What Do You Want From a Cookbook?

I think we all want different things, and that’s good.

I have declared the summer of 2024 my summer of pâte de fruits, and I’ve been looking all over for recipes that will give me the experience I seek in making them: Chiefly, made with fresh fruit and not requiring me to order anything special. This is very difficult, and I will probably end up with lots of pectin and/or citric acid at hand, but I realized in going through all my go-to dessert books—The Last Course by Claudia Fleming, Desserts by Nancy Silverton, Sweet + Salty by Lagusta Yearwood (though Lagusta blessedly emailed me her recipe!), Fancy Desserts by Brooks Headley, and the newly added (not dessert but fruit specific) Preserved: Fruit by Cortney Burns, Darra Goldstein, and Richard Martin—that there were no clues here to help me along. I obviously am missing a book on French confections that I should have. I can have all the digital recipes in the world: My heart wants something like this, something formulaic and classic, written down in a book.

When I do find this book, I will bet that it has few photographs and rigorous text instructions. This will be in contrast to discussions lately on social media about whether it’s only snobs who don’t like photography in cookbooks. (Kristin Donnelly has a good rundown on the matter.) I like photography, when it’s good and serves the story, but I don’t like nor require photography for photography’s sake.

If a recipe requires complex steps, yes, I like and appreciate the play by play—Kristina Cho’s Mooncakes and Milk Bread comes to mind as a book that does this really well; we discussed it in 2022—but I’m decidedly not a visual learner: I like words and conjuring the actions from them. My favorite cookbooks have no photos, or photos that enhance an ambiance rather than act as instruction, or they have illustrations. Photos often feel shouty at me about how a thing should look, and I prefer to get myself there with my imagination. It’s just a different way of thinking, that’s all. No one way is right; no one kind of cookbook serves everyone.

This is why, though, there are few contemporary cookbooks that appeal to me. I hope saying this doesn’t keep publishers from continuing to send me new cookbooks: I like to look at them, but I am not the target audience for them, for the most part. As noted, I like rigorous text-based instruction and notes. I like staple recipes that have personality, not personality-driven recipes. I like ideas that serve me for occasions both special and mundane. I need grams!!!

An adorable 2014 receipt stuck inside FANCY DESSERTS.

When I do cook from recipes—and I am doing so more lately, trying to branch out and also think through recipe writing and the dance of cooking—I read them over and over before I even get in the kitchen, internalizing the steps. Because I have a good bit of experience under my belt at this point, I often decide I’m going to rearrange the instructions to my own preferences, like: I’m going to ignore the step that tells me to put dough in a clean bowl, or I’m going to cook the mushrooms differently because I don’t like cooking mushrooms in fat until they’ve released their moisture, or I’m going to add every aromatic at once because otherwise I know they’ll burn. My husband is a newer cook and I’ve tried to instill in him how important it is to read the recipe over and over before getting into the kitchen, and to have your ingredients all set to go before a burner is lit—because we’re often in there together, and I know how to avoid chaos.

What I’ve noticed about contemporary cookbooks is that the instruction in text can be a bit lacking, a little less descriptive than I’d like, and perhaps the heavy reliance on photography is causing that—along with perhaps small advances, out of which comes the money for styling and photography, not to mention agents and taxes. Whereas I’m on record as liking old recipes—the ones that barely tell you a thing, but also do tell you everything, if you’re on the level with that book—I also like recipes that are really written, if that makes sense, where I’m really getting into the meat of how a person cooks and thinks. I really loved reading Kate Ray of Soft Leaves on this, over the weekend. It’s through knowing these things that I can figure out whether I want to eat something that they like. I can’t really know that from a picture, but maybe you can. 

The Newer Cookbooks on Heavy Rotation in My House

The Vegan Chinese Kitchen by Hannah Che
Arabiyya by Reem Assil (see my 2021 conversation with her)
Catalan Food by Daniel Olivella
To Asia, With Love by Hetty McKinnon (especially for its photography, which I discussed with Hetty last year!)
Cucina Povera by Giulia Scarpaleggia
Bread and How to Eat It by Rick Easton and Melissa McCart

The Classic Cookbooks I Am Always Looking At

Entertaining by Martha Stewart
The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook by Ina Garten
How to Eat by Nigella Lawson
The Zuni Cafe Cookbook by Judy Rodgers
The Dean & DeLuca Cookbook by Giorgio DeLuca, David Rosengarten, & Joel Dean

My Personal Canon (i.e. Desert Island Cookbooks)

The Vegetarian Compass by Karen Hubert Allison (out of print; seek it!)
Dirt Candy by Amanda Cohen
Rosetta by Elena Reygadas (I bought it in Spanish in Mexico City, but this link is to a quite pricey English-language edition!)

Let’s talk cookbooks in the comments! What do you want from cookbooks? What are you new and classic favorites?

As noted last week, the extra Monday in April is why I’m writing you this extra missive today. Next week, The Desk Dispatch.

Paid Subscriber Notes

The Desk Book Club is currently reading Food in Cuba: The Pursuit of a Decent Meal by Hanna Garth. On Friday, we will have April’s discussion, and on Sunday afternoon, the Zoom—the link will be in Friday’s post for paid subscribers. Buy it from Archestratus for 20 percent off!

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If you’re looking for cooking inspiration, remember to scroll through The Desk Cookbook.

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Each The Desk Dispatch contributor is paid $500 thanks to subscribers. I so appreciate getting to have this ad-free space for essays and cultural criticism in food. If you’d like to make this sustainable and perhaps enable it to expand in the future, please consider upgrading your subscription to paid.

News

I talked to The Blueprint on ABC Radio in Australia about my recent newsletter piece “Securing the Brand Bag.” Listen to it here.

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Writer Ali Francis is teaching a course called “Writing Food” with Off Assignment, and I’ll be one of the guest lecturers, along with Mayukh Sen, Bettina Makalintal, and Jaya Sax. I have a couple of 10 percent off codes left over for any paid subscribers who’d like one—I’ll be speaking for the first class, about the question of what food writing even is.

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My book No Meat Required: The Cultural History and Culinary Future of Plant-Based Eating will be out in paperback on June 25. Consider it a nice lightweight beach read!

Reading

Your girl is a desastre! I had a complete freak-out a couple of weeks ago and—yada, yada, yada—I now have three assignments to complete. My reading is scattered, but I think maybe 2024 will be the year I actually finish My Struggle? I’m sucked into Book 5 now… writing a book requires me to read My Struggle. I put it down once No Meat Required was done; really picking it back up while deep into the new manuscript. I will parse this!!! I also read Elissa Gabbert’s forthcoming essay collection Any Person Is the Only Self and that inspired me to finally pick up the first collection of Susan Sontag’s journals Reborn, which I’ve carried around for years.