For the Love of Cookbooks
The books that anchor and teach us
When you Google “cookbooks” the first suggested questions block has questions like, “What cookbooks should everyone own?” and “Do cookbooks have any value (i.e. could they sell for a high price at an auction)?” Cookbooks are vast for good reason - our needs in the kitchen are vast. Some are excellent for teaching people how to cook, others serve to bring joy, kitsch, and pop culture to your kitchen like The Bob’s Burgers Burger Book or A Feast of Ice & Fire (a Game of Thrones cookbook). There are cookbooks to explain the science behind cooking like Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat and The Food Lab, and there are specific ones that have recipes for one type of food: 100 cookies, Good Drinks, and Snacking Cakes. The possibilities seem to be truly endless.
I love my cookbook collection very much, and have added a lot to it over the last year. My husband collects board games and role playing game books, and my collection I’m unabashedly growing is my cookbook collection.
You can catch me scouring every Little Free Library I pass on a walk. One time in a small wooden cube I found The Nordic Cook Book, a thick and heavy 768 page tome of Scandinavian seasonal treasures that connect me to my ancestors through meatballs, pickled fish, cardamom cakes, and open faced sandwiches and toasts.
Used bookstores are where I find a lot of cookbooks too, and recently I found a GORGEOUS 11th edition copy of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook - a historically significant cookbook at a Half Price Books! The first edition was printed in 1896, and my copy is from the tenth printing, likely from 1965. The book has recipes for formal dinners, casual lunches and desserts galore, plus scientific explanations of the chemical processes that happen in food while it’s cooking, *AND* was essential in standardizing the system of measuring in cooking in the United States. I feel so lucky that I get to thumb through the deep brown edged pages devouring recipes for Cottage Cheese Pancakes and Ham and Veal Loaf, and instructions for how to make sandwiches (how precious?!), and how to plan a menu. The connections to traditions in the kitchen, the value of social relationships and knowledge-sharing over an open cookbook like this one that has been around in some iteration for over a century is really overwhelming. My heart and brain can barely take it!
she’s a stunner I ask for cookbooks from family for gifts, and I preorder modern cookbooks I can’t live without from my favorite popular chefs.
I first read a whole cookbook in 2016 when my friend, K.D., told me that she had read Chrissy Teigen’s first cookbook, Cravings, from cover to cover. “YOU CAN DO THAT?!” It blew my mind. Up until then, I had a cookbook or two that I cooked from regularly but I mostly just read the pages of whatever I was trying to make. I followed suit and read every recipe, every technique, the story behind the dishes, and I had a new confidence in the kitchen thanks to the knowledge gained by just reading a cookbook. Plus Chrissy has such a fun voice to her writing that it made it a joy to read. I haven’t cooked every recipe from Cravings, but I’m sure I’ve cooked more than 75% of them.
At that time, my husband and I had been married for under a year, and we were trying to shake things up in our dinner routine. Cooking Butternut Squash Soup taught me how to blend a soup to be a smooth texture for the first time, the Chicken Lettuce Wraps opened me up to the joy of an “assemble each bite” style of dinner, and it was the Sweet Potato Gnocchi with Brown Butter and Sage recipe that taught me how to make gnocchi. Before then I liked cooking fine but this whole time period cooking from this book taught me so much about myself, and my love for cooking blossomed. Unlike most people who love food and cooking as an adult, I didn’t grow up loving to cook or bake. I came to love it as an adult and this one experience with a cookbook was nothing short of transformative for my home cooking and life.
How to Read A Cookbook
If you are wondering how to stop relying on the internet for recipes and start using cookbooks a little more (I won’t argue about the merits of either here because it’s truly up to you), I’ll tell you how I read them. When I get my hands on a cookbook, I usually have three phases.
Phase one is all about paging through, skimming the recipe titles, and appreciating the artistry of the prop stylists, food stylists, photographers, illustrators, and designers. It’s usually here where I estimate how many recipes I would make. If it’s more than 30% and represents something different than the cookbooks already on my shelves, I buy it or make a note of it to buy it later.
Once I have the cookbook at home, phase two includes reading the foreword/prologue/introduction section. In modern cookbooks, there is usually a pantry staples and equipment section I take the time to read, noting if there is anything I should make a point of picking up soon.
If this is a cookbook I want to immediately cook from, phase three is me reading it cover to cover, dog earring recipes I want to cook which helps me focus when I’m picking out meals. My husband usually goes through it too and un-dog-ears recipes he doesn’t want to cook from the ones I’ve chosen so that way I know whether we’re both interested in a recipe.
Once I’ve cooked a recipe, if I made changes, I usually write those in the margins. The most common ones are if I adjusted the cook time or substituted any ingredients and whether that worked for the recipe.
Cookbooks are Expensive!
You can borrow them from the library first. If you find yourself renewing so you can keep the cookbook 3 times or more, that’s probably a good sign that you will get lots of use out of a copy of your own.
Share custody of a cookbookwith a friend. Go in together on buying the book and exchange every 6 months OR temporarily trade cookbooks with a friend.
Ask for them for gifts
Check those Little Free Libraries
Buy them used
Things I Like
Frozen waffles for breakfast with butter on both of the waffles, syrup, and cut like how I did when I was a kid. Is there anything better than the 3x3 square in the middle?!
Sitting outside when the air quality is decent. I downloaded a separate air quality app and that has come in handy!
This company that prints product on an as-needed basis to reduce waste. I have some tees coming from them soon!
This book of poetry: Until Tender, the debut poetry collection of Midwest writer Sam Slupski, invites readers to join Sam for supper. Those who delve hungrily into these poems will be met with the acidic difficulty of reflecting on a tumultuous childhood, as well as the sweet buttery balm of a queer adult celebrating the love they have found.
A fold up, crocheted produce bag pattern! If you haven’t learned to crochet yet, I highly recommend it as a hobby to keep you off your phone if that’s a goal you have. Plus, you can make so much cute and useful stuff!
Do you have a cookbook that you’ve read cover to cover?! What is your favorite cookbook? LMK in the comments!
May your week be gentle and may you eat well. 🌲🥣
Love. I also collect cookbooks while my partner collects records! I don’t have a great way to display them yet!