Recipe for success

The rise, fall and rise again of cookbooks

Featured in

  • Published 20221101
  • ISBN: 978-1-922212-74-0
  • Extent: 264pp
  • Paperback (234 x 153mm), eBook

A NOVEL I once read described a protagonist as the sort of woman who reads a cookbook in bed. I glance at my bedside and ponder the hardcovers sitting there. Hetty McKinnon. Anna Jones. Alison Roman. Are these not the great writers of our time? Steinbeck lies under a glass of water – the essential, reliable storyteller and coaster. But for practical, everyday beauty, for hope, for love, for mind-changing advice, it was always cookbooks.

Even in my childhood, books involving food interested me the most. In The Story of Little Black Sambo, out of print now because of its obvious racism, a little boy engages angry tigers in a race in circles, a trick that ultimately churns them into ghee. Roald Dahl both enthralled and informed in his books. In Charlie and the Chocolate Factory: ‘Doyou know what breakfast cereal is made of? It’s made of all those little curly wooden shavings you find in pencil sharpeners.’ In How Does a Czar Eat Potatoes? by Anne Rose, a Russian peasant tells how his king demands that hot potatoes be fired from a cannon and through an enormous block of butter, so he can catch them in his mouth.

Already a subscriber? Sign in here

If you are an educator or student wishing to access content for study purposes please contact us at griffithreview@griffith.edu.au

Share article

About the author

Kate Gibbs

Kate Gibbs is an Australian food and travel writer. She is a former editor at delicious, has written extensively for The Wall Street Journal, Australian...

More from this edition

Quinoa nation

FictionWe don’t stock Gwyneth Paltrow’s cookbook. I know this because Amanda thinks Gwyneth Paltrow is goofy, despite Amanda and Gwyneth Paltrow being the same person. Our customers are Gwyneth Paltrow’s target demographic. If Gwyneth Paltrow wrote a novel our book club would ­literally devour it.

Witches’ brew

EssayAnthropologist Solomon Katz proposed in the 1980s the intriguing ‘beer before bread’ theory, which suggested that early agriculturalists were driven to farming not by their wholesome desire for crusty loaves but by their lust for that other staple grain product: beer.

Finding the fundamentals of culture

MemoirValuing a job that creates something tangible is probably why, on leaving school, I opted to become a chef; I liked the idea of making food, and hopefully making people happy. It’s probably why I farm, because doing something physical, to produce something you can actually touch, is wired into me.

Stay up to date with the latest, news, articles and special offers from Griffith Review.