As someone who has a sizeable cookbook collection, I am always fascinated by people's relationships with cookbooks.
I find the whole idea that recipes don't let people explore their true culinary potential a bit misguided and even blind to how society and the kitchen works in the modern age. I mean, sure, if you are already a proficient cook recipes are suggestions for flavor combinations more than anything else. But for people who have never cooked a thing in their life recipes are literally instructions. I wonder how many of the people who shun recipes learned to cook from their mothers, or their grandmothers. That is just not how most people, at least in the US, learn to cook anymore. Recipes have filled that void. Cookbooks and recipes have replaced the older ways of learning to cook. The same goes for when someone is learning to cook something from a different culture. How do you know without instructions? You don't.
This is lovely, Juneisy--I have yet to see a really strongly articulate defense of cookbooks/recipes as a means of repairing and remaking cultural communication (both within and between cultures), but that's an article that should exist (especially since so many people write about the written recipe as part of hegemonic Westernized culinary discourse). I know that when I'm venturing into cooking something that isn't deeply familiar to me (most recently Malaysian cuisine), I'm immediately searching for recipes that can offer me a guide into a culture without inherently changing the methodology for the benefit of an Anglo-American reader. Additionally, the recipe as a stand-in for intergenerational knowledge is vital when families don't necessarily have dishes they "pass down". Even though it came from a cookbook, the tarte tatin that my mom made every year is part of our family's culinary lexicon--and even if she never sits down and has me make it from scratch in front of her, I know I'll be able to access a bit of her knowledge because that recipe is well-preserved.
As someone who has a sizeable cookbook collection, I am always fascinated by people's relationships with cookbooks.
I find the whole idea that recipes don't let people explore their true culinary potential a bit misguided and even blind to how society and the kitchen works in the modern age. I mean, sure, if you are already a proficient cook recipes are suggestions for flavor combinations more than anything else. But for people who have never cooked a thing in their life recipes are literally instructions. I wonder how many of the people who shun recipes learned to cook from their mothers, or their grandmothers. That is just not how most people, at least in the US, learn to cook anymore. Recipes have filled that void. Cookbooks and recipes have replaced the older ways of learning to cook. The same goes for when someone is learning to cook something from a different culture. How do you know without instructions? You don't.
This is lovely, Juneisy--I have yet to see a really strongly articulate defense of cookbooks/recipes as a means of repairing and remaking cultural communication (both within and between cultures), but that's an article that should exist (especially since so many people write about the written recipe as part of hegemonic Westernized culinary discourse). I know that when I'm venturing into cooking something that isn't deeply familiar to me (most recently Malaysian cuisine), I'm immediately searching for recipes that can offer me a guide into a culture without inherently changing the methodology for the benefit of an Anglo-American reader. Additionally, the recipe as a stand-in for intergenerational knowledge is vital when families don't necessarily have dishes they "pass down". Even though it came from a cookbook, the tarte tatin that my mom made every year is part of our family's culinary lexicon--and even if she never sits down and has me make it from scratch in front of her, I know I'll be able to access a bit of her knowledge because that recipe is well-preserved.