Cookbook Wisdom: Introduction

The Justification

I’ve been looking at the cookbooks I own for some time, now, thinking to myself ‘Why?’ and as an attempt to justify them beyond using them for recipes and research, I started to look more closely. I own, at the time of writing this post, something like 309 cookbooks, books on food and eating, food history, food memoirs, and others I’ve lumped into that category in my library catalog. I have cookbooks from every continent, yes including Antarctica, I have cookbooks passed down from my Great-grandma Ella, I have cookbooks I’m holding for my son until he’s out of the military and has a house to use them in. I have cookbooks older than Krakatoa popping its top (1883), and a few published in the last year by people who made their bones on YouTube in the era of mass cooking videos during the pandemic. I have cookbooks, er, pamphlets, produced by companies to sell their product - early examples of content marketing. I have fad diet cookbooks (but not many, most of those are worth less than the paper they are printed on). And this is just the physical books.

I picked up a few of the books on the shelves lining my dining room and started looking at what their authors wrote about why they decided to publish a cookbook. You see, beyond the recipes, there are real men and women working in real kitchens, from the exalted to the humble. I have cookbooks written to teach, not only how to prepare food, but how to present it, and the etiquette of serving, hosting, and even how to be a good guest.

In short, these books of mine are a treasure trove of wisdom. Some are even witty enough to make reading them out loud to whomever is in the room with me compulsive. I have laughed, I have been driven to deep consideration, I have learned unwritten history from cookbooks. Cooking is part of the human existence. Study them, and you learn the arts domestic, which ensure the higher arts ranging from sublime to political exist. Starving artists is no way to run a society.

I took my books, and started a notebook of the things that caught my attention and imagination. I then created a template and started to make beautiful little aphorisms framed in artwork. I’ve built up quite a few, and have started to share them on social media. I also thought to myself that it was a pity not to make more work come from what time I’d already put into them, and that they would make good topics for essays, as springboards into deeper thoughts from me. I lay no claims to original thoughts. I am simply writing to form my inchoate initial attraction into reasoned and rational expression. Perhaps this will help someone, and in that, I will have succeeded in my intent. Indeed, I will have justified in part my cookbook collecting habits!

I am confident enough in my cooking skills and varieties¹ that although I agree with Kate Douglas Wiggin’s² far-sighted prediction of Pinterest boards and their value to the homemaker if nothing is ever done with the inspiration, I will value the books none the less. And in using them to inspire thinking, perhaps to inspire others on the models of women and the power of making a house into a home, in the value of managing the family, the true worth of a mother… Particularly, if this will reach any girls and young women about to embark on their career in the most important role any human can hold: homemaker, housewife, domestic engineer, home executive, family manager, mother, Lady of the House. I cannot say enough about the presence of deep wisdom to be found inside the pages of the cook book.

1. My husband has been heard to complain that if he likes a dish, he’s unlikely to see it again, as I rarely repeat myself. I do, if he asks!

2. Best known for her classic children’s book, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, she was also an early advocate for early childhood education. But that’s another topic…