Too Many Cookbooks: A Vittles Sunday SupplementBy Jonathan Meades, Yemisí Aríbisálà, Rosa Lyster, Ruby Tandoh, Guan Chua, Christie Dietz, Anissa Helou, Ibrahim Hirsi, Saba Imtiaz, TW Lim, Lutivini Majanja, Meher Mirza, Marie Mitchell, Rachel Roddy
Cookbooks, contrary to all rumours, are not dead. Recently at Vittles, we’ve been thinking a lot about cookbooks – why we love them, why sometimes we don’t, and how often, it feels like there’s too many of them. As they have become less functional as a format, supplanted by online recipes and social media cooking channels, cookbooks have somehow become more beloved. Yet for all their influence, they are rarely treated as cultural objects that invite criticism; outside of the pages of Petits Propos Culinaires and log-rolling listicles, you will be hard-pressed to find a cookbook review anymore. Thousands of cookbooks are now published in this country each year, but we never question whether any of them needed to be written in the first place. That is why, as a delicious treat, we have assembled most stylish writers in the country we could think of to write about cookbooks for our first ever Sunday Supplement: ‘Too Many Cookbooks’. See this as the online equivalent of a newspaper food supplement, where you might spend a very lazy weekend morning chewing over a few essays, guides and lists that are meant to be read together. In Reinventing the Hexagon, Jonathan Meades – a critic with such a healthy skepticism of contemporary cookbooks that he was once compelled to write one – reviews one of the most conceptually interesting cookbooks of the last few years, Alex Jackson’s Frontières, interrogating its relationship to the oeuvre of Elizabeth David and Jane Grigson, and what its focus on borderlands says about French food. In ‘There is no recipe, take it or leave it’, Yemisí Aríbisálà takes us to Calabar to look at the reluctant tradition of Nigerian cookbooks, and the complicated reasons why there are so few of them. And in ‘Machiavelli in the Kitchen’, Rosa Lyster reappraises Caroline Blackwood’s acidic cookbook Darling, You Shouldn’t Have Gone to So Much Trouble and how it acts as an antidote to the current trend for the saccharine in cookbook publishing. For this supplement, we also wanted to celebrate the true diversity of cookbooks from around the world, which is why we asked ten of our favourite writers and cookbook experts, Guan Chua, Christie Dietz, Anissa Helou, Ibrahim Hirsi, Saba Imtiaz, TW Lim, Lutivini Majanja, Meher Mirza, Marie Mitchell & Rachel Roddy, to recommend a favourite cookbook that has not been translated or published in the UK. Together they make up an odd, singular and brilliant compilation of beloved cookbooks – everything from expensive, state-led projects to janky, home-published compendiums. And finally, in response to last year’s New York Times list of influential cookbooks, Ruby Tandoh has compiled Vittles’s own list of 15 cookbooks from the last 75 years that changed British food culture - for better or worse. These cookbooks have helped us both relearn our national cuisine and introduce us to new ones, not just through their recipes but as total cultural objects: their photography and design, their aspirational value, the way they can create, latch onto, or amplify cultural trends. As Ruby writes, ‘The reality is that it is difficult for cookbooks by themselves to transform the way we eat. But at the right time, with the right backup, deployed at the right pivot point in the culture, they can change things.’ This supplement is our own, complicated love letter to their transformative power. Too Many Cookbooks: A Sunday Supplement15 Cookbooks That Changed EverythingThe most influential British cookbooks of the last 75 years; for better, or for worse, by Ruby Tandoh.
Reinventing the HexagonJonathan Meades on Alex Jackson’s Frontières and the French food resurgence. Illustration by Alex Christian.
Machiavelli in the KitchenRosa Lyster on cooking to win, inspired by 'glamorously unpredictable witch', Caroline Blackwood.
'There is no recipe, take it or leave it'Yemisí Aríbisálà on why there are so few Nigerian cookbooks. Illustration by Hannah Ekuwa Buckman.
Cookbooks in TranslationA compilation of great non-English cookbooks, by Christie Dietz, Guan Chua, Anissa Helou, Saba Imtiaz, TW Lim, Lutivini Majanja, Meher Mirza, Marie Mitchell & Rachel Roddy.
A note on Sunday Supplements We intend to release Sunday Supplements sporadically on Sundays throughout the year. Like a magazine, each one will be based on a single subject. Also, like a magazine, these will not be free. Although some articles will later be sent out individually, everything in the Sunday Supplements is paywalled. To read these articles in full, please subscribe to Vittles for £7 a month, or £59 a year. Your subscription will also give you access to our last five years of writing: from long reads and features, to hundreds of restaurant recommendations and recipes. CreditsToo Many Cookbooks was written by Jonathan Meades, Yemisí Aríbisálà, Rosa Lyster, Ruby Tandoh, Guan Chua, Christie Dietz, Anissa Helou, Ibrahim Hirsi, Saba Imtiaz, TW Lim, Lutivini Majanja, Meher Mirza, Marie Mitchell & Rachel Roddy. It was illustrated by Alex Christian, Hannah Ekuwa Buckman and Jess Nash. This supplement was subedited by Tom Hughes. The full Vittles masthead can be found here. You’re currently a free subscriber to Vittles . To gain access to our entire back catalogue, you can upgrade your subscription below.
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Too Many Cookbooks: A Vittles Sunday Supplement
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