At first I thought I might just be overly touchy. After all, cookbooks have been both my passion and work for decades. But then I mulled the author’s comments further. IMHO they’re almost as ridiculous as saying that you only need a few symphonies, or artworks, or plays to enjoy. Or that if you want to read a novel, any one will do. Really?
The point missed is that cookbooks are both art form and fascinating social history documents. As a group, they capture for posterity what people are eating and what they think about food in a particular time and culture. They also convey expertise and unique personal visions and they celebrate a universal human experience—gathering with others to nourish the body and refresh the soul. I think the world needs a rich variety of cookbooks, whatever their currently print/digital morphing form turns out to be.
I say Ozersky’s piece is ostensibly written to enlighten us on the latest batch of cookbooks because he mentions only three recently published titles, and one just happens to be authored by his good friend Rachel Ray. (He also discloses that he blogs on her site.) Almost as unhelpful as the Ray plug is the one for a $49.95 chi-chi chef tome by Rene Redzepi of Noma in Copenhagen. I don’t have a thing against Chef Redsepi or Rachel Ray, but I can immediately think of ten current titles—say Dorie Greenspan’s Around My French Table, or Shauna Ahern’s Gluten-Free Girl and the Chef, or Ken Albala’s The Lost Art of Real Cooking for starters—that could and probably should be mentioned instead or as well.
So what about it? Am I’m being too prickly about this? Is it really true, as Ozersky suggests, that there’s no need for more than a basic book,“that tells you what goes into potpie,” and maybe a couple “for specialty fields like Moroccan or barbecue….?” Really? And if you only need a couple basics, how can it possibly make sense to opt for the Chef Redzepi book featured anyway?
Seems to me this is closed-minded and a clear path to limiting life’s pleasures. What do you think?
You are so right, Nancy, that the world would be paler and less interesting if we had fewer cookbooks, plays, paintings, and novels. They all enrich our lives immensely. This must be TIME's way of provoking conversation and getting back so many eyeballs they've lost over the years. I have been known to ask people which they'd choose if they could only have one cookbook, but that's similar to saying "What would you do with your lottery winnings?" Pure fantasy!
Thanks for the cataloging info and alert to EYB recource…someday I hope to get to putting my cookbooks in order. In the meantime, my collection just keeps growing!
This is to reply to the comment you left on my semi-active blog (this one gets updated weekly and has pictures http://menu.vldyson.com )
I have something over 5000 books, not including the cookbooks.
Eat Your Books ( http://www.eatyourbooks.com/home ) is a catalog system for cookbooks. Not only does it keep track of your cookbooks, but it keeps track of the ingredients in each recipe. So if I'm looking for a pork roast, and I currently have 316 of those available, I get a list of which books have them, when I choose one, I can then add the ingredients to a shopping list. Searches can be limited in a number of ways.
My wife has done this by hand, but only for recipes that are likely to appeal to her or for her use. As our abilities improve, she must go through the books again to re-index them. I am not certain if she is doing this for the 3rd or 4th time. It does take years.
We are hoping, especially as EYB adds the food magazines, that she will not have to do this again in 5 years or so.
I do charcuterie and it turns out I have over 6000 recipes that either are for sausage or use it.
Jane at EYB, second comment on this string, runs the site.
Meat
Good Meat
The River Cottage Meat
CIA Meat
and one of my hobbies is Charcuterie.
So glad to hear from you, Warner. It's clear you and your wife love cookbooks as much as I do and also see the merit in owning more than one cookbook per topic. I find that each author has his/her own special vision and way with food, and each expands my knowledge and appreciation. How much I would have missed if I only owned one cookie, or chocolate, or "healthy," or vegetarian, or bread book–that would have been a shame!
My wife and I own at least 563 cookbooks (in the process of entering them at Eat Your Books), and not a single one is by Rachel Ray or Sandra Lee. We have significantly more than 4 by Child.
I think I have at least 4 with a title that essentially consists of Meat.
When she first moved in, over 30 years ago, our combined cookbook shelf was 6 feet long and growing. It now fills her office and has expanded into my library in the basement.
Appreciate all the comments–helps still the, "Am I just a twit?" questions. Matthew, still giggling over the "Mr Cutlets" reference–thanks for the link to moonshine story. Will check it out.
Nancy ~
Spot on. It's not the first time Mr Cutlets has flubbed it in the pages of Time. Ozersky's writing is sloppy, lazy, and bullheaded — as it often is. He bludgeons readers with his opinions, regardless of their merit.
I have over 2,000 cookbooks at home and, while I'm the first to admit this may be too many for the average cook, I use the library daily. It is not sufficient, for example, to have a single meatloaf recipe. If I were writing about meatloaf, I'd want to check out different sources to see how it's made now in various parts of the world, how it's been made in the past, when it first showed up, to get at ratios of meat to binding, what modern chefs may be doing, etc. This is comparable to saying when you want to learn about World War 1, one book is sufficient.
I once wrote a letter to the editors of Time on response to another of his articles, then expanded it into a longer rant online (yes, I admit, it's a rant: not my usual style, but I was so angered that it fit my mood at the time). "As writers," I wrote "it’s incumbent upon us to get stories right or we lose credibility, individually and as a class." The rest of that piece is here: http://matthew-rowley.blogspot.com/2010/05/writers-guide-to-moonshine-part-1.html
Thanks for taking Ozersky to task for this this preposterous notion.
Dianne, as far as I can tell, the article is only in the printed version of the current Time issue–the just-out Oct. 26 issue, p. 66. I can only suggest checking the newsstand or library for it.
Hi Nancy,
I searched for this story online but couldn't find it.
Why do we buy cookbooks? I'm thinking of my own reasons here. For pleasure, to learn something new, to experiment, to dream, to enjoy vicariously, to help me express my love and passion to those I care about.
The idea that 4 is enough is ridiculous. For women who love food, it may be similar to saying that "four pairs of shoes is enough!"
As a cook book writer AND a cook book lover, I can't seem to get enough of them. Yes, we use cook books as a specific tool to help us get a meal on the table, but all cook book lovers I know like to sit on the couch and just read them, too! I love food books (maybe we should call them that–a whole new genre, like sci-fi, or westerns) to discern the author's point of view, stories, anecdotes, tips and tricks. Some of my favorite cook books, I haven't even cooked from yet. There is more to love in a cook book besides a string of recipes and a set of directions.
Thank you both for your thoughtful comments. I, too, had the feeling that the author just doesn't like cookbooks very much. Which I suppose is fine–except when you're supposed to be enlightening folks on what new treasures are out there in the market.
As someone who owns more than 800 cookbooks (including many of yours Nancy) I feel that Josh Ozertsky knows nothing about cookbooks. How on earth can he think that anyone who loves cooking should own just four cookbooks? Sure, we can pluck recipes from the internet, but they usually aren't from authors we know and trust. And you also can't relax by reading recipes on the internet in the same way you can a well-written cookbook.
Hi Nancy,
I couldn't agree more with your opinion of Ozertsky's article (though I admit I haven't seen the article yet myself). Can a person who is a true food lover really feel that way?? And, if he's NOT a food lover, what qualifies him to knowledgeably review–positively or negatively–cookbooks to begin with? I never cease to be interested in new cookbooks, and I relish their diversity; my shelves are bulging with them. And as for this fall's new crop? My goodness, just for bakers alone there is a nice handful of very promising volumes soon to be published or just out. It seems to me that Time, perhaps, simply picked the wrong individual to write that piece. And it's too bad, when there are so many writers/cooks/food-lovers who deeply appreciate the genre.
(I say, cookbook lovers unite!)
Jane