A Series on the History and Design of Cookbooks

A series on the history and design of cookbooks

Author and writer Dr. Julia Skinner is founder and director of Root, a fermentation and food history company that bridges the gap between modern people and historic food. Her substack, Root: Historic Food for the Modern World, is about "rediscovering the magic of everyday life through food, nature, and the creative process, plus recipes, writing tips, and stories." She has authored Wayfinding, a series on the history and design of cookbooks:Part…

A Boy’s Search for Queer Voices in Cookbooks

Ryan Hartley Smith. Ryan Hartley Smith It’s 1973, and I, a suburban junior high kid in California, keep a special word locked in my gay little heart. The word is brioche. If nobody’s home, I might slip my mom’s copy of The New York Times Cook Book from the shelf in the hutch and flip through it. I always stop on page 473 and study the black-and-white picture: a small round table in front of a window scrimmed off with sheer drapes filtering a too…