"Man, it has been said, is a dining animal. Creatures of the inferior races eat and drink; man only dines. It has also been said that he is a cooking animal; but some races eat food without cooking it. A Croat captain said to M. Brillat Savarin, "When, in campaign, we feel hungry, we knock over the first animal we find, cut off a steak, powder it with salt, put it under the saddle, gallop over it for half a mile, and then eat it." Huntsmen in Dauphiny, when out shooting, have been known to kill a bird, pluck it, salt and pepper it, and cook it by carrying it some time in their caps. It is equally true that some races of men do not dine any more than the tiger or the vulture. It is not a dinner at which sits the aboriginal Australian, who gnaws his bone half bare and then flings it behind to his squaw. And the native of Terra-del-Fuego does not dine when he gets his morsel of red clay. Dining is the privilege of civilization. The rank which a people occupy in the grand scale may be measured by their way of taking their meals, as well as by their way of treating their women. The nation which knows how to dine has learnt the leading lesson of progress. It implies both the will and the skill to reduce to order, and surround with idealisms and graces, the more material conditions of human existence; and wherever that will and that skill exist, life cannot be wholly ignoble."

Isabella Beeton's views on the cultural importance of dining were not uncommon for the era, and the manner in which she dehumanizes other races, using their differing (or rather, imagined) methods of dining as an excuse, was unfortunately also all too common. Victorian England had no problem invading other countries for their ample resources, including food and spices, and this manifested in the idea that the English were capable of using these resources far better than the races she wrote do not 'dine any more than the tiger or the vulture'. This "Orientalism" created a perception of the enlightened, civilized Occident (or West), and the backwards, uncivilized, barbaric Orient (or East), ultimately positing the "European identity as a superior one in comparison with all the non-European peoples and cultures" (Said).

This manifested heavily in the Victorian perceptions of imported ingredients and items, which were often considered healthy or useful, as long as they were not heavily in use by or associated the people of the original culture. Take, for instance, laudanum - or rather, tincture of opium, which appears in this recipe book and was considered a useful curative substance for a variety of medical issues. Opium sale was not regulated in Victorian England until 1868, when only pharmacists were allowed to sell the substance. But, as time went on, opium became more and more associated with foreign production, especially Chinese production:

Eventually, "opium became associated with Chinese opium dens; in particular, white women were thought to be at risk of being corrupted by foreigners", and the ban on opium and laudanum as an addictive substance in 1920 was led by The 1874 Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade, which was "created specifically to campaign against Britain’s involvement in the opium trade with China" (Ng). The public and political associations between laudanum and a 'foreign' invasive substance heavily contributed to its eventual complete ban, even for medical purposes.