such a huge reputation in the world of gastronomic publishing, is mindblowing,” said Máirtín.
“I’m heading out tomorrow morning to Riyadh and will get the award on Thursday. I won’t be holding out for the [best of the last 30 years] award on Friday but that would be truly amazing if we did.
“And I’ll be bringing Donal Fallon’s book on the history of the Dublin pub, which might be a bit redundant out there in Saudi and I’ll have to wait ’til I get back to Ireland for a celebratory pint!”
