Eliza Smith's The Compleat Housewife, 1727

A cookbook or cookery book[1] is a kitchen reference containing recipes.

Cookbooks may be general, or may specialize in a particular cuisine or category of food.

Recipes in cookbooks are organized in various ways: by course (appetizer, first course, main course, dessert), by main ingredient, by cooking technique, alphabetically, by region or country, and so on. They may include illustrations of finished dishes and preparation steps; discussions of cooking techniques, advice on kitchen equipment, ingredients, tips, and substitutions; historical and cultural notes; and so on.

Cookbooks may be written by individual authors, who may be chefs, cooking teachers, or other food writers; they may be written by collectives; or they may be anonymous. They may be addressed to home cooks, to professional restaurant cooks, to institutional cooks, or to more specialized audiences.

Some cookbooks are didactic, with detailed recipes addressed to beginners or people learning to cook particular dishes or cuisines;[2] others are simple aide-memoires, which may document the composition of a dish or even precise measurements, but not detailed techniques.[3]

History

Early works

Apicius, De re coquinaria, an early collection of Roman recipes
18th Century Recipes for Biscuits from a private collection of recipes

See also: Category: Medieval Cookbooks

Not all cultures left written records of their culinary practices, but some examples have survived, notably three Akkadian tablets from Ancient Mesopotamia, dating to about 1700 BC, large fragments from Archestratus, the Latin Apicius and some texts from the Tang dynasty.[4][5][6]

The earliest collection of recipes that has survived in Europe is De re coquinaria, written in Latin. An early version was first compiled sometime in the 1st century and has often been attributed to the Roman gourmet Marcus Gavius Apicius, though this has been cast in doubt by modern research. An Apicius came to designate a book of recipes. The current text appears to have been compiled in the late 4th or early 5th century; the first print edition is from 1483. It records a mix of ancient Greek and Roman cuisine, but with few details on preparation and cooking.[7]

An abbreviated epitome entitled Apici Excerpta a Vinidario, a "pocket Apicius" by Vinidarius, "an illustrious man",[8] was made in the Carolingian era.[9] In spite of its late date it represents the last manifestation of the cuisine of Antiquity.

Medieval

Asian

The earliest cookbooks known in Arabic are those of al-Warraq (an early 10th-century compendium of recipes from the 9th and 10th centuries) and al-Baghdadi (13th century).[citation needed]

Manasollasa from India contains recipes of vegetarian and non-vegetarian cuisines. While the text is not the first among Indian books to describe fermented foods, it contains a range of cuisines based on fermentation of cereals and flours.[10][11]

Chinese recipe books are known from the Tang dynasty, but most were lost.[citation needed] One of the earliest surviving Chinese-language cookbooks is Hu Sihui's "Yinshan Zhengyao" (Important Principles of Food and Drink), believed to be from 1330. Hu Sihui, Buyantu Khan's dietitian and therapist, recorded a Chinese-inflected Central Asian cuisine as eaten by the Yuan court; his recipes were adapted from foods eaten all over the Mongol Empire.[12] Eumsik dimibang, written around 1670, is the oldest Korean cookbook and the first cookbook written by a woman in East Asia.

European

After a long interval, the first recipe books to be compiled in Europe since Late Antiquity started to appear in the late thirteenth century. About a hundred are known to have survived, some fragmentary, from the age before printing.[13] The earliest genuinely medieval recipes have been found in a Danish manuscript dating from around 1300, which in turn are copies of older texts that date back to the early 13th century or perhaps earlier.[14]

Low and High German manuscripts are among the most numerous. Among them is Daz buch von guter spise ("The Book of Good Food") written c. 1350 in Würzberg and Kuchenmeysterey ("Kitchen Mastery"), the first printed German cookbook from 1485.[15] Two French collections are probably the most famous: Le Viandier ("The Provisioner") was compiled in the late 14th century by Guillaume Tirel, master chef for two French kings; and Le Menagier de Paris ("The Householder of Paris"), a household book written by an anonymous middle class Parisian in the 1390s.[16] Du fait de cuisine is another Medieval French cookbook, written in 1420.

