Drew Smith

One of the original mothers of Lyons, the woman who taught Paul Bocuse to cook, the first woman to have six Michelin stars, dictated on her deathbed by way of a legacy of 300+ recipes including the famous chicken in mourning and a whole canon of what we now call French cooking, although because this is from the ‘20s and 30’s using a very small (and affordable) repertoire of ingredients. Still relevant and timely especially for little things like her vinaigrette or scrambled eggs.

Jane’s first book was also the blueprint for what followed but shines a light on a historic culture and agriculture here and brings them into the kitchen. You may never think of sausages and bacon in the same way again.

This was the door opener for people like me and for many others to come. Many recipes are still commonplace in top level cooking like the sauce vierge and chicken with vinegar. For technical erudition his diet book Minceur is probably a better primer for learning to cook, but this book has the vision and charm and was credited, perhaps wrongly, with launching la nouvelle cuisine. At last a professional cooking without cream, butter, and flour or even much in the way of stock.

It is what it says it is, a reportage of English cooking from the days when the countryside was a heartland of cooking, a safe rudder in the more stormy turbulence of fast food and what has come since then. A very edible, erudite slice of history.

Before food bloggers there was…Florence who set up the Folk Cookery Association in 1928 and enthusiastically recorded and adapted all manner of recipes that she garnered around England in the ‘20s and ‘30s. A beautiful time capsule

Hickey manages to cover the whole era of cooking in Ireland starting with archeology, picking up old legends and songs, early recipes right up to first hand agriculture. Elegantly written and also robust attempts at recipes that survive to both remind and also establish the reputation of boxty and lots, of course, of other things to do with potatoes.

Gabrielle Hamilton’s Blood Bones and Butter is one of the great food bios, but these are the recipes from the cult restaurant she set up in New York, Prune. When she says tongue, octopus, salsa verde, mimosa eggs, that is not four dishes. It is one. Explosive, well grounded, inspiring stuff.

There are not many cookery books that are genuinely funny but this is hilarious combination of the strife and woes of a pill popping young mother transcribed them into recipes. It is not that her meringue roulade is better than anyone else’s but her inspiring methodology might send you back to the kitchen to see. As she puts it: this is the only ice cream recipe you will ever need.

In France they have Larousse. In Italy they have Ada Bono, historically the book an Italian bride was given on her wedding day. Compiled from recipes from all over the country given by friends and readers, this is actually the book on which the better-known Silver Spoon is based with one important difference. These are genuine recipes from Italian households of the 1920s. They are not chef recipes. A real taste of original Italian cuisine. A new translation is slated for 2021.

Probably the best book to cover Asian food as yet, compiled by a great cook himself. Thompson also researched the kind of historic recipes that were handed down in families from mother to daughter. Some magnificent dishes here and flavor combinations like crab and galingale, whelks and chilli in a sticky chicken broth show that Thai cooking deserves to be ranked among the best in the world on any stage. One warning: it is not a recipe book to dip into, rather it is an evolving philosophy so be prepared to cook Thai all week. One dish tends to lead into another. Endless pleasure.

In the 1968 edition the translator here Peta Fuller declares: “Other food writers…with unsportstmanlike disregard of poaching rules, have served up generous helpings of the text in their own pages”. Originally published in 1953, Escudier was a pseudo name (real name Rougie Rebstock) for the editor of the local newspaper who collated favourite recipes from chefs and restaurants in the region and gave them a bit of literary brio which would inspire the likes of James Beard and Richard Olney.