Recipe for boredom

Why must the modern cookbook be such a flavorless affair?

By Laura Calder

Dec. 19, 2001 |

He ate and drank the precious words
His spirit grew robust.
   --Emily Dickinson.

How often people boast, "Oh I read cookbooks like novels." It's a suspect claim; in fact, knowing what passes for reading these days one wonders if the trend isn't actually the other way around. But, when it comes to cookbooks, it's hard to be critical, because the poor modern recipe is about as original and engaging as the dishwasher manual, and every bit as literary.

Nevertheless, standard recipe format, which goes something like this, is for reasons far beyond me fiercely defended: First, the ingredients are listed in order with precise measurements in imperial, metric and cups. The method is then hacked into bite-size pieces and arranged in a reassuring cooking-by-numbers format. Nutritional breakdown of the end result generally follows, including a calorie count per serving for the dieters, and often at the very end is placed a thoughtful little star to indicate the name of the catalog from which the required specialty ingredients (unavailable in the average supermarket) might be obtained.

All of this presumably is for the cook's own good. "Safety in numbers" takes on a whole new meaning and the cook is protected from the faintest dependency on his feeble, out-of-shape instincts. Indeed, such a regression would be a virtual return to witchcraft and we couldn't have that! So, any recipe that strays in a corruptingly liberal direction is quickly scented out, hunted down and put to a silent death. When people talk about how to "execute" their recipes, I gather this is not what they mean, but it is unfortunately what they do. As a result, countless innocent dishes die tortured deaths on pages right under our noses every day.

The British cookery writer Elizabeth David, like a prophet, saw it coming, and in reviewing a cookbook by an American called Mrs. Brown, she tried to warn us. She praised the woman's recipes for being "easy on the eye and the mind" and "very far removed from those interminable recipes of American magazine cookery which call for one half-cup or one-quarter-teaspoon of everything but the washing up water." But no one listened and now we must live with the mournful consequences.

For example, one of my favorite recipes to read is Elizabeth David's own "Salad of Lettuce Hearts With Melted Butter":

Use only the tenderest of lettuce hearts for this exquisite salad; arrange them in a salad bowl, season them very lightly with salt and a scrape of sugar, and at the last moment pour over them warm melted butter into which you have pounded a very small piece of garlic and a squeeze of lemon juice.

In the hands of America's recipe executioners, I know full well what would become of it:

Lettuce Hearts With Warm Garlic-Lemon Dressing
(Serves 4)

Ingredients
1 clove garlic
2 teaspoons lemon juice
1/4 cup butter
4 lettuce hearts
1 teaspoon sugar
salt and pepper

Method
1. To make the garlic butter: Peel the garlic clove and crush it in a mortar and pestle or with the side of a knife. Pour in the lemon juice and mix well, then add the butter, cut into pieces, and mash together until creamy. Transfer the mixture to a small saucepan and set over low heat to melt.
2. Meanwhile, wash the lettuce hearts. Dry them thoroughly in a salad spinner and arrange in a flat salad bowl. Sprinkle over the sugar and season with salt and pepper. Then, drizzle over the melted garlic butter and serve immediately as a first course.

In other words, right there and then, in black-and-white transcription, that once elegant recipe meets its tragic end.

All is not lost, however, if you know where to look. The house I lived in a couple of years ago, for instance, held an impressive collection of contemporary and antiquarian cookbooks. The oldest, bound in cracking leather, beautifully embossed, and illustrated with intricate ink drawings, were those I loved best, and indeed it was their poetic "receipts" that helped me to appreciate the concept of reading cookbooks as literature.

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