From Southern Europe there is the 14th century Valencian manuscript Llibre de Sent Soví (1324), the Catalan Llibre de totes maneres de potatges de menjar ("The book of all recipes of dishes") and several Italian collections, notably the Venetian mid-14th century Libro per Cuoco,[17] with its 135 recipes alphabetically arranged. The printed De honesta voluptate et valetudine ("On honourable pleasure"), first published in 1475, is one of the first cookbooks based on Renaissance ideals, and, though it is as much a series of moral essays as a cookbook, has been described as "the anthology that closed the book on medieval Italian cooking".[18]

Medieval English cookbooks include The Forme of Cury and Utilis Coquinario, both written in the fourteenth century. The Forme of Cury is a cookbook authored by the chefs of Richard II. Utilis Coquinario is a similar cookbook though written by an unknown author. Another English manuscript (1390s) includes the earliest recorded recipe for ravioli, even though ravioli did not originate in England.[19]

Modern cookbooks

from Modern Cookery for Private Families by Eliza Acton (London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1871, p. 48)

With the advent of the printing press in the 16th and 17th centuries, numerous books were written on how to manage households and prepare food. In Holland[20] and England[21] competition grew between the noble families as to who could prepare the most lavish banquet. By the 1660s, cookery had progressed to an art form and good cooks were in demand. Many of them published their own books detailing their recipes in competition with their rivals.[22] Many of these books have now been translated and are available online.[23]

By the 19th century, the Victorian preoccupation for domestic respectability brought about the emergence of cookery writing in its modern form. In 1796, the first known American cookbook titled, American Cookery, written by Amelia Simmons, was published in Hartford, Connecticut. Until then, the cookbooks printed and used in the Thirteen Colonies were British. The first modern cookery writer and compiler of recipes for the home was Eliza Acton. Her pioneering cookbook, Modern Cookery for Private Families (1845), was aimed at the domestic reader rather than the professional cook or chef. This was an immensely influential book, and it established the format for modern writing about cookery.[citation needed] The publication introduced the now-universal practice of listing the ingredients and suggested cooking times with each recipe. It included the first recipe for Brussels sprouts.[24] Contemporary chef Delia Smith is quoted as having called Acton "the best writer of recipes in the English language".[25] Modern Cookery long survived her, remaining in print until 1914 and available more recently in facsimile reprint.

Acton's work was an important influence on Isabella Beeton,[26] who published Mrs Beeton's Book of Household Management in 24 monthly parts between 1857 and 1861. The book was a guide to running a Victorian household, with advice on fashion, child care, animal husbandry, poisons, the management of servants, science, religion, and industrialism.[27][28] Despite its title, most of the text consisted of recipes, such that another popular name for the volume is Mrs Beeton's Cookbook. Most of the recipes were illustrated with coloured engravings, and it was the first book to show recipes in a format that is still used today. Many of the recipes were plagiarised from earlier writers, including Acton.

In 1885 the Virginia Cookery Book was published by Mary Stuart Smith.[29] In 1896 the American cook Fannie Farmer (1857–1915) published The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book which contained some 1,849 recipes.[30]

Types of cookbooks

Betty Crocker's Cook Book for Boys and Girls, 1957

Cookbooks that serve as basic kitchen references (sometimes known as "kitchen bibles") began to appear in the early modern period. They provided not just recipes but overall instruction for both kitchen technique and household management. Such books were written primarily for housewives and occasionally domestic servants as opposed to professional cooks, and at times books such as The Joy of Cooking (USA), La bonne cuisine de Madame E. Saint-Ange (France), The Art of Cookery (UK, USA), Il cucchiaio d'argento (Italy), and A Gift to Young Housewives (Russia) have served as references of record for national cuisines.

Cookbook also tell stories of the writers themselves and reflect upon the era in which they are written. They often reveal notions of social, political, environmental or economic contexts. For example, during the era of industrialization, convenience foods were brought into many households and were integrated and present in cookbooks written in this time.[31] Related to this class are instructional cookbooks, which combine recipes with in-depth, step-by-step recipes to teach beginning cooks basic concepts and techniques. In vernacular literature, people may collect traditional recipes in family cookbooks.

While western cookbooks usually group recipes for main courses by the main ingredient of the dishes, Japanese cookbooks usually group them by cooking techniques (e.g., fried foods, steamed foods, and grilled foods). Both styles of cookbook have additional recipe groupings such as soups or sweets.

International and ethnic

Norwegian immigrant cookbook in Norwegian, published in the United States in 1899.

