There are many other themes. Symons’s classic, first published in 1982, could be described as an encyclopedia. Short chapters dedicated to the pavlova, sliced white bread, Golden Circle pineapple, the political salon that was Tony’s Bon Goût, and special events such as Len Evans’s $300-a-plate Great Wine Dinner are interspersed with weightier matters such as global food giants’ methods of developing new products and food rationing during World War II. The author’s research was formidable and remains impressive. Those who didn’t acquire their hardcover copy in 1982 can now do so in a paperback version that offers as many challenges as it does insights.

Can it really be a quarter of a century since the first incarnation of this impressive, but sometimes wayward, volume? Since then we have seen the publication of assorted lesser studies of food culture and enough recipe books to fill a hundred metres of library shelving; but no serious rival to Symons as a chronicler of our eating habits has emerged. During that quarter century, so many changes have occurred in the way we eat and think about food that, rather than a reprint with new top and tail, an entirely new work (or works) is probably needed to take up the story where Symons left off.

Symons, or some equally dedicated foodie, might chart the widening gap between metropolitan and rural cookery, or note the demise of the dinner party, a consequence of the boom in apartment living and the vogue for minimalism that has seen the end of the dedicated dining room, or examine, as Eric Schlosser did in Fast Food Nation (2001), the politics of America’s junk-food culture and the global implications thereof. Symons touches on some of these ideas, but they need more urgent and intensive investigation than a single brief chapter with a pithy title such as ‘Coca-Colonisation.’

It is by no means certain that we have been colonised. Pace Coke’s success in establishing a dominant market position (Pepsi didn’t stand a chance against its wilier rival), many American companies have met stiffer consumer resistance. After the period of uncritical approval that greeted the arrival of the first Golden (not ‘red’, as Symons writes) Arches abated, and following Morgan Spurlock’s devastating exposé in Super Size Me (2004), McDonald’s has been forced to modify, if not the type of food it offers, at least the way it is packaged and sold. Could those who flocked to the early franchises, impressed by the cleanliness, efficiency and value, have imagined the McCafé or the tandoori chicken sandwich? And despite attempts by Starbucks to expand their franchises here, Australians have so far resisted the dubious taste sensation of the pumpkin-spiced frappucino, although the Seattle-based company is blaming its lacklustre performance on poor choices of location and is planning a new incursion into this market.

A stroll down the aisle of a local supermarket would suggest that Asia has been as big an influence on the national taste buds, with the range and variety of flavours on offer in low-cost staples such as cup noodles rivalling those of breakfast cereals, including new designer lines such as maple and cinnamon granola.

A quarter of a century ago, Symons was able to confidently assert that supermarkets emphasised ‘cheapness rather than quality’ and ‘had trouble handling the fragile, fresh article’, but shoppers, at least in metropolitan areas, can now buy fragile, pre-washed mesclun in a bag back-flushed with nitrogen to preserve said freshness, and Woolworths confidently claims to be ‘The fresh food people’ without fear of breaching the Trade Practices Act.

Another fruitful area for research is seafood. Time was when flake and flathead were food for poor folks; Friday staples for the Irish working class. Oysters were cheap and came pre-shucked in curious long tubular bottles. Cooked prawns were what drunks ate direct from newspaper wrappings on public transport, usually leaving a cairn of stinking shells behind after they alighted. Not any more. Demand for lighter, more digestible dishes has sent the price of seafood rocketing. An upscale restaurant can now, without blushing, ask forty dollars or more for one hundred and twenty grams of white fish, albeit perfectly cooked and exquisitely garnished, while the makings of a family meal of fish can cost as much as the equivalent weight in Wagyu beef. Anyone embarking on that aspect of the sea change in our eating habits would also need to examine the related depletion of our stocks of once plentiful fish and the virtual elimination of certain species, such as orange roughy, not to mention the proliferation of farmed fish. Driven by demand, mainly from Japan, first salmon and ocean trout were bred in pens, then yellow fin tuna. There is talk of farming one of Tasmania’s most delicious fish, stripey trumpeter, although the Japanese prefer their sushi and sashimi coloured rather than white.

Then there is the phenomenon of the celebrity chef, whose influence extends far beyond his kitchen: to eponymous food products, consultancies with airlines and endorsements of kitchen equipment. Anonymous chefs who toil unseen in the kitchen and shun publicity are now an endangered species.

Another criticism of Symons’s book was that it viewed food from the wrong end of the telescope: from South Australia, where the author ran a restaurant and practised what he preached about growing your own produce. Meanwhile, the real revolution was taking place on the east coast.

These gripes aside, the central flaw in Symons’s argument in both editions is his hypothesis that Australia has not developed a discernible identity as have France, Italy, China, and other countries because it lacks the peasantry and agrarian history essential to the development of a truly individual national cuisine or even a gastronomic philosophy. ‘We had no great love of the cultivated landscape and, as a consequence, lost touch with a prerequisite of good eating. Instead of getting brown in the fields, we lay motionless on the beach.’ This may have been true a quarter of a century ago, but it is a dubious claim now. Symons admits as much in a postscript: ‘One mistake in the original edition of this book was to speak of one national cuisine as if that could suit our range of climates, so I later argued … that Tasmanians might eat more like the French, northern Queenslanders find more inspiration in Indian and Thai cuisine, and so on.’ Tastes are not quarantined at state borders like forbidden fruit, meat and fish. One can find good Indian and Thai in Hobart, and decent French in Port Douglas.

But one must nevertheless be grateful for this pioneering work. The chapters on colonial eating make for lively reading. It is amusing to think that the staples offered to convicts – flour, sugar and tea – were pretty much what was supplied to paid labour and allocated to citizens via food coupons during World War II. Another reason to welcome this reprint is that it is graced by a thoughtful and incisive foreword from one of our finest writers on food, Gay Bilson.