The Bible of Barbecue

Recreating 800-Year-Old Recipes

That what students at Durham University will attempt to do.

From a piece in the Northern Echo...

The 12th Century recipes are mainly for sauces to accompany mutton, chicken, duck, pork and beef, and also include a chicken dish named "Hen in Winter", denoting the use of older birds over the winter months. 

The sauces include some Mediterranean flavours, featuring ingredients such as parsley, sage, pepper, garlic and coriander. The text describes one recipe as deriving from central western France.

Dr Gasper added: "This shows the extent to which international travel and exchange of ideas took place within the medieval period. And what more evocative example of cultural exchange could there be than food?"

The Joy of the Joy of Cooking

Book Patrol takes a look at one of the most important cookbooks in history.

From the piece...

It is the most popular and best-selling cookbook in American history, with nearly 18 million copies sold.

It is the only cookbook to be included in the New York Public Library’s list of 150 Influential Books of the Century.

The original edition was privately published by the author in an edition of 3000 copies and was illustrated by the author’s daughter, Marion Rombauer Becker, who also designed the spectacular dust jacket featuring St. Martha of Bethany, the patron saint of cooking, taking up a mop to fend off the dragon Tarasque.

The author marketed the book herself, selling copies out of her apartment for $3.00 apiece and sold approximately 2000 copies in two years, no mean accomplishment in the early years of the Great Depression. 

But the real joy came when Bobbs-Merrill took over the commercial publication of the book in 1936. 

The rest they say is history.

A Tolkien Cookbook

When Was the First Cookery Book for Children Published?

That's the question recently posed by the Guardian.

From the piece...

The history of cooking, and therefore the books that support it, is complicated by the question of who did the cooking at a time of servants? For which children would anyone have published cookery books at a time when those who couldn't read would be doing the cooking, while those who could read would not. 

Research into the antiquarian book world reveals that one of the earliest was Lucy Crump's Three Little Cooks, published in 1906. Although it is illustrated, the pictures are a far cry from the mouth-watering illustrations a reader would expect today. It contains few recipes as it is more of a play adventure - which deals with everything from buying a stove and utensils in a toyshop to cooking a seven-course meal.

Cookin' with Coolio

Weird celebrity cookbooks, care of AbeBooks.

10 Best Books on Food History

The list, care of Flavorwire.

Smash Mouth - the Cookbook?

Indeed.

David Chang in a Cookbook Store

Top 10 17th Century Food Books

The list, care of the Guardian.

5 Dessert Cookbook Classics

The list, care of Hazlitt.

Unusual Cookbooks

A Guide to Collecting Cookbooks

AbeBooks whips up a batch of collectable cookbooks, here.

From the piece...

The sheer array of cookbooks is daunting to the first-time collector so it is advisable to specialize in a single genre or ethnicity, or to collect the work of a particular author or group of writers from a region or period. 

The demand for rare cookbooks is fuelled by the fact they are so hard to find, especially in good condition. Once a book has gone out-of-print, it becomes increasingly difficult to find and its value increases as it becomes more collectible.

Condition is the key factor. Look for a pristine copy that appears to have been lovingly read rather than one that has endured the heat, liquids and dirty fingerprints of a working kitchen. Is it signed by the author or someone of note? Does it have a dust jacket? Is it a first edition? Is it out-of-print? These are all important factors to take into consideration before purchasing.

Not Just Spice on His Shelves

Celebrity Jose Andres collects cookbooks. They're awesome.

From a piece in the New York Times...

“Books, for me, this is a way of learning,” Mr. Andrés, 43, said as he circled the table. “This is my college education. The history of cooking is my passion, and cooking is my passion.” 

Add those books residing in his office in Washington — 300 to 400 more — and in “boxes and boxes” still packed away, and the total is roughly 1,500. Mr. Andrés, who was born in Catalonia, Spain, has no time to catalog his remarkable collection, because in addition to operating 12 restaurants, he has embarked on a crusade to elevate Americans’ eating habits. 

His eclectic library includes an 1825 first edition of Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s “Physiology of Taste”; a rents and receipts notepad from 1795 that belonged to Honoré Julien, Thomas Jefferson’s chef; and Japanese comic books that relate the history of Japanese cooking. Add to these a 1931 first edition of Irma Rombauer’s “Joy of Cooking”; an 1851 edition of “The Virginia Housewife,” written by Mary Randolph in 1824; and the first cookbook Mr. Andrés ever bought, “The Cuisine of Frédy Girardet,” from one of the celebrated masters of nouvelle cuisine.

How to Eat Like Your Favorite Authors

Care for some recipes by Ernest Hemingway, Vladimir Nabakov and more? Put on your apron.

From a piece on Flavorwire...

Colette’s Truffles

Turns out legendary bad girl Colette didn’t just indulge her (risqué at the time) sexual appetites, but the prolific author also had a knack for truffles — a food that, of course, happened to be a prized aphrodisiac in ancient Rome.

“Steep in good very dry white wine. Keep your champagne for banquets; the truffle (highly prized black or white mushroom sniffed out by pigs and dogs) does very well without it. Lightly seasoned with salt and pepper. Cook in a covered black concotte (black iron skillet). For 25 minutes it dances in the boiling liquid… which give substance to the cooking juices. No other spices whatsoever! To hell with the pressed napkin, tasting and smelling of chlorine, the final bed of the cooked truffle. Your truffles should come to the table in their court-bouillon (cooking liquid.) Take a generous helping: the truffle whets the appetite and assists the digestion.”

Will Cookbooks Go Extinct?

Yes, says Slate.

From the piece...

I’m not exactly objective about this. When I was a teenager, my idea of a relaxing after-school activity was to read cookbooks in my family’s La-Z-Boy, salivating over the photography, relishing droll turns of phrase, and dog-earing recipes I wanted to try. My first job out of college was as an assistant for a successful cookbook author, a position for which I spent thousands of hours writing, testing, and editing recipes. Cookbooks dominate my bookshelves. A good friend ghostwrites cookbooks for famous chefs. You’d be hard-pressed to imagine someone more predisposed to be sentimental about cookbooks than me.

And yet I’m not only certain of the imminent demise of the print cookbook—I’m fine with it. That’s because print cookbooks offer nothing that apps, e-books, and websites can’t, despite print enthusiasts’ efforts to recast them as objets d’art.

Top 50 Cookbooks

The list, care of the Stylist.

Game of Thrones - The Cookbook?

Yup.

An Edible Cookbook?

Yum.

I Was a Cookbook Ghost Writer

How do celebrity chefs keep churning out recipe book after recipe book? With help.

From a piece in the New York Times...

Many real-world cooks have wondered at the output of authors like Martha Stewart, Paula Deen and Jamie Oliver, who maintain cookbook production schedules that boggle the mind. Rachael Ray alone has published thousands of recipes in her cookbooks and magazine since 2005. How, you might ask, do they do it?

The answer: they don’t. The days when a celebrated chef might wait until the end of a distinguished career and spend years polishing the prose of the single volume that would represent his life’s work are gone. Recipes are product, and today’s successful cookbook authors are demons at providing it — usually, with the assistance of an army of writer-cooks.

“The team behind the face is invaluable,” said Wes Martin, a chef who has developed recipes for Ms. Ray and others. “How many times can one person invent a new quick pasta dish?”

Mr. Martin, and dozens of others like him, have a particular combination of cooking skills, ventriloquism and modesty that makes it possible not only to write in the voices of chefs, but to actually channel them as cooks.

“It’s like an out-of-body experience,” Mr. Martin said. “I know who I am as a chef, and I know who Rachael is, and those are two totally separate parts of my brain.”