International and ethnic cookbooks fall into two categories: the kitchen references of other cultures, translated into other languages; and books translating the recipes of another culture into the languages, techniques, and ingredients of a new audience. The latter style often doubles as a sort of culinary travelogue, giving background and context to a recipe that the first type of book would assume its audience is already familiar with. Popular Puerto Rican cookbook, Cocina Criolla, written by Carmen Aboy Valldejuli, includes recipes that are typically of traditional Puerto Rican cuisine such as mofongo and pasteles. Valldejuli's cookbook was not only important to Puerto Ricans, but also very popular in the United States where her original cookbook has since been published in several editions, including English versions. These include The Art of Caribbean Cookery - Doubleday, 1957; Puerto Rican Cookery - Pelican Publishing, 1983; and, Juntos en la Cocina (co-authored with her husband, Luis F. Valldejuli) - Pelican Publishing, 1986.[32]

Professional cookbooks

Professional cookbooks are designed for the use of working chefs and culinary students and sometimes double as textbooks for culinary schools. Such books deal not only in recipes and techniques, but often service and kitchen workflow matters. Many such books deal in substantially larger quantities than home cookbooks, such as making sauces by the liter or preparing dishes for large numbers of people in a catering setting. While the most famous of such books today are books like Le guide culinaire by Escoffier or The Professional Chef by the Culinary Institute of America, such books go at least back to medieval times, represented then by works such as Taillevent's Viandier and Chiquart d'Amiço's Du fait de cuisine.

Single-subject

Single-subject books, usually dealing with a specific ingredient, technique, class of dishes or target group (e.g. for kids), are quite common as well. Jack Monroe for example features low budget recipes. Some imprints such as Chronicle Books have specialized in this sort of book, with books on dishes like curries, pizza, and simplified ethnic food. Popular subjects for narrow-subject books on technique include grilling/barbecue, baking, outdoor cooking, and even recipe cloning (Recipe cloning is copying commercial recipes where the original is a trade secret).[33]

Community

Community cookbooks (also known as compiled, regional, charitable, and fund-raising cookbooks) are a unique genre of culinary literature. Community cookbooks focus on home cooking, often documenting regional, ethnic, family, and societal traditions, as well as local history.[34][35] Sondra Gotlieb, for example, wrote her cookbooks on Canadian food culture by visiting people and homes by region. She gathered recipes, observed the foodways, observed the people and their traditions of each region by being in their own homes. Gotlieb did this so that she could put together a comprehensive cookbook based on the communities and individuals that make up Canada.[36] Gooseberry Patch has been publishing community-style cookbooks since 1992 and built their brand on this community.

Community cookbooks have sometimes been created to offer a counter-narrative of historical events or sustain a community through difficult times. The Historical Cookbook of the American Negro, published in 1958 by the National Council of Negro Women, includes recipes that illuminate histories of Black resistance, including "Nat Turner Crackling Bread."[37] The 1976 People's Philadelphia Cookbook, published by grassroots organization The People's Fund, includes recipes from members of the Black Panther Party, The United Farm Workers, and the Gay Activist Alliance of Philadelphia.[38] For In Memory's Kitchen, written in the 1940s by Jewish women interned at the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, women drew on their memories to contribute recipes.[39]

Chefs

Cookbooks can also document the food of a specific chef (particularly in conjunction with a cooking show) or restaurant. Many of these books, particularly those written by or for a well-established cook with a long-running TV show or popular restaurant, become part of extended series of books that can be released over the course of many years. Popular chef-authors throughout history include people such as Delia Smith, Julia Child, James Beard, Nigella Lawson, Edouard de Pomiane, Jeff Smith, Emeril Lagasse, Claudia Roden, Madhur Jaffrey, Katsuyo Kobayashi, and possibly even Apicius, the semi-pseudonymous author of the Roman cookbook De re coquinaria, who shared a name with at least one other famous food figure of the ancient world.

Famous cookbooks

A page from the Forme of Cury (14th century) by the Master Cooks of King Richard II of England

Famous cookbooks from the past, in chronological order, include:

Collections and collectors

Several libraries have extensive collections of cookbooks.

