I am not a cookbook collector, but have had, on average ~30 cookbooks on a shelf in my kitchen, and ~15 food-related in my library at any one time. Over the last 2+ years, while conducting the obligatory “pandemic purge,” I have whittled down the number of books, after making copies of the recipes I wanted to keep from each. As part of that purge, I reviewed each book carefully and realized that if a visiter only had access to my cookbooks, they would acquire a particular view about the USA as they are not just instructions on how to cook, but are a critique of our society too.
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History of Cookbooks
I used a variety of sites to clarify some of the oldest cookbooks we know of and utilized TheMint, TheCultureTrip, BookRiot, and Smithsonian to give me directions on these cookbooks. Since I am speaking about various times, here is the convention I use:
- PattyCooks uses BCE (Before the Common Era) as a secular version of BC (before Christ).
- I also use CE (Common Era) as a secular version of the Latin AD (anno Domini), which means “in the year of the Lord.”
Some common observations I have made about cook books through the ages.
Originally men wrote the cook books, or recipes, as they were the scribes. Additionally, while women were the home cooks, men created a professional class of Cooks (now Chefs) where women were not allowed in the public sphere.
You can tell the influence of Colonialism by the food and its cooking style over time, and the changes that creep into local preparations.
Over time the existing cook books changed from being written for those who know how to cook, into a more democratic set of ingredient lists and directions. The idea slowly being discovered is that anyone with proper cooking pots and pans along with measurement tools could cook even difficult dishes.
In many cases, the cookbook keeps culture alive. Be it Black Americans, Native Peoples, or others reaching back into their own history of origins.
Oldest Recipes
The oldest published recipes are considered to be 3 clay Mesopotamian tablets that date back to 1700 BCE and are known as the Yale Culinary Tablets (located in Yale’s Babylonian collection). From Yale: This tablet includes 25 recipes for stews, 21 are meat stews and 4 are vegetable stews. The recipes list the ingredients and the order in which they should be added, but does not give measures or cooking time – they were clearly meant only for experienced chefs.” YBC 4644 from the Old Babylonian Period, ca. 1750 BC.
First Cookbook
The first recorded cookbook (still in print today) was Of Culinary Matters (originally, De Re Coquinaria, or The Art of Cooking), written by Apicius, in 4th century CE Rome. It featured more than 500 recipes.
First Islamic Cookbook
The first Islamic cuisine cookbook. In the 10th century, estimated at 950 CE, Ibn Sayyar al-Warraq wrote Kitab al-Ṭabīḫ (The Book of Dishes), with over 600 recipes.
First USA Cookbook
The first USA cookbook was published in 1796 CE and was 47 pages long. American Cookery, by Amelia Simmons, contained recipes for roasts, stews, pies and cakes. What made it unique was that it starts to show the move from a British to an American Cuisine; so she gave the recipe for a British inspired ultra-fluffy, sugary, and delicate cake, followed closely with a recipe for Johnny Cakes and Native Peoples SlapJack. Additionally, she used American names in place of British, such as molasses instead of treacle.
Smithsonian wrote that The Library of Congress recently designated American Cookery one of the 88 “Books That Shaped America.”
First African American Cookbook
The first African American cookbook is recorded as written and published by “an experienced cook” Malinda Russell in 1866 entitled A Domestic Cookbook: Containing a Careful Selection of Receipts for the Kitchen. While her 39-page book focused on cakes, pastries, and desserts, she also included many other important recipes. Per cook books of its time, while it included ingredients, it did not always include measurements or very precise ones. Interestingly, you can still purchase this book from Amazon.
- A related, but side note: Robert Roberts, in 1827 had the first African American published book called The House Servant’s Directory.
First Modern Recipe Format Book
The first cookbook with a modern recipe format was Fannie Mae Farmer’s The Boston Cooking School Cookbook, published in 1896. She provided an ingredient and amount list, along with directions.
These early books spoke to particular segments of the population and reflected the biases and experiences of the authors. One is able to glean lots of information from cookbooks
- Some were obviously for cooking and serving the rich, given the type and amount of food suggested.
- Others showed transitions, say from early USA foods combining African, Native Peoples, and the local environment, into later Southern or Soul Foods as we know them today.
