Andrew Carnegie once wrote, "All that man has ever though t or done is preserved, as if by magic, in books. I love that quote. Books are magic, and you can pull way more than a rabbit out of them.
Think about what a cookbook holds - all that man has ever cooked or eaten? Also, entrée into private passions and obsessions, a ticket to places far away and to times long past. They are an invitation to holiday parties and family dinners, entrée into private realms of taste and home.
The idiosyncrasies of funerals in the American South, the private foods that we eat over the sink when no one else is around, what Shakespeare ate, the food of Baja or Morocco or Eastern Europe. The recipes can be more revealing than a novel, or at least contain the seeds of a story. A woman trying to reproduce the pastries of her childhood, a new bride desperately finding her way to a new family, or a slave conjuring up a cuisine out of being captured. They can be more revealing than novels, because they are true. Their truth is why people read cookbooks even if they never cook from them. Because, as if by magic, we are transported
Think about what a cookbook holds - all that man has ever cooked or eaten? Also, entrée into private passions and obsessions, a ticket to places far away and to times long past. They are an invitation to holiday parties and family dinners, entrée into private realms of taste and home.
The idiosyncrasies of funerals in the American South, the private foods that we eat over the sink when no one else is around, what Shakespeare ate, the food of Baja or Morocco or Eastern Europe. The recipes can be more revealing than a novel, or at least contain the seeds of a story. A woman trying to reproduce the pastries of her childhood, a new bride desperately finding her way to a new family, or a slave conjuring up a cuisine out of being captured. They can be more revealing than novels, because they are true. Their truth is why people read cookbooks even if they never cook from them. Because, as if by magic, we are transported