Some individuals are notable for their collections of cookbooks, or their scholarly interest therein. Elizabeth Robins Pennell, an American critic in London from the 1880s, was an early writer on the subject, and has recently been called "one of the most well-known cookbook collectors in the world".[46] Much of her collection eventually went to the Rare Book and Special Collections Division at the Library of Congress. Held alongside hers are the thousands of gastronomic volumes donated by food chemist Katherine Bitting; their collections were evaluated in tandem in Two Loaf-Givers, by one of the LOC's curators;[47] a digital version is available.[48]

Usage outside the world of food

The term cookbook is sometimes used metaphorically to refer to any book containing a straightforward set of already tried and tested "recipes" or instructions for a specific field or activity, presented in detail so that the users who are not necessarily expert in the field can produce workable results. Examples include a set of circuit designs in electronics, a book of magic spells, or The Anarchist Cookbook, a set of instructions on destruction and living outside the law. O'Reilly Media publishes a series of books about computer programming named the Cookbook series, and each of these books contain hundreds of ready to use, cut and paste examples to solve a specific problem in a single programming language.

See also

Notes

  1. ^ "Definition of cookery book | Dictionary.com". www.dictionary.com. Archived from the original on 2019-11-08. Retrieved 2019-11-08.
  2. ^ e.g. Mastering the Art of French Cooking
  3. ^ e.g. Le Répertoire de la Cuisine
  4. ^ Pilcher, Jeremy (2012). The Oxford Handbook of Food History. Oup USA. ISBN 9780199729937.
  5. ^ "LA Times: Chef Breaks Code to Ancient Recipes : Babylonian Collection Now the Oldest Known to Man". Los Angeles Times. 23 May 1985. Archived from the original on 2017-01-11. Retrieved 2017-01-11.
  6. ^ Yale University (June 13, 2018). "Interdisciplinary team cooks 4000-year old Babylonian stews at NYU event". YouTube. Archived from the original on June 22, 2018. Retrieved June 29, 2018.
  7. ^ Adamson, Melitta Weiss. "The Greco-Roman World" in Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe, p. 6–7; Simon Varey, "Medieval and Renaissance Italy, A. The Peninsula" in Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe, pp. 85–86.
  8. ^ About Vinidarius himself nothing is known; he may have been a Goth, in which case his Gothic name may have been Vinithaharjis.
  9. ^ Christopher Grocock and Sally Grainger, Apicius. A critical edition with an introduction and an English translation (Prospect Books) 2006 ISBN 1-903018-13-7, pp. 309-325
  10. ^ K.T. Achaya (2003). The Story of Our Food. Orient Blackswan. p. 85. ISBN 978-81-7371-293-7. Archived from the original on 2019-01-07. Retrieved 2019-03-19.
  11. ^ Jyoti Prakash Tamang; Kasipathy Kailasapathy (2010). Fermented Foods and Beverages of the World. CRC Press. p. 16. ISBN 978-1-4200-9496-1.
  12. ^ Hu Sihui, Paul D. Buell, Eugene N. Anderson, tr., A Soup for the Qan: Chinese Dietary Medicine of the Mongol Era as Seen in Hu Szu-Hui's Yin-Shan Cheng-Yao: Introduction, Translation, Commentary and Chinese Text (London; New York: Kegan Paul International, 2000. ISBN 0710305834), p. 1-8.
  13. ^ John Dickie, Delizia! The Epic History of the Italians and Their Food 2008, pp50f.
  14. ^ Constance B. Hieatt, "Sorting Through the Titles of Medieval Dishes: What Is, or Is Not, a 'Blanc Manger'" in Food in the Middle Ages, pp. 32–33.
  15. ^ Melitta Weiss Adamson, "The Greco-Roman World" in Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe, p. 161, 182–83
  16. ^ Adamson (2004), pp. 103, 107.
  17. ^ Text printed in E. Faccioli, ed. Arte della cucina dal XIV al XIX secolo (Milan, 1966) vol. I, pp.61-105, analysed by John Dickie 2008, pp 50ff.
  18. ^ Simon Varey, "Medieval and Renaissance Italy, A. The Peninsula" in Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe, p. 92.
  19. ^ Constance B. Hieatt, "Medieval Britain" in Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe, p. 25.
