Books, Arts & Manners: The Myth of the Cookbook

COOKBOOK writers are always writing about how to cook dishes successfully. They show you a picture of a perfect-looking risotto, give you a recipe and some cooking guidance, and imply that if you only follow the recipe and guidance you too will produce a risotto like the one in the picture. Success is the rule. In fact, as those of us who are good cooks who have to eat in not so good cooks’ homes know, success is not the rule. I’ve had stodgy risottos that tasted of nothing but rice. And the same goes for any dish from coq au vin to fried eggs. Terrible things happen. You’d think cookbook writers would be interested in finding the commonest causes of failure. One reason they aren’t is that it would spoil their lucrative game. For it turns out that failure usually happens from believing the cookbook writers’ myth that the answer to everything is following recipes and reading their books. Behind this is a more general lie, which is that cooking is the crucial thing.

This is wrong. Shopping is the crucial thing. Rooting around the horrid risottos with a fork to try to find the cause of the disaster, what one finds is that the cook has bought the wrong sort of rice or the wrong quality of rice. The reason Jaqui’s coq au vin was a mush was that the coq was not an adult farmyard animal that had eaten insects, scraps, and minerals—for which the recipe was designed—but a teenager or even a child maybe as little as a couple of months old. Moreover the child had never eaten much except pap. It consequently not only tasted of pap but behaved like pap when soaked in wine and given a couple of hours’ heat. You cannot make coq au vin with such a bird. No, no, not even with a special recipe. All the recipes in the world won’t help you. You might be able to contrive something but it won’t be coq au vin. No, I said. For once in your life shut up and face the truth. If you can’t or won’t find the bird necessary, you can’t do the dish.

DA

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Digby Anderson

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COOKBOOK writers are always writing about how to cook dishes successfully. They show you a picture of a perfect-looking risotto, give you a recipe and some cooking guidance, and imply that if you only follow the recipe and guidance you too will produce a risotto like the one in the picture. Success is the rule. In fact, as those of us who are good cooks who have to eat in not so good cooks’ homes know, success is not the rule. I’ve had stodgy risottos that tasted of nothing but rice. And the same goes for any dish from coq au vin to fried eggs. Terrible things happen. You’d think cookbook writers would be interested in finding the commonest causes of failure. One reason they aren’t is that it would spoil their lucrative game. For it turns out that failure usually happens from believing the cookbook writers’ myth that the answer to everything is following recipes and reading their books. Behind this is a more general lie, which is that cooking is the crucial thing.

This is wrong. Shopping is the crucial thing. Rooting around the horrid risottos with a fork to try to find the cause of the disaster, what one finds is that the cook has bought the wrong sort of rice or the wrong quality of rice. The reason Jaqui’s coq au vin was a mush was that the coq was not an adult farmyard animal that had eaten insects, scraps, and minerals—for which the recipe was designed—but a teenager or even a child maybe as little as a couple of months old. Moreover the child had never eaten much except pap. It consequently not only tasted of pap but behaved like pap when soaked in wine and given a couple of hours’ heat. You cannot make coq au vin with such a bird. No, no, not even with a special recipe. All the recipes in the world won’t help you. You might be able to contrive something but it won’t be coq au vin. No, I said. For once in your life shut up and face the truth. If you can’t or won’t find the bird necessary, you can’t do the dish.