Cookbook
They may include illustrations of finished dishes and preparation steps; discussions of cooking techniques, advice on kitchen equipment, ingredients, tips, and substitutions; historical and cultural notes; and so on.
[3] Not all cultures left written records of their culinary practices, but some examples have survived, notably three Akkadian tablets from Ancient Mesopotamia, dating to about 1700 BC, large fragments from Archestratus, the Latin Apicius and some texts from the Tang dynasty.
An early version was first compiled sometime in the 1st century and has often been attributed to the Roman gourmet Marcus Gavius Apicius, though this has been cast in doubt by modern research.
[7] An abbreviated epitome entitled Apici Excerpta a Vinidario, a "pocket Apicius" by Vinidarius, "an illustrious man",[8] was made in the Carolingian era.
[citation needed] One of the earliest surviving Chinese-language cookbooks is Hu Sihui's "Yinshan Zhengyao" (Important Principles of Food and Drink), believed to be from 1330.
Among them is Daz buch von guter spise ("The Book of Good Food") written c. 1350 in Würzberg and Kuchenmeysterey ("Kitchen Mastery"), the first printed German cookbook from 1485.
[15] Two French collections are probably the most famous: Le Viandier ("The Provisioner") was compiled in the late 14th century by Guillaume Tirel, master chef for two French kings; and Le Menagier de Paris ("The Householder of Paris"), a household book written by an anonymous middle class Parisian in the 1390s.
Her pioneering cookbook, Modern Cookery for Private Families (1845), was aimed at the domestic reader rather than the professional cook or chef.
[citation needed] The publication introduced the now-universal practice of listing the ingredients and suggested cooking times with each recipe.
The book was a guide to running a Victorian household, with advice on fashion, child care, animal husbandry, poisons, the management of servants, science, religion, and industrialism.
Such books were written primarily for housewives and occasionally domestic servants as opposed to professional cooks, and at times books such as The Joy of Cooking (USA), La bonne cuisine de Madame E. Saint-Ange (France), The Art of Cookery (UK, USA), Il cucchiaio d'argento (Italy), and A Gift to Young Housewives (Russia) have served as references of record for national cuisines.
For example, during the era of industrialization, convenience foods were brought into many households and were integrated and present in cookbooks written in this time.
The latter style often doubles as a sort of culinary travelogue, giving background and context to a recipe that the first type of book would assume its audience is already familiar with.
Many such books deal in substantially larger quantities than home cookbooks, such as making sauces by the liter or preparing dishes for large numbers of people in a catering setting.
Single-subject books, usually dealing with a specific ingredient, technique, class of dishes or target group (e.g. for kids), are quite common as well.
Community cookbooks focus on home cooking, often documenting regional, ethnic, family, and societal traditions, as well as local history.
[34][35] Sondra Gotlieb, for example, wrote her cookbooks on Canadian food culture by visiting people and homes by region.
Popular chef-authors throughout history include people such as Delia Smith, Julia Child, James Beard, Nigella Lawson, Edouard de Pomiane, Jeff Smith, Emeril Lagasse, Claudia Roden, Madhur Jaffrey, Katsuyo Kobayashi, and possibly even Apicius, the semi-pseudonymous author of the Roman cookbook De re coquinaria, who shared a name with at least one other famous food figure of the ancient world.
Elizabeth Robins Pennell, an American critic in London from the 1880s, was an early writer on the subject, and has recently been called "one of the most well-known cookbook collectors in the world".
Held alongside hers are the thousands of gastronomic volumes donated by food chemist Katherine Bitting; their collections were evaluated in tandem in Two Loaf-Givers, by one of the LOC's curators;[47] a digital version is available.
