Recipes

Confessions of a Recovering Cookbook Addict

Here’s a paradox that would make Schrödinger cry: despite people cooking less and less, cookbook sales continue to burgeon like an unattended sourdough starter. Amazon lists 60,000 books in its Cookbook, Food, and Wine section. Twenty million cookbooks are sold each year. This is roughly equivalent to the number of people who believe they’ll use that spiralizer gathering dust in their kitchen cabinet. I am no longer one of the purchasers. I have seen the light, and it is the glow of my phone screen at 6 P.M., searching for “what can I do with leftover quinoa.”

I wasn’t always this enlightened. I confess that I was once a cookbook addict, requiring a twelve-step program that I mostly skipped to step thirteen: “Accept that you will never make cassoulet or a gallotine again.” Back in the day, a significant portion of my discretionary income, money that could have funded therapy, vanished into cookbooks. It finally dawned on me that after the initial dopamine hit of ownership and a few insipid cooking experiments, I never opened the damn book again. Valuable library shelf space was consumed by lies. Beautiful, glossy lies.

Being obsessed with food in that uniquely modern way where you spend more time photographing it than eating it, I also collected dozens of books on food history, cultural approaches to foods and cooking, food chemistry, agriculture, and probably at least one manifesto about heirloom tomatoes. Then there were the magazines—Gourmet (RIP, taken before its time), Saveur, Food and Wine, Cooks Illustrated (which I read like scripture), Bon Appetit (pre-scandal), and a regional Sunset that mostly made me feel inadequate about our patio furniture. I amassed two Time-Life series, each a dozen volumes, which I displayed prominently to convince guests I was sophisticated. Despite not being a packrat, I couldn’t rid myself of this cookbook plague. Each time we relocated, I dragged the hoard along like Sisyphus, except my boulder was made of glossy pages and false promises. My collection included a prodigious assemblage of specialty genres, such as wild mushrooms, wild-game cookery, and charcuterie.

During our third downsizing, I knew that the time had come. Bookshelf space in our condo was limited, unless you count “the floor” as a valid storage solution, which my spouse did not. I discarded over seven hundred books in what can only be described as a cookbook massacre. Some went to a local library, where they would disappoint a whole new generation. Some went to a thrift store, where they sit today, still pristine, waiting for the next sucker. Most spent their final days in a landfill, a resting place for the aged and neglected.

Some treasures I retained. These included a few classics, or those written with great style and panache by such notables as M.K.F. Fisher (who could make eating an orange sound like a religious experience), Jane Grigson, Elizabeth David (the patron saint of making British people feel bad about their kitchens), Marion Burrows, Waverley Root, and Harold McGee (the only cookbook that’s actually useful because it explains why your hollandaise broke). One can dip into these at any time, not for a recipe but for the illusion that you’re educated. My all-time favorite is “Unmentionable Cuisine,” because one never knows when one might need a recipe for duck chitterlings or the best sauce to accompany water beetles.

Some books are so magnificently quirky that I can’t part from them: Matzo Ball Gumbo (interfaith cooking at its finest), Italian Jewish Cooking (confusing historians everywhere), and The International Goodwill Cookbook, which accompanied us from South Africa and includes recipes my mother donated. It contains ingredients that are no longer available, but it is well-thumbed and stained with grease, the only honest cookbook credential that matters.

Let’s be honest: writing a cookbook is a mere conceit, rivaling a memoir for sheer narcissistic indulgence. (I, too, plead guilty to this particular sin, and yes, I see the irony of writing about my cookbook problem in essay form.) Almost every two-bit cook or restaurant feels obligated to share their “unique wisdom” with the world, as if the planet were desperately waiting for their take on roasted chicken. And we suckers buy it all up like we’re investing in Beanie Babies.

The newest offerings are little more than food porn—exquisite photography, carefully staged, airbrushed, and glistening with what is definitely not butter. Each page whispers seductively: “You could make this.” No, you couldn’t. And, like all pornography, attempts to duplicate the picture usually fall short, ending with you ordering pizza at 9 PM while quietly sobbing into your improperly emulsified vinaigrette. As my cooking skills grew, I became astute enough to tell the difference between decent recipes and aspirational fiction. Few make the cut. And the hundred or so books still decorating our shelves, serving primarily as expensive dust collectors, are seldom consulted. Some contain one or two recipes I might gravitate to for special occasions, which are themselves becoming increasingly rare.

The internet changed everything. Instead of spending the children’s inheritance on books, the $40 a year for New York Times recipes is a trivial investment, less than a single hardcover cookbook that you’ll use exactly once to make a mediocre risotto. There are thousands of recipes, many by reputable cooks, and some by people who think “eyeballing it” counts as a measurement system. That is not to say that all are good, or even edible. The greatest value is that every recipe comes with a comment section full of real people who have tried the experiment and failed spectacularly. They detect the flaws (”This called for too much salt and also ruined my marriage”) and offer suggestions for improvement (”I substituted Greek yogurt for the butter, quinoa for the pasta, and my hopes and dreams for the actual recipe, and it was perfect”). These comments are both invaluable and more entertaining than the recipe itself. I always read the top ten or so before deciding whether the recipe is worthwhile or just another beautiful lie. My batting average with NYT recipes is around .800.

Things continue evolving at the speed of technology and my declining attention span. Now, I merely open the fridge, survey the wasteland of expired condiments and that one mysterious Tupperware I’m afraid to open, and enter three or four items into Google to discover a dozen “interesting” suggestions. By “interesting” I mean “edible with wine.” This is spontaneous, unconstrained gastronomy at its best. Cooking is little more than basic art and science, which means it’s unpredictable, frequently disappointing, and subject to the laws of thermodynamics that you never fully understood in high school.

If the news cycle is particularly disturbing, I forgo watching TV while exercising in the fitness center and instead watch YouTube videos of a couple of chefs I trust. These are not the glitzy celebs of the cooking shows with their perfect kitchens and camera-ready enthusiasm. No, these are honest, straightforward cooks who know how to prepare a real home meal, not some precious, pretty dish requiring ingredients from endangered species or available only from a specialty grocer in a specific arrondissement of Paris. The last time I used forceps and tweezers was in my previous career, not to arrange three petals and a microgreen on a plate like I’m performing surgery on someone’s dinner.

I have taken the next logical step in my devolution as a human being. I prompted ChatGPT to provide recipes using whatever ingredients were available, which is essentially asking a robot to solve my problems, the most 2020s solution imaginable. Our dinner was outstanding, or at least no one got food poisoning. I might consider upgrading to ChatGPT Pro so it can show me the meal’s plating in the style of Le Bernardin in New York. I am sure that will require some tweezer work, which I’ll probably skip in favor of dumping everything in a bowl and calling it “rustic.”

Does anyone want to purchase a cookbook collection? It is offered at a significant discount, by which I mean “please take them.” If you are willing to truck them away, you can have them for free. I’ll even throw in the spiralizer.