October 3, 2019

I Think You Should Read a Cookbook

Reading a cookbook may not seem like a first-choice-read when laying out on the beach (or
second or third for that matter) nor does it seem like the next step into great, classical literature. 

But perhaps it’s time that cookbooks be recognized as something beyond a soulless, step-by-step
manual for pecan pie, deteriorating away in your grandmother’s kitchen. 

Surely, a cookbook does have it’s technical elements; but equally, a cookbook is a personal
narrative. When reading a cookbook cover to cover, as one would do with a fictional novel, it
becomes clear that beyond the recipe is an underlying story that the author is trying to convey
and the recipe acts as both part of the story and a token of the author’s sentiments. 

When reading a cookbook, it’s important to note that the book has a central theme that goes
beyond cooking. 

Yes, the purpose of the book is to share recipes, but what is the author’s purpose in sharing these
recipes? Is the author sharing recipes that resulted from years of their own weight or health
issues? Or an accumulation of lessons they had learned from a year spent studying szechuan
cooking? Maybe they are presenting a new way to view, feel, and think about food through their
cultural upbringing? 

Or perhaps the author just wants readers to experience the same, joy-filled stillness they feel
when they pour hot water over tea leaves.  

In this way, many cookbooks begin as personal narratives, starting with where the author began
before their recipe and how they reached their conclusion, which is the recipe itself. 

If the personal narrative laced into the woodwork of the book isn’t compelling enough, surely the
sheer complexity of the book’s form, and the role the recipe plays in this form, is enough to
justify reading it. 

Very few times in any work of literature is the reader gifted with a tangible piece of the story that
can be brought to life. This is how the recipe element of a cookbook makes the genre so unique.
It’s easy to resonate with and imagine the feelings and images detailed by Ray Bradbury, but his
words cannot be kneaded into a shaggy dough and popped into the oven at 375 degrees for 30
minutes to be consumed for later.

In many ways, the recipe acts as a point of connection between the author and the reader. It
allows the reader to see what the author saw when they whisked their egg whites until stiff peaks
and smell what the author smelled when the fish first hits the scorching oil.

Likewise, the book’s form also challenges how voice in instruction manuals are imagined. When
reading a recipe in a cookbook, it isn’t a generic voice or the voice of the reader that narrates the
instructions; rather, it’s the voice of the author guiding the reader through their story. 
 October 3, 2019

This isn’t to say though that all cookbooks are a work of magic. Like any work of poetry or
prose, there will be cookbooks that excite and some that bore, and maybe even some that
shouldn’t have been published at all. 

However, this shouldn’t be a reason to ignore cookbooks (or all food writing for that matter) as a
genre. 

Cookbooks should be read and praised for their ability to inform and to entertain, for their unique
way of connecting with readers, and for their way of further complicating the definition of
literature.

By reading cookbooks with this mindset, the connection between food and literature becomes
apparent. Hopefully then, this connection can introduce a new layer of depth and importance to
the experience of reading a recipe for “insane grilled cheese,” placing buttery slices of bread
stacked with cheese in the frying pan, and hope that this will, indeed, be insane.