EP 45 Cookbooks: Guardians of Culture and Cuisine

Cookbooks provide context into a specific cuisine; allow its reader to emulate royal diets; provide meaningful instruction in how to nourish and nurture others with food; or even just whet the imagination and the appetite. This latest installment of As We Eat’s Kitchen Technology series turns our attention to the cookbook - a powerhouse culinary tool that instructs, educates, and inspires.

What does your favorite cookbook say about you? For centuries, cookbooks have not only instructed us on how to prepare a dish, but also educated, entertained, and inspired our food preferences and choices. Join us as we reflect on some of our favorites and muse about how the cookbook of the future may look.

Cookbooks form a critical backbone in how we conceptualize and communicate how a dish tastes through its headnotes, the ingredients of which it is composed (ingredient list), and the means by which to make it (technique).

For As We Eat’s latest addition to our celebrated Kitchen Technology series, Leigh and Kim delve into the history of cookbooks - the oldest dating to the First Century! - with an eye towards how cookbooks instructed and informed its readers about the diets of royalty and the foods that were both delicious and healthy. These recipes often reflect the abundance and variety of ingredients available to the wealthy.

As food scarcity decreased and variety became more accessible to all classes, cookbooks shifted focus towards the needs of the common man. Technological and cultural innovations that benefitted literacy and made home kitchens more capable of producing larger, regular meals was reflected in the variety of cookbooks published by acclaimed chefs, food pioneers, and food companies. Our grocery stores and pantries filled with both fresh and canned foods that changed the fundamental question from what to cook but how to make the most of our abundance.

Kim shared how four keystone books in her personal cookbook collection serve as historical touch points to vintage recipes and special family memories, and we conclude with speculation about how today’s technology will influence how future generations might create, share, and use cookbooks and recipes.

Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode

The Ancient Mesopotamian Tablet as Cookbook

A Brief History of Cookbooks Worldwide

A History of Cookbooks

Books We Think You’ll Enjoy Reading

Apicius: De Re Coquinaria Cookbook

Plain Cookery for the Working Classes

The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy

Complete Indian Cookbook

Betty Crocker’s Cookbook, 1974 Ring-Bound

Episode Transcript

🎧 Click here for the full, interactive transcript of this episode 🎧

We would love to connect with you

AsWeEat.com, on Instagram @asweeat, join our new As We Eat community on Facebook, or subscribe to the As We Eat Journal.

Do you have a great idea 💡 for a show topic, a recipe 🥘 that you want to share, or just say “hi”👋🏻? Send us an email at [email protected]

Review As We Eat on Podchaser or Apple Podcast. We...