Books That Cook: The Making of a Literary Meal is a delightful book that is meant to be savored. But not literally. You can’t actually eat it. Well, if you have the paper version, I guess you could, but I highly recommend that you read it instead. It’s an anthology with the premise that cookbooks are a form of literature, and it combines selections from cookbooks with passages from fiction, memoir, and poetry to create a lovely meditation on the meaning of food and food writing.
One thing I like about this book is that there are so many ways to read it. I read it casually – I had it by my bed and I would read a section here or there in no particular order, with no real agenda except enjoyment. But you can also read the Introduction and get a good sense of why the book is organized the way it is, and use this organization to get a good academic sense of how cookbooks have changed our culture, and vice versa, and what role food plays in literature. Basically, you can enjoy this as casually as you might enjoy a glass of wine at a party or as seriously as if you are the judge of a wine competition. It’s up to you.
The cookbook selections come from American Cookery by Amelia Simmons, The American Frugal Housewife, by Lydia Maria Child, The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook, by Fannie Merritt Farmer, The Joy of Cooking by Irma S. Rombauer, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck, and Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook, by Alice Waters, and The Anarchist Cookbook. My frugal father-in-law, who passed away three years ago, would have greatly approved of the Frugal Housewife’s advice to “save your paper and twine”. My mother’s Joy of Cooking has more recipes clippings in it than it has actual cookbook. The mere mention of some of these cookbooks evokes powerful emotions even though I’ve never cooked a single recipe from them, and the introduction made me completely re-evaluate why these cookbooks are so enjoyable to read and so laden with emotion.
The book is organized by cookbook sections, each headed with a sample from a cookbook followed by other forms of literature. The editors have created some suggested menus for your browsing convenience. For instance, here’s the menu for “Love and Desire”:
“To Cepe, with Love (or, The Alchemy of Longing)” by E.J. Levy
“An Unspoken Hunger”, by Terry Tempest Williams
“Whistle Stop, Alabama” by Fannie Flagg
The Food Taster by Peter Ebling
“Reception” by Kathy Fagan
“Potatoes and Love: Some Reflections” by Nora Ephron
“Burn” by Jennifer Cognard-Black
Embedded in the above offerings are recipes as diverse as Mango Cake, Buttermilk Biscuits, and Creamed Morels on Chive Butter Toast. Nora Ephron provides three potato recipes: one for the beginning of a relationship, one for the middle, and one for the end (mashed potatoes, of course).
There are many delectable recipes throughout the book, both simple and elaborate, but the book is more about our relationship to food than food itself. This brings me to my favorite recipe, by Howard Dinin M.F.K. Fisher. It’s for Fried Egg Sandwiches, just the way her aunt used to make them, and she writes about them with great affection despite the fact that they were, empirically speaking, terrible. The sandwiches were unhealthy, leaden, and soggy, and guaranteed to stain your clothes all around the pocket – but Fisher loved to eat them while hiking with her aunt. She closes the recipe with this advice:
To be eaten at the top of a hill at sunset, between trios of ‘A Wandering Minstrel I’ and ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, preferably before adolescence and its priggish queasiness set in.
I hadn’t considered that cookbooks are a form of literature before, but I’m sure thinking about it now. It explains why I hate to cook but I love reading cookbooks. It explains why the linguistic style of cookbooks varies so much despite some basic similarities. It also explains why recipes fit so neatly into larger works of literature, whether the books is fiction (think of how the recipes in Fried Green Tomatoes enhance the story) or memoir (as in Nora Ephron’s Heartburn).
I loved how the structure of this book made me think and how the content made me feel. It’s a lovely book for any foodie or for anyone with an interest in how we write and talk about food. And if, unlike me, you do like to cook, this book will give you plenty of ideas. Can I come over for dinner?
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O my! A book about food, food writing and recipes: all my catnip. The only thing preventing me from clicking right now is a case of food poisoning. I don’t think I could take reading about fried egg sandwiches at the moment.
