Women in the Kitchen
Twelve Essential Cookbook Writers Who Defined the Way We Eat, from 1661 to Today
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- $12.99
Publisher Description
Culinary historian Anne Willan “has melded her passions for culinary history, writing, and teaching into her fascinating new book” (Chicago Tribune) that traces the origins of American cooking through profiles of twelve influential women—from Hannah Woolley in the mid-1600s to Fannie Farmer, Julia Child, and Alice Waters—whose recipes and ideas changed the way we eat.
Anne Willan, multi-award-winning culinary historian, cookbook writer, teacher, and founder of La Varenne Cooking School in Paris, explores the lives and work of women cookbook authors whose essential books have defined cooking over the past three hundred years. Beginning with the first published cookbook by Hannah Woolley in 1661 to the early colonial days to the transformative popular works by Fannie Farmer, Irma Rombauer, Julia Child, Edna Lewis, Marcella Hazan, and up to Alice Waters working today.
Willan offers a brief biography of each influential woman, highlighting her key contributions, seminal books, and representative dishes. The book features fifty original recipes—as well as updated versions Willan has tested and modernized for the contemporary kitchen.
Women in the Kitchen is an engaging narrative that seamlessly moves through the centuries to help readers understand the ways cookbook authors inspire one another, that they in part owe their places in history to those who came before them, and how they forever change the culinary landscape. This “informative and inspiring book is a reminder that the love of delicious food and the care and preparation that goes into it can create a common bond” (Booklist).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
James Beard Award winning author Willan (The Country Cooking of France) winnows centuries of women cookbook authors to an influential dozen whose biographies and recipes form the backbone of this smartly executed book. Drawing from her own 2,000-plus cookbook collection built up over decades of writing about food, Willan notes "most of the active, recipe books, the ones I take into the kitchen, are by women." She begins with Hannah Woolley, who in 1670 published the first woman's cookbook, handwritten in 1661, in English, and closes with Alice Waters, who opened her "little French restaurant" Chez Panisse three centuries later and in 1982 shared its lauded recipes in the first of several cookbooks. The other 10 women include the familiar (Fannie Farmer, Irma Rombauer) and the forgotten, among them Lydia Child (better known for the classic rhyme, "Over the river and through the wood"). Recipes vary from unexpected (a 17th-century version of almond milk) and rustic ("Indian Slapjack," from 1796) to sophisticated (Julia Child's coq au vin; Marcella Hazan's polenta con la luganega). Both cooks and historians will eagerly tuck into this cleverly conceived, well-researched collection.
