Why Cookbooks?

Contrary to what most people think, cookbook writing, unless you hit the top, pays poorly, especially if you turn out original, honest books with tested recipes. Why, then, do so many non-professional food people write cookbooks? Because it is the Kulturni thing to do today, when men are proud to wear aprons and stockbrokers dimple at being praised for their paella rather than for their savoir faire in the market. Cookbooks are written because they are an easy way to show that you, too, are an expert, and experts are the holy men of our times. Anyone can cook something and anyone has opinions about food, but if you want to paint flowers on fans or play arpeggios on the French horn you have to have a certain technique. Cookbooks are written because they mark you as a person concerned with the finer things in life, who will add tone to crasser surroundings. And professionals write cookbooks for much the same reasons university professors write papers; they keep their name before the public and impress those who dispense the well-paying commercial jobs.

With the steady stream of new cookbooks, how do authors think up new subjects for more cookbooks? The more responsible ones cast a look around as to what is needed, and come up with either better all-purpose books, or books for beginners, or special-subjects books such as freezing or seafood, or some foreign food that has not been done to death. Others follow the leader. Still others, alas a majority, shut their eyes and dream up a catchy theme, such as “Food to Swing By” or “Food Too Deep for Tears” or “Food to Shoot Geese By.” One unhappy writer wrote a “gay cookbook,” no less, and another one a wordy treatise on how to seduce with food, where would-be seducers (m. and f.) ran between bed and stove without stopping to so much as wash their hands.

NH

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Nika Hazelton

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Contrary to what most people think, cookbook writing, unless you hit the top, pays poorly, especially if you turn out original, honest books with tested recipes. Why, then, do so many non-professional food people write cookbooks? Because it is the Kulturni thing to do today, when men are proud to wear aprons and stockbrokers dimple at being praised for their paella rather than for their savoir faire in the market. Cookbooks are written because they are an easy way to show that you, too, are an expert, and experts are the holy men of our times. Anyone can cook something and anyone has opinions about food, but if you want to paint flowers on fans or play arpeggios on the French horn you have to have a certain technique. Cookbooks are written because they mark you as a person concerned with the finer things in life, who will add tone to crasser surroundings. And professionals write cookbooks for much the same reasons university professors write papers; they keep their name before the public and impress those who dispense the well-paying commercial jobs.

With the steady stream of new cookbooks, how do authors think up new subjects for more cookbooks? The more responsible ones cast a look around as to what is needed, and come up with either better all-purpose books, or books for beginners, or special-subjects books such as freezing or seafood, or some foreign food that has not been done to death. Others follow the leader. Still others, alas a majority, shut their eyes and dream up a catchy theme, such as “Food to Swing By” or “Food Too Deep for Tears” or “Food to Shoot Geese By.” One unhappy writer wrote a “gay cookbook,” no less, and another one a wordy treatise on how to seduce with food, where would-be seducers (m. and f.) ran between bed and stove without stopping to so much as wash their hands.