I love food memoirs whether by chefs or writers like Ezra Pound and George Orwell, and I love when books have recipes incorporated into the story like in like Water for Chocolate. This is going on my holds list immediately.
I haven’t read anything by Howard Dinin before…..his story sounds much like MFK Fisher’s Aunt Gwen’s fried egg sandwiches. For anyone who enjoys culinary writing and hasn’t read MFK Fisher, please treat yourself! But yes, off to download this book.
One of my all time favorites is Laurie Colwin’s “Home Cooking”, and its sequel. I loved her fiction, and when she published recipes with commentary, or stories with recipes, I was lost.
Among my favs are two opposite ends of the spectrum: Laurel’s Kitchen, which is all warm and fuzzy, and the I Hate To Cook Book which is freaking hilarious.
It used to be that if my meal was less than inspiring, I would grab either a cookbook or a book about food to read while I ate; it made my mundane meal so much better. I like reading Marion Cunningham (The Fanny Farmer cookbook, The Fanny Farmer baking book), and Rose Levy Beranbaum (Rose’s Christmas cookies, The Cake bible)as well as Calvin Trillan’s tummy trilogy (although he didn’t stop at three). And even though I don’t particularly like audio books, I love Jill Conner Browne’s Sweet Potato Queens books, all of which have recipe sections, and I enjoy hearing her read them (which is maddening when I listen to them when I’m driving, because they always make me hungry).
Did somebody page me? Because I could have sworn I heard this post calling my name.
@DPR: I was thinking of you when I was formatting it. I had a feeling you’d be like, YES PLEASE NOW.
That Howard Dinn quote comes directly from M.F.K. Fisher’s “An Alphabet for Gourmets.” (It’s “H for Happy”).
The only type of book that can compete with romances for for my book budget dollars are cook books. I, too, adore Laurie Colwin’s food writing. Her last columns in Gourmet, published posthumously, were a bittersweet joy, and her lentil soup is a winter storm staple. Rose Levy Berenbaum is an autobuy. My copy of Rose’s Christmas Cookies is falling apart from use. Ruth Reichl’s memoirs are tasty. Molly O’Neill’s One Big Table was a Border’s closing score at $5 and chock full of stories about people all over the country and their food. Most recently I got the Top Pot Hand-Forged Doughnuts cookbook, Top Pot is regularly mentioned in Lauren Dane’s romance’s. The inside cover is my own food story because it has a picture of the table I sat at with my mocha and apple fritter the morning I left Seattle.
Oh! I loved this book too though I had to return it to the library after reading almost half of it. You’re right, food is about so much more than the act of cooking or eating and the pieces in the book capture that relationship perfectly.
@Kate: i’ve been looking for that book but my library doesn’t seem to have it! may have to hunt down a kindle version of the book!
in fact love all the reccos I got!
No doubt the result of a hasty reading or a pressing deadline, and although I don’t mind at all being confused—by a strange act of conflation—for the great M.F.K. Fisher, it’s unfortunate you attributed her story in Books that Cook, complete with her aunt’s indigestible version of a fried egg sandwich, with my poem, which follows it immediately, and is actually a poem, a rather long one. I am Howard Dinin, and I wrote How to Make the Perfect Fried Egg Sandwich, which produces a result that is the opposite of unchewable and indigestible. An easy mistake to make, undoubtedly, given the circumstances. I wouldn’t care to venture the possible themes and motives, beyond reminiscence, triggered by culinary memories for Ms. FIsher’s bit, but my poem, which consists largely from appearances as a protracted recipe for a very simple dish, cooked in the style of the French, and is as well, I think, a meditation on mortality. I hope in some small way this helps to set the record straight. I’d apologize to the spirit of Ms. Fisher, but, the error is hardly my doing.
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Thank you so much for bringing this error to our attention, Howard – and I see now from looking at previous comments that I should have realized that something was up. My profuse apologies – it’s been corrected.
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