A
cookbook is a
book that
contains information on
cooking. It
typically contains a collection of
recipes,
and may also include information on ingredient origin, freshness,
selection and quality.
History
The earliest cookbooks on record seem to be mainly lists of recipes
for what would now be called
haute
cuisine, and were often written primarily to either provide a
record of the author's favorite dishes or to train professional
cooks for banquets and upper-class, private homes. Many of these
cookbooks, therefore, provide only limited sociological or culinary
value, as they leave out significant sections of ancient cuisine
such as peasant food, breads, and preparations such as vegetable
dishes too simple to warrant a recipe.
The earliest collection of recipes that has survived in Europe is
De re coquinaria, written
in
Latin. An early version was first compiled
sometime in the 1st century and has often been attributed to the
Roman gourmet
Marcus Gavius
Apicius, though this has been cast in doubt by modern research.
An
Apicius came to designate a book
of recipes. The current text appears to have been compiled in the
late 4th or early 5th century; the first print edition is from
1483. It records a mix of ancient Greek and Roman cuisine, but with
few details on preparation and cooking. An abbreviated epitome
entitled
Apici Excerpta a Vinidario, a "pocket Apicius" by
Vinidarius, "an illustrious man", was made in the
Carolingian era. In spite of its late
date it represents the last manifestation of the cuisine of
Antiquity.
The earliest cookbooks known in Arabic are those of
al-Warraq (10th century) and
al-Baghdadi (10th
century).
Huou,
Kublai Khan's
court chef, wrote a collection of recipes called "The Important
Things to Know About Eating and Drinking" in the 13th century; it
includes mainly soups as well as household advice.
After a long interval, the first recipe books to be compiled in
Europe since Late Antiquity started to appear in the late
thirteenth century. All told, about a hundred survive, mostly
fragmentary, from the age before printing. The earliest genuinely
medieval recipes have been found in a Danish manuscript dating from
around 1300, which in turn are copies of older texts that date back
to the early 13th century or even earlier.
Low and
High German
manuscripts are among the most numerous. Among them is
Daz buch von guter spise ("The
Book of Good Food") written c. 1350 in Würzberg and
Kuchenmeysterey ("Kitchen Mastery"),
the first printed German cook book from 1485. Two French
collections are probably the most famous:
Le Viandier ("The Provisioner") was compiled
in the late 14th century by
Guillaume
Tirel, master chef for two French kings; and
Le Menagier de Paris ("The
Householder of Paris"), a household book written by an anonymous
middle class Parisian in the 1390s. From Southern Europe there is
the 14th century Catalan manuscript
Libre de Sent Soví ("The Book
of Saint Sophia") and several Italian collections, notably the
Venetian mid-14th century
Libro per
Cuoco, with its 135 recipes alphabetically arranged. The
printed
De honesta
voluptate ("On honourable pleasure"), first published in
1470, is one of the first cookbooks based on Renaissance ideals,
and, though it is as much a series of moral essays as a cookbook,
has been described as "the anthology that closed the book on
medieval Italian cooking". Recipes originating in England include
the earliest recorded recipe for ravioli (1390s) and
Forme of Cury, a late 14th century
manuscript written by chefs of
Richard II of England.
Types of cookbooks
Cookbooks that serve as basic kitchen references (sometimes known
as "kitchen
bible") began to
appear in the
early modern
period. They provided not just recipes but overall instruction
for both kitchen technique and household management. Such books
were written primarily for housewives and occasionally domestic
servants as opposed to professional cooks, and at times books such
as
The Joy of Cooking
(
USA),
La bonne cuisine de
Madame E. Saint-Ange
(
France),
The Art of Cookery (
UK, USA),
Il cucchiaio d'argento (
Italy), and
A Gift to Young Housewives
(
Russia) have served as references
of record for national cuisines. Related to this class are
instructional cookbooks, which combine recipes with in-depth,
step-by-step recipes to teach beginning cooks basic concepts and
techniques.
International and ethnic cookbooks fall into two categories: the
kitchen references of other cultures, translated into other
languages; and books translating the recipes of another culture
into the languages, techniques, and ingredients of a new audience.
The latter style often doubles as a sort of culinary travelogue,
giving background and context to a recipe that the first type of
book would assume its audience is already familiar with.
Professional cookbooks are designed for the use of working chefs
and culinary students and sometimes double as textbooks for
culinary schools. Such books deal not only in recipes and
techniques, but often service and kitchen workflow matters. Many
such books deal in substantially larger quantities than home
cookbooks, such as making sauces by the
liter
or preparing dishes for large numbers of people in a
catering setting.
