Subjects read narratives about a meal at a fine restaurant or a trip to a supermarket. The same 18 items of food, attributed to the same characters, were mentioned in the same order in the two stories. As predicted from current formulations of schema theory, foods from categories determined to be part of most people's restaurant schemata were better recalled by subjects who read the restaurant narrative. Also as predicted, subjects who received the restaurant narrative were more likely to recall the character to whom a food had been attributed. However, contrary to expectation, subjects were equally likely to reproduce food-order information, whichever passage they had read. Information of the same significance in the context of either the restaurant or supermarket story was equally well recalled by the two groups. (Author)