- A few cook books came from enslaved peoples, clearly showing the distinction between them and slave owners, in terms of ingredients and dishes.
History was written all through those early cook books and interestingly to me is that almost all of them can still be tracked down and bought.
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Types of Cookbooks
There are a variety of cookbooks these days due to the democratizing effects of an easy way to replicate books and a large reading population. Here are the most obvious types of cookbooks on my shelf in the kitchen, or in my library.
Academic Cookbooks
The big example of this type of cookbook is the Joy of Cooking (1931). It provides ingredient lists, quantities, instructions and also dives into all the details someone would really need to cook anything. Really, this book is all about food from hunting and gathering, to canning and consuming. If I could have only one cookbook, this would probably be the one I would want for it features all aspects of direct food preparation, including how to butcher.
Another example of academic books are often more experimentally-based. For example, The Complete Milk Street, that covers their TV cooking show from 2017-2019; or the The Complete America’s Test Kitchen TV Show Cookbook, that covers their TV show from 2001-2022. These are from televised cooking shows that test out each recipe, and various cooking techniques, cookware, appliances, and utensils to recommend the best ones to use.
Adventurous Cookbooks
The first type of adventure cookbook, is when the author, an outsider, comes into an area and learns everything they can, traveling around to experience local life, then works with local cooks to learn the cuisine. Finally, they write about their observations and experience. Canadian author Naomi Duguid has written Burma: Rivers of Flavor and A Taste of Persia that capture her travels and food in those areas.
The second type, is a person who is part of the community, an insider, who makes an effort to learn about the food history and its context, takes lots of pictures and then writes about what they know. I Am A Filipino by Nicole Ponseca and Miguel Trinidad, provides much more than recipes as they give us a tour of their country and history.
Cuisine-specific Cookbooks
These are books focused on one specific cuisine. I tend to have these books and gather a few whenever I move to explore a new cuisine. So on my kitchen shelf right now, I have cookbooks specifically on Indian, Greek, German, Southern, Korean, Japanese, and Ethiopian cuisine.
The Taste of Country Cooking (1976) was written by Edna Lewis and remains the foundation book for Southern comfort food. Her work preserved the old-time, Southern country food culture, as well as the African-American food culture, in a way that also seems to be from an era that is slipping away. This woman was ahead of her time and Wikipedia notes, she refined the American view of Southern cooking. She championed the use of fresh, in season ingredients and characterized Southern food as fried chicken, pork, and fresh vegetables – most especially greens.
Ethnic and Cultural-Identity Cookbooks
These are cookbooks focused on particular ethnicity, and provide recipes and political, economic, geographical or cultural contexts. I love these books and they are probably the largest category of cook books I repeatedly reference. Including some very loved and old ones on German, Italian, and other European countries’ food. But also, from a historical point of view, as we move to more modern times, the cookbooks written by women were some of the few ways that women could and still have a voice within their own communities.
Bibi’s Kitchen has 8 women’s voices from differing African countries that touch the Indian Ocean. They provide context for their food, a grounding in their cultural heritage, and context for the food. This is a beautiful book.
I follow Maangchi on the internet, and love learning to shop and cook “real” Korean food, easy to follow so long as I have the ingredients at hand. Maangchi’s Real Korean Cooking: Authentic Dishes for the Home Cook is great and her recipes are used often.
A recent addition is the New Native Kitchen: Celebrating Modern Recipes of the American Indian that has gorgeous photos of the food all around us in America. Another recent addition is My Mexico City Kitchen: Recipes and Convictions [A Cookbook].
Food Memoirs
These types of books will provide some limited recipes in generic or detail form, but the main focus of these books is on the author’s personal story and their relation to some aspect of food and drink.
My first introduction to food-related memoirs, was from American M.F.K. FIsher’s The Art of Eating. I loved her writing, way of describing her experiences, and she really introduced to me the concept of appreciating and eating well as a critical part of living well. She also writes well.
Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential (2000) revealed the behind-the-scenes activities of restaurant life and helped develop the “cult of the chef.” While I have read this book, it is not on my shelves.