While the most famous of such books today
are books like Le guide
culinaire by Escoffier or The
Professional Chef by the Culinary
Institute of America
, such books go at least back to medieval times,
represented then by works such as Taillevent's Viandier and Chiquart d'Amiço's Du fait de
cuisine.
Single-subject books, usually dealing with a specific ingredient,
technique, or class of dishes, are quite common as well; indeed,
some imprints such as
Chronicle
Books have specialized in this sort of book, with books on
dishes like
curries,
pizza, and simplified ethnic food. Popular subjects
for narrow-subject books on technique include
grilling/
barbecue,
baking,
outdoor
cooking, and even recipe cloning.
Cookbooks can also document the food of a specific chef
(particularly in conjunction with a
cooking
show) or restaurant. Many of these books, particularly those
written by or for a well-established cook with a long-running TV
show or popular restaurant, become part of extended series of books
that can be released over the course of many years. Popular
chef-authors throughout history include people such as
Julia Child,
James
Beard,
Nigella Lawson,
Edouard de Pomiane,
Jeff Smith,
Emeril Lagasse,
Claudia Roden,
Madhur Jaffrey,
Katsuyo Kobayashi, and possibly even
Apicius, the semi-pseudonymous author of the
Roman cookbook
De re coquinaria,
who shared a name with at least
one other famous food figure of the
ancient world.
While western cookbooks usually group recipes for main courses by
the main ingredient of the dishes,
Japanese cookbooks usually group them by
cooking techniques (e.g.,
fried foods,
steam foods, and
grill foods). Both styles of cookbook have
additional recipe groupings such as
soups,
sweets.
Famous cookbooks
Famous cookbooks from the past, in chronological order, include:
Usage outside the world of food
The term
cookbook is sometimes used metaphorically to
refer to any book containing a straightforward set of already tried
and tested "
recipes" or
instructions for a specific field or activity,
presented in detail so that the users who are not necessarily
expert in the field can produce workable results. Examples include
a set of circuit designs in
electronics,
a book of
magic spells, or the
Anarchist Cookbook, a
set of instructions on destruction and living outside the law.
O'Reilly Media publishes a series of
books about
computer
programming named the
Cookbook series, and each of these
books contain hundreds of ready to use, cut and paste examples to
solve a specific problem in a single
programming language.
See also
Notes
- Melitta Weiss Adamson, "The Greco-Roman World" in Regional
Cuisines of Medieval Europe, p. 6–7; Simon Varey, "Medieval
and Renaissance Italy, A. The Peninsula" in Regional Cuisines
of Medieval Europe, pp. 85–86.
- About Vinidarius himself nothing is known; he may have been a
Goth, in which case his Gothic name may have been
Vinithaharjis.
- Christopher Grocock and Sally Grainger, Apicius. A critical
edition with an introduction and an English translation
(Prospect Books) 2006 ISBN 1903018137, pp. 309-325
- Encyclopedia Britannica,
s.v. cookbook full text
- John Dickie, Delizia! The Epic History of the Italians and
Their Food 2008, pp50f.
- Constance B. Hieatt, "Sorting Through the Titles of Medieval
Dishes: What Is, or Is Not, a 'Blanc Manger'" in Food in the
Middle Ages, pp. 32–33.
- Melitta Weiss Adamson, "The Greco-Roman World" in Regional
Cuisines of Medieval Europe, p. 161, 182–83
- Adamson (2004), pp. 103, 107.
- Text printed in E. Faccioli, ed. Arte della cucina dal XIV
al XIX secolo (Milan, 1966) vol. I, pp.61-105, analysed by
John Dickie 2008, pp 50ff.
- Simon Varey, "Medieval and Renaissance Italy, A. The Peninsula"
in Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe, p. 92.
- Constance B. Hieatt, "Medieval Britain" in Regional
Cuisines of Medieval Europe, p. 25.
References
- Adamson, Melitta Weiss Food in Medieval Times.
Greenwood Press, Westport, CT. 2004. ISBN 0-313-32147-7
- Food in the Middle Ages: A Book of Essays. Melitta
Weiss Adamson (editor). Garland, New York. 1995. ISBN
0-8153-1345-4
- Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe: A Book of
Essays. edited by Melitta Weiss Adamson (editor). Routledge,
New York. 2002. ISBN 0-415-92994-6
- What’s the Recipe? - Our hunger for cookbooks., Adam Gopnik,
The New Yorker, 2009.
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