As We Eat
As We Eat Podcast 🎧
EP 45 Cookbooks: the Guardians of Cuisine and Culture
8
0:00
-27:34

EP 45 Cookbooks: the Guardians of Cuisine and Culture

No. 4 in our Kitchen Technology series
8

Cookbooks provide context into a specific cuisine; allow readers 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.

Leigh’s cookbook collection is filled with vintage cookbooks inspiring her through nostalgia and story.

A glimpse of you through your cookbook collection

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: Time travel, insights, and touch points

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).

Yale Culinary Tablets. Old Babylonian period (c. 1900–1600 BCE); Museum no. YBC 4644

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 We Eat Journal is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

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. 

From Kim’s cookbook collection. Betty Crocker’s Cookbook filled with marginalia and memories.

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.

The Scholastic Book Fairs brought culinary literature to young readers. California Cooking is a book that still inspires Kim.

Take a look at your cookbook collection. Does it speak to culture, cuisine, memories or something entirely different?

Leave a comment

Episode Transcript

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


Sources We Found Helpful for this Episode 

Books We Think You’ll  Enjoy Reading

Episodes We Think You’ll Like

Join us in two weeks for another listener requested journey as we share history, lore and musings about the sweet preservation of fruits and berries.

If you’re enjoying the podcast…

we would love it if you would consider becoming a supporting subscriber. For just a few dollars, you can get access to exclusive content including our Recipe Box Roulette “card” game, more in-depth articles, more recipes and you’ll help keep our oven lights on!

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 connect@asweeat.com

Review As We Eat on Podchaser or Apple Podcast. We would like to know what you think.

Thank you for listening to the As We Eat Podcast. This post is public so share it with a friend - or three :)

Share

As a member of affiliate programs, we earn from qualifying purchases at no additional cost to you. This helps us to continue to bring you stories, history, and personal musings about food, cuisines, traditions, and recipes
8 Comments
As We Eat
As We Eat Podcast 🎧
Food lovers, Kim Baker and Leigh Olson, invite you on a storytelling journey exploring food memories, family recipes, food traditions, cuisines, cookery, and food history to discover how food connects, defines, and inspires us.