Homestead Cookbooks
These are the books that take a ”do it yourself” approach from gardening, to cooking, and preserving food. The River Cottage Cookbook (2001), by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is one such book. His call for us to return to the self-sufficient lifestyle, to relearn the seasons, and to meet our food as well as neighbors. Basically to return to nature’s rhythms and bounty.
Ingredient Cookbooks
When I bought my first house, one of the joke house warming gifts was a bag of beans and a cookbook on nothing but beans. Then a year later that same person gave me a cookbook focused on potatoes. I no longer have these books, but am interested in getting Bean by Bean: A Cookbook that boasts more than 175 recipes.
Personality Cookbooks
Probably one of the most famous here is Julia Child’s book Mastering the Art of French Cooking which I have read in parts, but do not own.
Clearly a modern version would be TV personality and cook Barefoot Contessa or Ina Garten, and I have 9 of her 12 books. While there are some personal narratives in these books, that provide some minimal context, these recipes themselves are really the focus.
Also in this category, I have a book from blogger, vlogger, and businesswoman Marion Grasby (and her mama Noi) Always Delicious (2021). Both of these women have made cooking Thai and Asian food very accessible; their food looks so wonderful, and tastes famously, almost outrageously good. Although I follow Grasby on YouTube and Facebook, I decided to own her cookbook so I would always have her recipies at hand.
Recipe Cookbooks
The purest form of the cookbook is one that mainly contains recipes, and related tips or tricks, to help the cook replicate the dish in our own homes. An example, that I have on my shelf, is Better Homes and Garden’s New Cookbook (1951) that I have had for all these decades. There is no narrative, no personality, just the recipes. My book has missing pages, some pages are falling out, and all my favorite recipes have notes and stains all over the page.
Restaurant Cookbooks
At some point, restaurants started to release their own cookbooks, focused on the food they serve to consumers. In some cases the book was self-published, in others it was solicited by a publisher.
One of our favorite Greek restaurants, Kokkari Estiatorio, is located downtown San Francisco; and they published a beautiful cookbook simply called Kokkari (2010). This is on my shelf and I refer to it a couple times each year.
I also have The Greens Cookbook (see my review post on the restaurant) which I use for vegetarian recipes. This is pretty much a standard for vegetarian cooking that I reference probably once a year to remember the ingredient list for a dish I liked.
We also have a very old copy of The Moosewood Cookbook: Recipes from Moosewood Restaurant (1974). Filled with vegetarian recipes, our book is brittle, finger stained, and marked up with changes we have preferred.
Science + History Cookbooks
These books explore the science and history of farming, cooking, eating and everything in between. These are generally not in my kitchen but in my library as reference texts.
Samin Nosrat’s documentary and cookbook, Salt Fat Acid Heat is a wonderful romp through the world of flavor. Her attraction to aroma, flavor, and taste is hard not to enjoy right along with her as her delight is transferred right through the screen and book. This book helps me when thinking about the science behind flavors.
Michael Pollen is another person with documentaries based on his books that are related to food, including Botany of Desire, Cooked, and Omnivore’s Dilemma. His books move about the world making links between farming and our table, from ingredient to nutrition, and everything in between.
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Why Have Cookbooks
Education: Cookbooks are a physical entity that has the capacity to teach us gardening, harvesting, cooking, and storing skills that are not taught as they once were. But the education can also help us understand our own country. For instance to understand Bangladesh, you have to understand the impact of their specific geography on their food options.
Survival: The ever true fact, is that we all have to eat and drink in order to survive, wether we know how to cook or not. So learning to farm or forage, learning what we can eat, and how to fix the food, are critical skills that support our survival. Globally, we cannot all eat out at a local restaurant, anytime we get hungry. So cookbooks focusing on our expressive needs may help some families in bridging the gabs between available money or resources, and food.
History: Cuisine teaches us history, why does Vietnamese cuisine have a French flair? Think colonialism. Why does Japan eat KFC at Christmas? Think economic imperialism. How does Tex-Mex fit in Mexican cuisines? Think about changing populations, political boundaries, etc.
Culture: In some cases we are writing things down because we do not want our culture to die out. So cookbooks have become more than just a book, it has started to become an authority, representing cultures and history, and proof that ”my people” have existed.
Look at the cookbooks you have and let me know which ones you value and why.
— Patty
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