  20. ^ Sieben, Ria Jansen (1588). Een notable boecxtken van cokeryen.
  21. ^ anon (1588). The good Huswifes handmaid for Cookerie.
  22. ^ May, Robert (1685). The accompliſht Cook.
  23. ^ Judy Gerjuoy. "Medieval Cookbooks". Archived from the original on 2007-06-09. Retrieved 2007-06-15.
  24. ^ Pearce, Food For Thought: Extraordinary Little Chronicles of the World, (2004) pg 144
  25. ^ Interview Archived 2014-06-06 at the Wayback Machine.
  26. ^ "Acton, Eliza (1799–1859)". Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia. Gale Research Inc. Archived from the original on 18 May 2013. Retrieved 8 January 2013.(subscription required)
  27. ^ "General Observations on the Common Hog". Archived from the original on 2013-10-21. Retrieved 2014-06-02.
  28. ^ "Food in season in April 1861". Archived from the original on 2013-11-19. Retrieved 2014-06-02.
  29. ^ Smith, Mary Stuart (1885). Virginia Cookery Book. New York: Harper and Bros.
  30. ^ Cunningham, Marion (1979). The Fannie Farmer Cookbook (revised). Bantam Books, New York. ISBN 0-553-56881-7.
  31. ^ Melissa Fuster (2015) Writing Cuisine in the Spanish Caribbean: A Comparative Analysis of Iconic Puerto Rican and Cuban cookbooks, Food, Culture & Society, 18:4, 659-680
  32. ^ Melissa Fuster (2015) Writing Cuisine in the Spanish Caribbean: A Comparative Analysis of Iconic Puerto Rican and Cuban cookbooks, Food, Culture & Society, 18:4, 659-680
  33. ^ "Top Copycat Restaurant Recipes Revealed! - Food.com". www.food.com. Archived from the original on 2019-11-08. Retrieved 2019-11-08.
  34. ^ "Answers.com". Answers.com. Archived from the original on 2011-09-22. Retrieved 2010-04-03.
  35. ^ Bowers, Anne (1997). Recipes for Reading: Community Cookbooks, Stories, Histories. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 978-1-55849-089-5. Archived from the original on 2013-12-28. Retrieved 2013-03-15.
  36. ^ Keneally, Rhona Richman. There is a Canadian Cuisine, and it is unique in all the world: Crafting National Food Culture during the Long 1960s.
  37. ^ scientifique., Bower, Anne. Éditeur (1997). Recipes for reading : community cookbooks, stories, histories. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-088-4. OCLC 758887232.((cite book)): CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  38. ^ Gattuso, Reina (2020-01-24). "Eat Like a 1970s Radical With 'The People's Philadelphia Cookbook'". Atlas Obscura. Archived from the original on 2021-01-23. Retrieved 2021-02-26.
  39. ^ Theophano, Janet (2016). Eat my words: reading women's lives through the cookbooks they wrote. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 978-1-250-11194-4. OCLC 965713058.
  40. ^ Popova, Maria (17 April 2013). "The Artists' & Writers' Cookbook: A Rare 1961 Treasure Trove of Unusual Recipes and Creative Wit". The Marginalian.
  41. ^ "Collections". Archived from the original on 2014-10-26. Retrieved 2014-10-31.
  42. ^ Heather Atwood, "Harvard's Cookbooks Speak of Our History", Gloucester Times, August 8, 2012 full text Archived 2014-10-31 at the Wayback Machine
  43. ^ "Fales Library Food and Cookery Collection Development Policy" Archived 2014-11-01 at the Wayback Machine
  44. ^ "Cookery Collections Guide". Special Collections. Leeds University Library. Archived from the original on 20 April 2017. Retrieved 19 April 2017.
  45. ^ White, Eileen (2004). The English Cookery Book: Historical Essays (PDF). Prospect Books. pp. 6–27. ISBN 1-90301836-6. Archived (PDF) from the original on 20 April 2017. Retrieved 19 April 2017.
  46. ^ ""A Greedy Woman:The Long, Delicious Shelf Life of Elizabeth Robins Pennell". Cynthia D. Bertelsen. August 2009. Fine Books Magazine". Archived from the original on 2018-04-03. Retrieved 2018-04-02.
  47. ^ Two Loaf-Givers: Or a Tour through the Gastronomic Libraries of Katherine Golden Bitting and Elizabeth Robins Pennell. by Leonard N. Beck ISBN 0-8444-0404-7 (0-8444-0404-7)
  48. ^ "From the Rare Book and Special Collections Division". loc.gov. Archived from the original on 2021-03-29. Retrieved 2018-04-02.

References

External links

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