Always keeping a notebook on hand wherever she went, she wrote down the recipes of the dishes she tasted. Based on her knowledge of Sichuan cuisine, Dunlop published her first book, Sichuan Cookery, in 2001, which was hailed by the Observer Food Monthly as "one of the top 10 cookbooks of all time".

Since then, she has published four books about Sichuan cuisine. She has also written one on recipes from Hunan province, and Land of Fish and Rice in 2016 about recipes from Jiangnan, which includes Shanghai, and provinces of Zhejiang, Jiangsu and southern Anhui－the region that is "blessed with a warm and nurturing climate, fertile land, and lakes, rivers and coastal waters that teem with fish and seafood".

Now a Chinese version of Land of Fish and Rice translated by He Yujia is available. In the book, Dunlop displays her profound understanding of the food culture that runs deep in the blood of Chinese culture.

"Food is a representation of culture anywhere in general, but in China it has a particular importance," she says. "China is a place where food has been culturally important since the beginning, not only socially, but also in sacrifice and ritual, so food is a way into understanding and appreciating China and its culture in general."

Having studied Chinese food culture for nearly two decades, she regards the Jiangnan region as the heartland of the nation's gastronomy.

"Although you have really interesting and delicious food all over China, in this region, particularly, people wrote about it and discussed it. Many of the old classic food books came from this region, for example. So if you talk about gastronomy, and not just about good food, then Jiangnan is a really important region," she says.

Since 2006 when she visited Yangzhou of Jiangsu province for the first time, Dunlop had spent 10 years researching the book.