It’s easy to find recipes. Thousands of tips for the gooiest chocolate chip cookies and YouTube tutorials for how to ensure, this year, your turkey won’t be dry, are out there for your taking. And popular as they are, those high-speed cooking videos rob the experience of its ritual, while the increase in on-demand, recipe-in-a-box services means the novice and hobbyist cooks miss out on the the experimenting, discovery and improvising that make the kitchen exciting. It’s led many to wonder about the fate of the cookbook. How quaint, it seems, to crack a spine for your ingredients and instructions.
But cookbooks aren’t always instruction manuals. Often, they tell deeper stories of the dish, whether its the history of the ingredients or the way the author came to the recipe. They draw you into the world of their food, sometimes so much that you get lost in them before you get the chance to get out your frying pan. But also, get out your frying pan, because you’ll want to make everything you find in these books.
- Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine
by Sarah Lohman
- The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook: Recipes and Wisdom from an Obsessive Home Cook by Deb Perelman
- A History of Food in 100 Recipes by William Sitwell
- My Two Souths: Blending the Flavors of India into a Southern Kitchen by Asha Gomez
- The Inspired Vegan: Seasonal Ingredients, Creative Recipes, Mouthwatering Menus by Bryant Terry
- 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement by Jane Ziegelman
- Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise by Ruth Reichl
- The Artists’ and Writers’ Cookbook: A Collection of Stories with Recipes by Natalie Eve Garrett
by Sarah LohmanRead all about them at Electric Literature: https://electricliterature.com/8-cookbooks-you-can-read-like-books-36cc91987de0
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